fatally shedding blood, which awakened the feeling
of revenge in some, and alarm in all ; so that the
whole of the inhabitants were thrown for days
into a state of ferment. And Smith had been a
spectator of the most notable of these riots.
No thoughtful and sensitive young man could be
altogether unmoved or uninfluenced in spirit by
the political agitations of those days. He was no
politician, however, and still less was he a chartist.
And with all his poetic sensitiveness, he was as
little affected by these circumstances and events,
as any one could be. Indeed, by 1848 his life was
being spent very much beyond the sphere of
politics. He was now living, as far as the sterner
necessities of his lot would allow, in a dreamland
of poesy, to which he had been lured, and where
his spirit was being entranced by voices, among
which that of Keats took the lead. And the
riotous voices of the ruder world around, bursting
violently in upon this poetic region, seemed only
to disturb him, and engage his attention for a
passing moment. The deep currents of his mpid'



144 ALEXANDER SMITH.
were scarcely touched by the boisterous political
events of tlie time. These never moved him to
write one political stanza, even though he had
taken to the reading of Ebenezer Elliott. The &ct
of his doing so may seem contradictory of all this ;
but the fact is, it was Elliott's strains of genuine
poetry, and not hts politics nor patriotism that
fascinated Smith.
But a stronger cause of unrest of spirit consisted
in his own present and prospective circumstances.
