grazin'. I have been payin' rint twinty
years, an' am still, thank God, able to take
my own part iv any day's work,-- plough,
spade, or flail."

"Have you got a lease?" said I.

"No, indeed; not a schrape of a pin; nor
I never axed it. Have I not my tinnantrite?"

From that subject, Mr. Mc Nale diverged
slightly into politics, touching on the state of
the counthry, and untwisting some entanglements
of the ' Irish difficulty ' that might be
usefully made known in the neighbourhood
of Westminster.

"Troth, Sir," said Con, "you English are
mighty grand in all your doings. You dale
wholesale in all sorts iv things; good luck to
you-- in charity as well as in pigs, praties,
an' sich like. Well you want to improve
Ireland by wholesale; you set up illigant
schames for puttin' us all to rights by the
million; for clanin' an' dranin' a whole
province at onst; for giving labour to everybody;
an' all mighty purty on paper, with
figures all as round an' nate as copybooks,
with long rigiments of O's, after 'em. I 've
heard iv whole stacks of papers piled up an'
handsomely ticketed in tidy big offices-- all
' rules and riglations ' for labourers, which
the boys can't follow, and the inspectors
can't force. Why not," continued Mr. Con,
giving his spade a thrust into the ground
that sent it up to the maker's name, " Why
not tache the boys to do as I have done?"

"But all are not so persevering, so knowing,
and so fond of work as you."

Whether Mr. Mc Nale was impressed by
his own modesty, or by the force of my
suggestion, I know not. But he was silent.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born on the
7th of April, 1770; he died on the 23d of
April, 1850. His life was prolonged for ten
years beyond the space attributed to man by
the inspired Psalmist. He lived in an age
unprecedented for its social and civil revolutions;
for its discoveries in science, and their
practical application. He was fourteen years
of age when the new North American
Republic was finally recognised as one of the
brotherhood of nations; he witnessed the
French Revolution; the subjection of every
monarchy in Europe, except England and
Russia, to the absolute will of a French
emperor; the instalment and evaporation of
the Holy Alliance; the European war of
twenty years, and the European peace of
thirty-two years; one Pope carried into
exile by a foreign conqueror, another driven
into exile by his own subjects: and at home,
the trials of Hardy and Thelwall; the Bank
Restriction Act; the origination of the Bell
and Lancaster systems of Education; the visit
of the allied monarchs to London; the passing
of Peel's Bill; the introduction of Palmer's mail-
coaches and M'Adam's roads; the invention
of steam navigation; the passing of the
Reform Bill; the development of the Railway
system, and the Electric telegraph. He was
the contemporary of Davey, Herschell,
Bentham, Godwin, Malthus and Ricardo, Byron,
Scott, Wilkie, Chantrey, Fox, Pitt, Canning
and Brougham.

Wordsworth's age was one of stirring
events and great changes. The character of
his poetry is in startling contrast to that age.
It is passionless, a record of the poet's own
mind; simple and austere, emanating from
his own independent thoughts and fancies;
receiving little of its form and colour from
external events, or the feelings and opinions
of men. For eighty long years, Wordsworth
would almost appear to have lived 'among
men, not of them; ' sympathising as little with,
the ephemeral pursuits of his contemporaries
as the colossal Memnon does with the Copts,
Turks, and Arabs who now tenant the banks
of the Nile.

Willliam Wordsworth was born in the
little county town of Cockermouth; his
father was an attorney-- not a wealthy man,
but in circumstances that enabled him to give
his family a fair education. One son entered
the merchant service, rose to command a
vessel, and perished at sea. The son of
another has acquired a name as master of
Harrow, and author of a delightful book on
Greece, full of delicate beauty and classical
feeling. The allusions by William to his
favourite sister are among the most touching
passages in his poems; and one or two little
pieces of verse, and some extracts from her
journals, which he has published, show that
she was every way deserving of his love.
The poetical dedication of the River Duddon
to Dr. Wordsworth, is full of delightful
allusions to the boyhood of the brothers, and
conveys a pleasing impression of their family
relations.

Our poet received the rudiments of his
education at the grammar school of Hawkeshead,
in Westmoreland, conducted in his time
by a master of more than ordinary attainments.
In 1787, he matriculated at St. John's
College, Cambridge. Even in his boyhood it
was obvious that he possessed superior
abilities, but they were not of the showy and
ambitious kind which achieve school or college
distinction. He was partial to solitary
rambles; fond of reading and reciting verses;
a boy whom elder men 'singled out for his
grave looks' as he has said in the Excursion,
and liked to converse with.

It was intended that he should enter the
Church, the family circumstances rendering it
necessary that he should adopt a profession.
But, independently of his wish to devote
himself exclusively to literary pursuits, he had
caught the prevalent spirit of the time-- the
aversion to conventional forms and opinions.
A moderate income, settled upon him by
Raisley Calvert, the victim of a premature