expression in his lofty poetry, and, also, in his less known but no less precious and admirable prose, with its In his Sonnets on National Liberty and Independence he everywhere lays great stress on Moral Force. The late Rev. F. W. Robertson of Brighton, whose standpoint was in many respects widely different from that of Wordsworth, generously asserts and vindicates the poetical consistency of the poet's inner life; reminding us that "there are two kinds of truth—the one is the truth of facts, the other is idle truth, and these are not one-they are often opposite to each other. ... I say, therefore, that in Wordsworth's most democratic days he was aristocratic in heart, and in his most aristocratic days he had all that was most generous, and all that was most aspiring in the democratic mind. Wordsworth's patriotism ever possessed that intense and deep love for England, in which aristocrat and democrat are blended in the formation of one high-minded man.' And, again, speaking of the sonnet beginning— "Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent," Robertson says "It does the heart good to read these firm, and pure, and true, and manly words, issuing fron the lips of one who was not ashamed to love his country with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength; a man whose every word, and every thought, and every act, were the words of a manly, true-spirited, high-minded Englishman !" While recognising the oneness of our common humanity, Wordsworth, after religion, respected the rights of rank, position, and eminence, as correctives to labour on the one hand, and to mere wealth on the other; and as assuredly furnishing elements of stability to society. The To revert to Robertson of Brighton: in a Lecture to Working Men, when expounding Wordsworth he says— "I will say that rank is a power in itself more spiritual, because less tangible, than the power of wealth. man who commands others by the extent of his broad acres or by the number of his bales of cotton, rules them by a power more degrading and more earthly than he who rules them simply by the prestige of long hereditary claims." And Aubrey de Vere thus writes of Wordsworth"To the end, his sympathies were ever with the cottage hearth far more than with the palace. If he became a strong supporter of what has been called the hierarchy of society, it was chiefly because he believed the principle of equality' to be fatal to the well-being and the true dignity of the poor. Moreover, in siding politically with the crown and the coronets, he considered himself to be siding with the weaker party in our democratic days." Emphatically basing his views of good government on Bible truth, he everywhere insists on pure religion and sound morality as being indispensably pre-requisite to States that would attain health, happiness, and prosperity, combined with true and lasting greatness. Before passing from this subject, we would remark, that with the courage of settled opinions came fulness of faith and profound humility. Though troubled and perplexed by the passing of certain measures, the tendency of which he clearly saw to be wrong, he was still hopeful that error might ultimately be overruled for good; and in writing to a friend, at a time of great public excitement, he added:-" After all (as an excellent bishop of the Scotch Church said to a friendly correspondent of mine), 'Be of good heart; the affairs of the world will be conducted as heretofore, by the foolishness of man and the wisdom of God. After leaving college, as he had no liking for entering on professional life, his relatives not unnaturally thought his career a failure. He had determined, instead, to cultivate the muse; and a succession of opportune legacies and favouring circumstances fortunately enabled him to carry out his resolution. In 1795, his friend Calvert, whom he had nursed during his illness, died and bequeathed to him the sum of £900. Wordsworth was thus enabled to settle down with his sister in the autumn of this year, at Racedown Lodge, near Crewekerne, in Dorsetshire; and to live contentedly there and elsewhere, for the next seven or eight years, turning out good and noble work, on an income of less than a hundred a-year. From the empty verbiage of zealots, he now turned his thoughts to the quiet, virtuous home-lives of the dalesmen around him. His mind was happily toned by his sister's fine tact, sympathy, and soothing influence. She devoted her whole life to him. Thus, tuned to concert pitch, song was induced, and her benign presence perceptibly coloured his whole life. To her, the poet addressed the following appreciative and grateful lines, after acknowledging that she had corrected his too exclusive esteem for "love that had terror in it," and softened down his "over-sternness". "But for thee, dear friend! My soul too reckless of mild grace, had stood Retained too long a countenance severe; A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers, When every day brought with it some new sense And all the earth was budding with these gifts Wordsworth, we may here remark, was eleven years younger than Burns; and he was six-and-twenty when the greatest song-writer the world has ever seen died at Dumfries, in 1796. In July 1797 Wordsworth and his sister removed from Racedown to Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, in order to be nearer Coleridge. Alfoxden was a large house, on a slope of the Quantock Hills, in a romantic spot, surrounded with woods and streams, within sight of the Bristol Channel, and commanding a view of the Welsh mountains. "We Here, Wordsworth and Coleridge planned their joint volume-The Lyrical Ballads. Among other exquisite poems by Wordsworth which it contained, were, are Seven; "Lines written in Early Spring; "Lines left upon a Yew-tree Seat ;" and "Tintern Abbey; and of Coleridge's, "The Ancient Mariner," and The Nightingale.' 66 In 1798, the Wordsworths visited Germany-the proceeds of Lyrical Ballads enabling them to do so. Coleridge accompanied them as far as Hamburg, from whence he went to Ratzeburg and Göttingen, in order to study the German language and metaphysics; while Wordsworth and his sister settled down at Goslar, in Hanover, on the borders of the Hartz Forest. The winter was very cold; for economical reasons they did not go into society, and, instead of assimilating foreign surroundings and ideas while abroad, he reverted to Estwaite, to the dear hills of Westmoreland, and to the pleasant haunts of his school-days, writing poems laid in those localities, which afterwards appeared in the second series of Lyrical Ballads. Among these poems were "Lucy," "Ruth," "The Fountain,' 66 Matthew,' "The Influence of Natural Objects," and "Nutting." In the last-named poem, how exquisitely he describes that sequestered flowery nook, with fairy waterbreaks murmuring on with sparkling foam by great boulderstones fleeced with moss, beneath shady trees, where"The violets of five summers reappear And fade, unseen by any human eye!" And how finely, too, in it, he expresses his feeling, coinciding with the old classic idea, of the deep sacredness of the life that there is in Nature, revealing it by the sense of pain and remorse with which he viewed the desolation he has caused, in dragging down branch and bough, and mutilating the bower, so that the hazels, deformed and sullied, patiently gave up their quiet being to the rash intruder on the virgin scene-exhorting his sister and companion henceforth to touch with gentle hand, "for there is a spirit in the woods." On leaving Goslar on the 10th February 1799, he tells us he wrote the opening passage of "The Prelude," joyfully welcoming the breeze and the open country outside the city walls. In the spring of 1799, in his thirtieth year, accompanied by his sister, he returned to England and paid a |