Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, moon, and stars, but
"To murmur by the living brooks A music sweeter than their own."
What has been the result? Seven volumes (oh! why not seven more?) of poetry, as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The earth--the middle air--the sky--the heaven--the heart, mind, and soul of man--are "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth--not even Thomson; in imbuing her and making her pregnant with spiritualities, till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till such communion--he excels all the brotherhood. Therein lies his especial glory, and therein the immortal evidences of the might of his creative imagination. All men at times "muse on nature with a poet's eye,"--but Wordsworth ever--and his soul has grown more and more religious from such worship. Every rock is an altar--every grove a shrine. We fear that there will be sectarians even in this Natural Religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of Nature--or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest "in the metropolitan temple built in the heart of mighty poets." But has he--even he--ever written a Great Poem? If he has--it is not "The Excursion." Nay, "The Excursion" is not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, all swimming in the light of poetry; some of them sweet and simple, some elegant and graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some of "strength and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by the numerals on the page; and the most, serious apprehensions have been very generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary breathe the vital air, may "The Excursion," stop where it will, be renewed; and as in its present shape it comprehends but a Three Days' Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion of three weeks, three months, or three years, to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life of man is not always limited to the term of threescore and ten years. What a Journal might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, not a Great Poem--nay, not a Poem at all--nor ever to be so esteemed, till the principles on which Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are exploded, and the very names of Art and Science smothered and lost in the bosom of Nature from which they arose.