said it, was true enough, I do believe, having heard things much to the same purpose from my own old grandfather. The Coroner listened with more patience than we had given him credit for, although he told us that brother Perkins should have reserved his learned speech for the second inquiry, which was to be about the deaths of the five young men; for to him it appeared that this noble infant must lay the blame of his grievous loss not on the sand but upon the sea. Hezekiah replied, with great deference, that the cause in both cases was the same, for that the movement of sand went on under the sea even more than ashore, and hence the fatal gulfing of that ship, the Andalusia, and the loss of his young lordship.

The name he had given the ship surprised me; and indeed I felt sure that it was quite wrong; and so I said immediately, without any low consideration of what might be mine own interest. But the Coroner would not hearken to me, being much impressed now with the learning and wisdom of Hezekiah Perkins. And when Hezekiah presented his card, beginning with "horologist," and ending with the "king and queen," he might have had any verdict he liked, if he himself had been upon trial.

Therefore, after calling in (for the sake of form) the two poor women who found the dead baby among the sea-weed, and had sevenpence apiece for doing so, and who cried all the while that they talked in Welsh (each having seen a dear baby like him not more than twenty years ago), we came in the most unanimous manner, under his lordship's guidance, to the following excellent verdict:

"Found drowned on Pool Tavan

rocks, a man-child, supposed to be two years old; believed to be a young nobleman, from marks on pinafore, and high bearing; but cast away by a storm of sand from the ship Andalusia of Appledore."

Now I was as certain, as sure could be, that half of this verdict must be wrong; especially as to the name of the ship, and her belonging to Appledore, which never yet owned any craft of more than 200 tons at the utmost-a snow, or a brig, at the very outside. Nevertheless I was compelled to give in to the rest of them, and most of all to the Coroner. Only I said, as many who are still alive can remember, and are not afraid to speak to, and especially my good friend Mr Lewis, "The ship was not called the Andalusia; the ship was never from Appledore; neither was she of British build. As an old seaman, it is likely that I know more of the build of a ship than a lubber of a clockmaker, or rather a clock-mauler."

But here I was put down sternly; and hearing of verdicts a great deal worse, without any mischief come of them, I was even content to sign the return, and have a new pipe of bird's-eye. And a bird's-eye view this gave me of them at the second inquest, wherein I had to give evidence; and was not of the jury. They wanted to cross-examine me, because I had been unpleasant; but of that they got the worst, and dropped it. But as all our jurymen declared upon their oaths that the little nobleman was drowned in a storm of sand, so they found that the five young rabbiters came to their end of smothering through a violent sea-tempest.

In the days of my youth such judgments perhaps would have tried my patience; but now I knew that

nothing ever follows truth and justice. People talk of both these things, and perhaps the idea does them good.

Be that according to God's will as we always say when deprived of our own-at any rate, I am bound to tell one little thing more about each quest. And first about the first one. Why was I so vexed and angry with my foolish tongue when Hezekiah began to speak? Only because I knew full well that it would lead to the very thing, which it was my one desire to avoid, if possible. And this as you may guess at once, after what happened on the stairs-was the rude fetching and exposing of the dear little maid among so many common fellows; and to show her the baby-corpse. I feared that it must come to this, through my own thoughtless blabbing about her "ickle bother" in the presence of Hezekiah: and if ever man had a hollow dry heart from over-pumping of the tongue, I had it when Hezekiah came in; bearing, in a depth of fright and wonder, and contempt of him, my own delicate Bardie. I had set my back against the door, and sworn that they should not have her; but crafty Perkins had stolen out by another door while they humoured me. Now my pretty dear was awed, and hushed beyond all crying, and even could not move her feet, as children do, in a kicking way. Trying to get as far as possible from Hezekiah's nasty face-which gave me a great deal of pleasure, because she had never done the like to me, unless I were full of tobacco she stretched away from his greasy shoulder, and then she saw old Davy. Her hands came toward me, and so did her eyes, and so did her lips, with great promise of kisses, such as her father and mother perhaps might have been mightily tempted by; but nobody now to care for them.

When Hezekiah, pretending to dandle this little lady in a jaunty way, like one of his filthy low children, was taking her towards that poor little corpse, so white in the light of the window; and when he made her look at it, and said, "Is that ickle bother, my dear?" and she all the time was shivering and turning her eyes away from it, and seeking for me to help her, I got rid of the two men who held me, nor hearkened I the Coroner, but gave Hezekiah such a grip as he felt for three months afterwards, and with Bardie on my left arm, kept my right fist ready.

Nobody cared to encounter this; for I had happened to tell the neighbourhood how the Frenchman's head came off at the time when he tried to injure me; and so I bore off the little one, till her chest began to pant and her tears ran down my beard. And then as I spoke softly to her and began to raise her fingers, and to tickle her frizzy hair, all of a sudden she flung both arms around my neck, and loved me.

"Old Davy, poor ickle Bardie not go to 'e back pithole yet?”

"No, my dear, not for ever so long. Not for eighty years at least. And then go straight to heaven!"

"Ickle bother go to 'e back pithole? Does 'a think, old Davy?" This was more than I could tell, though inclined to think it very likely. However, before I could answer, some of the jury followed us, and behind them the Coroner himself; they insisted on putting a question to her, and so long as they did not force her again to look at that which terrified her, I had no right to prevent them. They all desired to speak at once; but the clerk of the Coroner took the lead, having as yet performed no work toward the earning of his salt or rum. An innocent old man he was, but very free from cleanliness; and

the child being most particular of all ever born in that matter, turned away with her mite of a nose, in a manner indescribable.

He was much too dull to notice this; but putting back his spectacles, and stooping over her hair and ears (which was all she left outside my beard), he wanted to show his skill in babies, of which he boasted himself a grandfather. And so he began to whisper,

"My little dear, you will be a good child-a very good child; won't you, now? I can see it in your little face. Such a pretty dear you are! And all good children always do as they are told, you know. We want you to tell us a little thing about pretty little brother. I have got a little girl at home not so old as you are, and she is so clever, you can't think. Everything she does and says; everything we tell her

"Take ayay 'e nasty old man. Take ayay 'e bad old man; or I never tis 'a again, old Davy."

She flashed up at me with such wrath, that I was forced to obey her; while the old man put down his goggles to stare, and all the jury laughed at him. And I was running away with her, for her little breath was hot and short; when the Coroner called out, "Stop,

man; I know how to manage her.” At this I was bound to pull up, and set her to look at him, as he ordered She sate well up in my arms, and looked, and seemed not to think very highly of him.

me.

"Look at his Honour, my dear,” said I, stroking her hair as I knew she liked; "look at his lordship, you pretty duck."

"Little child," began his Honour, "you have a duty to perform, even at this early period of your very beginning life. We are most desirous to spare your feelings, having strong reasons to believe that you are sprung from a noble family. But in our duty towards your lineage, we must require you, my little dear—we must request you, my little lady-to assist us in our endeavour to identify

"I can say 'dentify,' old Davy tell 'e silly old man to say 'dentify' same as I does."

She spread her little open hand with such contempt at the Coroner, that even his own clerk could not keep his countenance from laughing. And his Honour, having good reason to think her a baby of high position before, was now so certain that he said, "God bless her! What a child she is! Take her away, old mariner. She is used to high society."

No character could possibly be more unlike that of the gentle, timid, sorrowful, and lonely Cowper, than is the austere and dignified form lonely, too, but after a different kind-which comes next after him, by natural descent and development, in the splendid roll of English poets. And it is not in our power to point out any moment of contact or apparent influence of one upon the other. Wordsworth, so far as we are aware, never even speaks of his predecessor-never acknowledges either admiration of or help from him. Yet it is safe to say, that without Cowper Wordsworth could scarcely have been. The leap from Twickenham to Grasmere direct is too great for human faculties. Cowper had not created a new school or style, but he had acted upon the very air of England as some subtile natural influence of which we know nothing-as the warm ripple of some Gulf-stream, the chill breath of some wandering iceberg, acts upon the atmosphere we breathe. Probably the young poets whose fame began with the new-born century were not even aware that the brightened and more bracing mental air, the higher firmament, the clearer sky, meant Cowper, or meant anything but the evermysterious, ever-simple course of nature. Yet it is our conviction that "The Task" had so far affected all the possibilities of composition in England, that already "The Excursion" had become likely, if not inevitable. The laws of natural progress and inheritance had come into operation, independent of any consciousness on the part of the inheritor. Wordsworth was affected as a child

is affected by the character of his father, whom he has never seen, nor even had any mental intercourse with, as between soul and soul. He received his gift darkling, warm from the hands which had held it, without knowing, or apparently much caring, whose hands these

were.

But these were the hands which had taken up again the old heritage of English poetry-the mantle of Milton, if not his power. Cowper had lifted those singing-garments, which his generation pronounced to be out of fashion, from the grave of the old poets almost unawares, and with the old fashion had returned to old nature-nature ever young and ever fresh-as the source of his inspiration. He had done it without knowing what he did, timidly, apologetically, never sure that the fresh landscape and sweet natural scenes he loved might not be quite inferior to the moral subjects which he ought to have been treating while his truant soul went off, in spite of himself, to the grateful woods and dewy fields. He was doubtful; but his successor was more than certain-he was dogmatically confident, that nature was not only a lawful teacher, but the supreme and only guide. Cowper made the needful beginning, the thousand deprecating apologies to outraged art and an unprepared public. Wordsworth placed himself on a serene and patient throne, above both art and public, and waited without doubt till they should come to his feet who would never bow to them. Thus, as in almost all intellectual revolutions, the first step was made in uncertainty and doubt; the se

cond, with confidence and daring. Cowper laid the foundations of the structure, and another came and built on it, scarce knowing, not caring, what was beneath. The work of the one rose naturally out of the other, greater than the other, of higher range and infinitely superior power; but yet, as Scripture has it, not to be made perfect without the other, any more than the writers of the full revelation could be perfected without the prophets who had prophesied in darkness, not knowing, but by snatches, what the real importance and significance of their burden was.

It may be said, however, here, that the absence of all consciousness on Wordsworth's part of the work of his immediate predecessor may be much explained by the fact that Wordsworth himself was little moved or influenced at any time by books. He is perhaps a unique example of mental character in this respect. Himself possessed of the highest literary genius, he was indifferent to literature. This, of course, is not to say that he was unmoved by existing poetry; on the contrary, he confesses to being "by strong entrancement overcome," "When I have held a volume in my hand, Poor earthly casket of immortal verse, Shakespeare or Milton, labourers divine!" But such entrancement does not seem to have been much more than the inevitable homage which is forced from every man who permits himself to come into contact with the great singers of the world. Wordsworth did not seek such contact, nor require it. He was indifferent to books; they were not even his constant companions, much less his masters. His mind was formed and moulded by other influences. He developed alone, like a tree fed by the dews of heaven, and strengthened by its sunshine, unaware of either pedi

gree or husbandry. He was without father or mother in his own consciousness, like that mysterious priest in the darkness of the patriarchal ages to whom the father of the faithful himself did homage. But no man can stand thus apart, except in his own consciousness. The laws of descent and inheritance are nowhere more stamped than in the line of genius, where every man receives something from the past to be handed on to the future; becoming in himself at once the heir of all the glorious ages and the father of our kings to be.

The early career of Wordsworth is one of curious independence and apparent separation from the ordinary influences that affect mental growth.

He seems, like Cowper, to have lost both his parents at a very early age; his mother when he was but eight, and his father when he was in his fourteenth year. He was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, of an old and respectable family, with all the advantages and disadvantages of "good connections,"-abundance of friends to advise and find fault, but none apparently with absolute authority over him, or sufficiently interested in him to afford him a permanent home. In the partial autobiography contained in "The Prelude," his school, and the "grey-haired dame" with whom he lived there, bulk much more largely than any kindred household. Hawkshead, a kind of humble Eton, would indeed seem to have afforded a most fit training to this son of the mountains. It is -for we presume it still exists, and that no marauding commissioners or school board have yet laid irreverent hands upon the poet's cradle - a foundation of the sixteenth century, planted in a village in the vale of Esthwaite, in the heart of the lake district, surrounded by mountainpeaks, and possessing a little lake of