What we have now quoted will give the reader a notion of the taste and spirit in which this volume is composed; and yet, if it had not contained something a good deal better, we do not know how we should have been justified in troubling him with any account of it.  But the truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his perversities, is a person of great powers; and has frequently a force in his moral declamations, and a tenderness in his pathetic narratives, which neither his prolixity nor his affectation can altogether deprive of their effect.

* * * * *

Besides those more extended passages of interest or beauty, which we have quoted, and omitted to quote, there are scattered up and down the book, and in the midst of its most repulsive portions, a very great number of single lines and images, that sparkle like gems in the desart, and startle us with an intimation of the great poetic powers that lie buried in the rubbish that has been heaped around them.  It is difficult to pick up these, after we have once passed them by; but we shall endeavour to light upon one or two.  The beneficial effect of intervals of relaxation and pastime on youthful minds, is finely expressed, we think, in a single line, when it is said to be—­

  Like vernal ground to Sabbath sunshine left.

The following image of the bursting forth of a mountain-spring, seems to us also to be conceived with great elegance and beauty.

  And a few steps may bring us to the spot,
  Where haply crown’d with flowrets and green herbs;
  The Mountain Infant to the Sun comes forth
  Like human life from darkness.—­

The ameliorating effects of song and music on the minds which most delight in them, are likewise very poetically expressed.

 —­And when the stream
  Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
  A consciousness remained that it had left,
  Deposited upon the silent shore
  Of Memory, images and precious thoughts,
  That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

Nor is any thing more elegant than the representation of the graceful tranquillity occasionally put on by one of the author’s favourites; who, though gay and airy, in general—­

  Was graceful, when it pleased him, smooth and still
  As the mute Swan that floats adown the stream,
  Or on the waters of th’ unruffled lake
  Anchored her placid beauty.  Not a leaf
  That flutters on the bough more light than he,
  And not a flower that droops in the green shade,
  More winningly reserved.—­

Nor are there wanting morsels of a sterner and more majestic beauty; as when, assuming the weightier diction of Cowper, he says, in language which the hearts of all readers of modern history must have responded—­

                 —­Earth is sick,
  And Heaven is weary of the hollow words
  Which States and Kingdoms utter when they speak
  Of Truth and Justice.