pointments, he purchased with his sair-won penny-fee" a passage to America. We say after many difficulties and disappointments, some of which he owed to his own imprudence, for it was not till the ruling passion of his genius found food ever fresh and fair in Ornithology, that his moral and intellectual character settled down into firm formation. In a Journal which he kept of an excursion made in 1789 along the east coast of Scotland with his miscellaneous pack on his shoulders, "A vagrant merchant, bent beneath his and a prospectus of a volume of that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse; while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for consolation, her Bible: and, in this house, the wife brawls, the children shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralized upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never had a being, except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors." The writer of an excellent memoir of Wilson in Constable's Miscellany (Mr Hetherington, author of a poetical volume of much merit— Dramatic Scenes-characteristic of Scottish pastoral life and manners) justly observes, " that this, it must be acknowledged, is a somewhat prolix and overstrained summing up of his observations: but it proves Wilson to have been, at the early age of twenty-three, a man of great penetration, and strong native sense; and shews that his mental culture had been much greater than might have been expected from his limited opportunities." At a subsequent period, he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an account in his journal, from which it appears his success was far from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character, occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some that merely bespeak the keener pangs of wounded pride founded on conscious merit. that You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest thwartings of your expectations-think what I felt!" Wilson himself attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A packman is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every opportunity, and using every mean art within their power to cheat." This is a sad account of the estimation in which a trade was then held in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth are in the right; both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen must be, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally esteemed to be -peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"-and for a plack people will forget principle who have-as we say in Scotland-missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there was degradation in such a calling-and he latterly vented his contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and nature of packman. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years over the same country, each with his own district or domain-and there can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and of respect-his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very happiest of humble life -in itself very various-would have been very great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good Moral Philosopher. Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we may believe the truth of a pic ture entirely the reverse, from the hand and heart of a still wiser manthough his wisdom has been gathered from less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay-floors of the labouring poor. Thus speaks Wordsworth-" At the risk of giving a shock to the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay homage to the Aristocracy of Nature; under a conviction that vigorous human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste. It may still, however, be satisfactory to have prose-testimony, how far a character, employed for purposes of imagination, (he alludes to the Pedlar in his noble poem the Excursion,] is founded upon general fact. I therefore subjoin an extract from an author who had opportunities of being well acquainted with a class of men from whom my own personal knowledge emboldened me to draw this portrait." Wordsworth quotes a passage from Heron's Tour in Scotland-in which there are these impressive sentences. "It is farther to be observed, for the credit of this most useful class of men, that they commonly contribute, by their personal manners, no less than by the sale of their wares, to the refinement of the people among whom they travel. Their dealings form them to great quickness of wit and acuteness of judgment. Having constant occasion to recommend themselves and their goods, they acquire habits of the most obliging attention, and the most insinuating address. As in their peregrinations they have opportunity of contemplating the manners of various men and various cities, they become eminently skilled in the knowledge of the world. As they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation. With all these qualifications, no wonder that they should often be, in remote parts of the country, the best mirrors of fashion, and censors of manners; and should contribute much to polish the roughness, and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. It is not more than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of Scotland to England, of purpose to carry the pack, was considered as going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune, of a gentleman, When 80% 252 Audubon's Ornithological Biography after twenty years' absence, in that honourable line of employment, he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge" of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns," the fient a pride nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is in his poetry; and he had not now been "sofe king of rocky Cumberland," had he not studied the characters of his subjects-in "huts where poor men lie"-had he not " stooped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such huts, as will ingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Burns has said, too, "The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, &c. and such have been Wordsworth's wanderings among all the solitary beauties and sublimities of nature. Yet the inspiration he "derived even from the light of setting suns," was not so sacred as that which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man, when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. Thence came the Creation-both bright and solemn-of the Sage, humble but high, of the finest of Philosophical Poems with soul" capacious and serene," the Sage at whom-oh! ninny of ninnies, we have been assured that you have sneered, to the capricious beck of Mr Jeffrey, himself a man, in his wiser moods, to honour most, as Wordsworth always does, "the Aristocracy of Nature," which you, presumptuous simpleton, must needs despise; and would-if you knew how to set about it-perhaps ekeReform! Now we shall shut and seal your mouth in perpetual dumbness, with a magical spell. "In days of yore how fortunately fared Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood; To gather, ranging through the tamer ground Both while he trode the earth in humblest guise, What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School en daar O #9 1916, 914 Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes, Look'd on this Guide with reverential love? laget et mid 20 Each with the other pleased, we now pursued 25 os at all1 Our journey-beneath favourable skies. A Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass, A e dronzeh, 77 Rarely a house, that did not yield to him Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth His overflowing spirit. Birds and beasts, 1 Impatience, through inaptness to perceive Who, on perusing that passage, and meditating thereon, but will exclaim with us, in the words of the same bard-applying to himself the fulfill ed prophecy-but trusting that the event in the last line will be far Wilson, on the breaking out of the flames of the French Revolution, like many other ardent spirits, thought they were fires kindled by a light from heaven. He associated himself with the Friends of the Peoplemost of whom soon proved them away,Blessings be with them and eternal selves to be the Enemies of the Hu man Race. His biographer in Constable's Miscellany-unlike one or two others elsewhere-saw Wilson's conduct, in all things connected with "this passage in his life," in its true light. That gentleman does not calumniate the respectable townsmen of the misguided Poet-and a Poet he was for bringing him to legal punishment for an unprincipled act, (an attempt to extort money for the suppression of satire, or rather gross and false abuse of private character,) which he committed, at a time when his moral sense-in after time firm, clear, and pure-was weakened, disturbed, and darkened by dangerous dreams and delusions, which his own reason soon afterwards dispelled. "His conduct had given umbrage to those in power, and he was marked as a dangerous character. In this condition, foiled in his efforts to acquire a poet's name; depressed by poverty; hated by those who had smarted beneath his lash; and suspected on account of his politics; it is not to be wondered at, that Wilson listened willingly to the flattering accounts regarding America, and speedily resolved to seek that abode of Utopian excellence." His determination was high-hearted and heroic, for the means were so which enabled him to carry it into execution. "When he finally determined on emigration, he was not possessed of funds sufficient to pay his passage. In order to surmount that obstacle, he adopted a plan of extreme diligence at his loom, and rigid personal economy; by which means he amassed the necessary sum. After living for a period of four months, at the rate of one shilling per week, he paid farewell visits to several of his most intimate friends, retraced some of his old favourite haunts, and bidding adieu to his native land, set out on foot for Port-Patrick,"-thence sailed to Belfast, and then embarked on board an American ship bound to Newcastle, in the State of Delaware, where he arrived on the 14th of July, 1794, "with no specific object, without a single letter of introduction, and with only a few shillings in his pocket." He had then just completed his twenty-eighth year. For eight years, Wilson struggled on now a copperplate-printer-now a weaver-now a pedlar-now a land-measurer-now a schoolmaster -and now of a composite occupation and nondescript. But he was never idle in mind nor body-always held fast his integrity; and having some reason to think angrily though we doubt not, lovingly—of Scotland -he persisted resolutely, if not in thinking, in speaking and writing highly of American life and character-also of "every kind of peaches, apples, walnuts, and wild grapes, not enclosed by high walls, nor guarded by traps and mastiffs." He adds, "When I see them sit down to a table, loaded with roasted and boiled, fruits of different kinds, and plenty of good cider, and this only the common fare of the common people, I think of my poor countrymen, and cannot help feeling sorrowful at the contrast." These and other lamentations of his over the wretchedness of "cauld kail in Aberdeen and custocks in Strathbogie," have too much in them of bile and spleen; nor does it appear that, with all his extraordinary talents, at the end of eight years, he was better off-or so well-in the New World as he would probably have been, with equally proper and prudent conduct, in the old. Philadelphia was not a kinder mother to him than Paisley had been-and in the land of liberty it appears that he had led the life of a slave. Man does not live by bread alone-and certainly not by peaches, apples, walnuts, and wild grapes-with plenty of good cider. There were enjoyments partaken of by the poor all over Scotland, during those eight years, which few or none knew better how to appreciate than this highlygifted man, utterly unknown to the people of America; nor, in the na ture of things, could they have had existence. But Wilson, in spite of his vainly-cherished dissatisfaction with the state of things in his native country, loved it tenderly, and tenderly did he love the friends there whom he never expected again to see; for his heart, though it was not addicted to outward overflowings, was full of the holiest feelings and affections, and it was deep. Its depth sometimes seems sullen-but the time was near when it was to be revisited with sunshine, and to murmur music. In a letter to his father from Milestown, Philadelphia, August, 1798, he shews every disposition that best becomes a man. "I should be very happy, dear parents, to hear from you, and how my brother and sisters are. I hope David will be a good lad, and take his father's advice in every difficulty. If he does, I can tell him he will never repent it; if he does not, he may regret it bitterly |