humanity, was coming to an end; whilst the aspects of the future are shapeless, uncertain, and alarming. It is of course well for men not to relax their efforts, to make head against the dangers which threaten, or seem to threaten, us from day to day. I trust that much, that enough, may still be done; but certainly we have no time to lose. There are moments, indeed, when I cannot but remember a painful story of the Alps. You have all heard of it, I make no doubt. You have heard how an Alpine hunter, searching among the mountain clefts to find out why the stream, that hitherto had fed his valley with life, was ceasing to flow, discovered that a barrier of ice had fallen across the river bed, high up among the crags. Against that barrier beat, in alliance with the summer sun, a lake ever rising higher as the fountains from above kept trickling down. He saw before him, therefore, a reservoir of ruin, waiting full of menace till the appointed instant came. The stalwart villagers laboured hard in their own defence. They cut a gallery here, and they cut a gallery there, and thus a certain amount of mischief was drained away. But the frail parapet that kept destruction back grew thinner and weaker from hour to hour, and long before their puny efforts had made any real impression upon the army of waters imprisoned within, that rocking rampart suddenly gave way, and everything within reach was buried at once beneath the pitiless outburst of devastation. We must hope and endeavour to be more fortunate than these Swiss herdsmen. We must try to cut our galleries through the icy mass that sunders from us, whilst it holds back for the moment, the ever-gathering flood of wrath and wretchedness, as it rises up against our present effeminate civilisation. We must endeavour to cut them neither too recklessly nor yet too languidly, so as to drain away all such threatening reservoirs of ruin before they overwhelm us for ever.

Meanwhile, returning to Wordsworth's eulogy on Burke, as Wordsworth cares nothing for the plumage, if we may revert to

that metaphor, and is entirely overmastered by his sympathies with the dying bird, this eulogy is quite out of keeping with the sentiments which he expresses, and apparently still adhered to even when he became old and a poet-laureate. He stands before us as a regular disciple of the French Revolution, and reconciled himself, like many other estimable men, to its darker features, by some general notions about Liberty and Progress; by the ever-recurring, but ever-defeated hope, that each new atrocity was certain to be the last; aye, and above all, for this is more than all, by

Not caring if the wind did now and then

Blow keen upon an eminence, that gave
So large a prospect to futurity.

I am not sure whether I interpret these lines rightly. If I do understand them, they seem much upon a level with Barrère's famous expression about the September massacres :'Ce sang, étoit-il donc si pur?' For this I am not blaming Wordsworth much. He partook of a sublime drunkenness, that for the moment was all but universal. Under this excitement, every minor interest, even the interest of his own country, was lost and swallowed up in a golden haze and fermentation of illimitable light. It is this vivid picture of the typical youth of the time that gives to these books of ‘The Prelude' their permanent value. We see that the soberest intellects were driven wild, by a kind of oracular vapour like that of Delphi, rising, as we may say, out of the ground, and filling the souls of men with a madness wiser and truer, so at least they deemed it, than the ordinary wisdom of earth. It is, nevertheless, painful to reflect now, that in Wordsworth's own case, one of the saddest consequences of party-spirit fell upon him. I mean that he rejoiced in the disasters and defeats of his own countrymen. It will be said, perhaps, that if our country is clearly in the wrong, reason, bare reason, may justify a man in this perverse exultation. Even reason, however, is not at her best

when she confines herself to the narrow limits of the presentnot looking before or after. At any rate, right or wrong, I prefer those unreasoning instincts that lead men to stand, shoulder to shoulder, in defence of their national flag. I prefer the spirit of the republican Blake, serving under Cromwell, whom he regarded as a tyrant, against the enemies of England. I prefer, to the anti-English philanthropy of Wordsworth, the one generous impulse recorded of James II., who, when he saw the fortunes of his house, the hope of relief from humiliating dependence, the chances of an early restoration, broken down together by the defeat of the Spaniards at the Battle of the Dunes; nevertheless, in that disastrous rout, cared, at the moment, for none of these things. No, he fixed his eyes upon Cromwell's contingent (upon a body of British seamen who, after sweeping everything before them, burst sword in hand into a redoubt, which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest engineers of Spain), and shouted aloud in irrepressible triumph-'Look there! Look there! See how my brave English fight!' It pains me, I repeat, that Wordsworth should have clung to these bitter decisions of his youth. But as, apparently, he did cling to them without repentance or shadow of turning, I cannot understand him when he eulogizes Burke; inasmuch as the fierce desire in Wordsworth to see the blood of England poured out like water, and the honour of England trampled in the dust, was languid and irresolute, if compared with the angry demonism inspiring Burke to level his untiring blows at the heart of France. Burke, implacable in his hatred of those golden hours, as the poet calls them, would certainly not have agreed with Wordsworth, that, because according to the then laws of France, the father of a most contemptible young Frenchman, a certain Vaudracour, was enabled to detain his son in prison, lest he should embarrass the family

1 See Macaulay's Essays.

by an unequal marriage, it was, therefore, just and expedient that the four corners of Europe should be set on fire.

Oh much have they to account for who could tear

By violence, at one decisive rent,

From the best youth of England their dear pride,
Their joy in England.

As if their wish had been to undermine
Justice, and make an end of liberty.

This is the tone in which the future poet-laureate speaks of what, I at least, have always been taught to consider a just, nay, an inevitable war. Proceedings, inveighed against by him, and unsuited, no doubt, to the ordinary tenour of our English life, are accounted for by the old maxim, 'Inter arma silent leges.' And if the lawless cruelty of the French Revolution seemed to him nothing worse than the accidental keenness of a refreshing and invigorating breeze, it may surely be said on our side, that we had no choice, when the vessel of the State was labouring in the storm, but to cut away any treacherous timbers that had parted from us-had thrown themselves, as it were, overboard, and were threatening, in alliance with that hostile tempest, to rush up and shatter the devoted ship. These matters, however, belong to the past. Both Wordsworth and Burke were great men, and it matters little now that they differed then, as youth naturally differs from age, about the French Revolution. What remains as really important to mankind, is that Wordsworth here records for us his feelings and impressions in immortal verse. 'The word of the poet,' so a high authority informs us, ' lives longer than the deeds of other men.' And, accordingly, the vivid photographs preserved

by Wordsworth; first, of the loyal soldier, blighted by that dreadful season; 2ndly, of the land—

That swarmed with passion, like a plain

Devoured by locusts;

3rdly, of his high-minded and enthusiastic friend, Beau-puis, sacrificing all the prejudices of his caste, and all the ties of friendship, to the welfare of mankind as he understood it. These pictures, I say, are destined to outlast the effect of battles and sieges, and to remain as an abiding presence before the memory of all future generations.

The later books, after the French Revolution is disposed of, treat, among other things, of his bitter disappointment at the failure of hopes so proudly entertained. His dream that he should see the man to come, 'parted, as by a gulph,' from him who had been, was rudely broken up. He still, indeed, strove to take pleasure in natural objects-in the winds and roaring waters; the lights and shades,

That marched and counter-marched along the hills

In glorious apparition.

But these pleasures were comparatively superficial—pleasures of the eye merely, whilst the inner faculties slept. The heart lay dead. By slow degrees, however, he recovered, as he tells us, peace of mind. And separating himself from all artificial things-from the worship of wealth, and the luxurious arts that weigh down the many, to pander to effeminate appetites in the few, he gave himself up to the study of his great object -the universal heart of man. These books are full of noble thoughts nobly expressed, and the poet takes leave of Coleridge, the brother of his soul, in this spirit of stately selfconfidence:

And now, oh Friend! this history is brought

To its appointed close; the discipline

And consummation of a Poet's mind