ven
standing-room in that strange theatre of nature. But down from "the
swelling instep of a mountain's foot," that has protruded itself through
a wood, while the body of the mountain prudently remains in the extreme
distance, descends on you, ere you have recovered from your unexpected
encounter with the old Roman cement, an unconscionable cataract. There
stands a deer or goat, or rather some beast with horns, "strictly
anonymous," placed for effect, contrary to all cause, in a place where
it seems as uncertain how he got in as it is certain that he never can
get out till he becomes a hippogriff.

The true poet, again, has such potent eyes, that when he lets down the
lids, he sees just as well, perhaps better than when they were up; for
in that deep, earnest, inward gaze, the fluctuating sea of scenery
subsides into a settled calm, where all is harmony as well as
beauty--order as well as peace. What though he have been fated, through
youth and manhood, to dwell in city smoke? His childhood--his
boyhood--were overhung with trees, and through its heart went the murmur
of waters. Then it is, we verily believe, that in all poets, is filled
with images up to the brim, Imagination's treasury. Genius, growing, and
grown up to maturity, is still a prodigal. But he draws on the Bank of
Youth. His bills, whether at a short or long date, are never
dishonoured; nay, made payable at sight, they are as good as gold. Nor
cares that Bank for a run, made even in a panic, for besides bars and
billets, and wedges and blocks of gold, there are, unappreciable beyond
the riches which against a time of trouble

"The Sultaun hides in his ancestral tombs,"

jewels and diamonds sufficient

"To ransom great kings from captivity."

We sometimes think that the power of painting Nature to the life,
whether in her real or ideal beauty (both belong to _life_,) is seldom
evolved to its utmost, until the mind possessing it is withdrawn in the
body from all rural _environment_. It has not been so with Wordsworth,
but it was so with Milton. The descriptive poetry in "Comus" is indeed
rich as rich may be, but certainly not so great, perhaps not so
beautiful, as that in "Paradise Lost."

It would seem to be so with all of us, small as well as great; and were
_we_--Christopher North--to compose a poem on Loch Skene, two thousand
feet or so above the level of the sea, and some miles from a house, we
should desire to do so in a metropolitan cel