JULY. 215 



our dells and copses, and the poet complains, in re- 

 gretful notes, that he 



Wanders away to the field and glen, 

 Far as he may for the gentlemen. 



I am not so much of a poet, and so little of a 

 political economist, as to lament over the progress 

 of population. It is true that I see, with a poetical 

 regret, green fields and fresh beautiful tracts swal- 

 lowed up in cities ; but my joy in the increase of 

 human life and happiness, far outbalances that 

 imaginative pain. But it is when I see unnecessary 

 and arbitrary encroachments upon the rural pri- 

 vileges of the public, that I grieve. Exactly in the 

 same proportion as our population and commercial 

 habits gain upon us, do we need all possible oppor- 

 tunities to keep alive in us the spirit of Nature. 



The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 

 Little there is in Nature that is ours. 



We give ourselves up to the artificial habits and 

 objects of ambition, till we endanger the higher and 

 better feelings and capacities of our being ; and it is 

 alone to the united influence of religion, literature, 

 and nature, that we must look for the preservation 

 of our moral nobility. Whenever, therefore, I 

 behold one of our old field-paths closed, I regard it 

 as another link in the chain which Mammon is 

 winding around us, another avenue cut off by 



