pedantry of Oxford, and by the maintainers of the despotism not
even of Pitt but of Castlereagh. It is already felt, however, that the
poet whom these men were mainly instrumental in bringing into notice,
will live in men's memories by exactly those of his writings most
powerful to undermine and overthrow their dull and faded bigotries.
Despite his own efforts, Wordsworth (as has been said of Napoleon) is
the child and champion of Jacobinism. Though clothed in ecclesiastical
formulas, his religion is little more than the simple worship of
nature; his noblest moral flights are struggles to emancipate himself
from conventional usage; and the strong ground of his thoughts, as of
his style, is nature stripped of the gauds with which the pupils of
courts and circles would bedeck and be-ribbon it. Even in the ranks of
our opponents Wordsworth has been laboring in our behalf.

It is in the record of his extra-academic life that the poet soars his
freest flight, in passages where we have a very echo of the emotions
of an emancipated worshiper of nature flying back to his loved
resorts. Apart from its poetic value, the book is a graphical and
interesting portraiture of the struggles of an ingenuous and impetuous
mind to arrive at a clear insight into its own interior constitution
and external relations, and to secure the composure of self-knowledge
and of equally adjusted aspirations. As a poem it is likely to
lay fast and enduring hold on pure and aspiring intellects, and to
strengthen the claim of Wordsworth to endure with his land's language.

* * * * *

THE MONUMENT TO SIR ROBERT PEEL.

A LETTER FROM WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'EXAMINER.'

Now the fever hath somewhat subsided which came over the people from
the grave of Sir Robert Peel, there is room for a few observations on
his decease and on its consequences. All public writers, I believe,
have expatiated on his character, comparing him with others who,
within our times, have occupied the same position. My own opinion
has invariably been that he was the wisest of all our statesmen;
and certainly, though he found reason to change his sentiments and
his measures, he changed them honestly, well weighed, always from
conviction, and always for the better. He has been compared, and
seemingly in no spirit of hostility or derision, with a Castlereagh,
a Perceval, an Addington. a Canning. Only one of these is worthy of
notic