lar in "The
Excursion?" Wordsworth says--

"Amid the gloom,
Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms,
Appear'd a roofless hut; four naked walls
That stared upon each other! I look'd round,
And to my wish and to my hope espied
Him whom I sought; a man of reverend age,
But stout and hale, for travel unimpair'd.
There was he seen upon the cottage bench,
Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;
An iron-pointed staff lay at his side."

Alas! "stout and hale" are words that could not be applied, without
cruel mocking, to our figure. "Recumbent in the shade" unquestionably he
is--yet, "recumbent" is a clumsy word for such quietude; and, recurring
to our former image, we prefer to say, in the words of Wilson,--

"Still is he as a frame of stone
That in its stillness lies alone,
With silence breathing from its face,
For ever in some holy place,
Chapel or aisle--on marble laid,
With pale hands on his pale breast spread,
An image humble, meek, and low,
Of one forgotten long ago!"

No "iron-pointed staff lies at his side"--but "Satan's dread," THE
CRUTCH! Wordsworth tells us over again that the Pedlar--

"With no appendage but a staff,
The prized memorial of _relinquish'd_ toils,
Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs,
Screen'd from the sun."

On his couch, in his Alcove, Christopher is reposing--not his limbs
alone, but his very essence. THE CRUTCH is, indeed, both _de jure_ and
_de facto_ the prized memorial of toils--but, thank Heaven, not
_relinquished_ toils; and then how characteristic of the dear merciless
old man--hardly distinguishable among the fringed draperies of his
canopy, the dependent and independent KNOUT!

Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep? We shrewdly suspect not--'twas but a
doze. "Recumbent in the shade, _as if asleep_"--"Upon that cottage-bench
_reposed_ his limbs" induce us to lean to the opinion that he was but on
the border of the Land of Nod. Nay, the poet gets more explicit, and
with that minute particularity so charming in poetical description,
finally informs us that

"Supine the wanderer lay,
_His eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut_,
The shadows of the breezy elms above
Dappling his face."

It would appear, then, on an impartial consideration of all the
circumstances of the case, that the "man of reverend age," though
"recumbent" and "supine" upon