Accustomed as he had been to open air freedom, and loving converse with nature, he did not take kindly to university ways and restraints, but deliberately pursued various studies of his own choosing, and, by intercourse with his fellow-students, gained a wider experience of diverse character. When his first summer vacation came, he joyfully returned to Hawkshead, and spent it amid his happy school-day haunts. From thence, he made sundry excursions, visiting his sister at Penrith, and "another maid," his cousin Mary Hutchinson.

On returning to the University he diligently betook himself to the study of the Italian language, and extended his acquaintance with the older English poets -particularly Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spencer, and Milton.

From his dormitory pillow in St. John's, as he himself tells us, by moonlight or by starlight, he looked out on the anti-chapel of Trinity, where stood the statue

"Of Newton, with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone."

Milton had paced these same "studious cloisters pale," and to him the place seemed haunted and hallowed by the memories of great men. Such associations

strengthened Wordsworth's resolution to become a poet, and leave something behind him which would take a permanent place in the literature of his country, and which would be "reverenced by pure hearts.' A glorious sunrise, at this period, greatly impressed him, and brought on a crisis of glowing feeling which coloured all his after life. Henceforth he considered himself " a dedicated spirit."

During the summer vacation of 1790, along with a

companion, he made a pedestrian_tour_through France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy. They were absent fourteen weeks, trudging along, each paying his way with four shillings a-day, and they got back again in time for the October term. The sublime and beautiful scenery of Switzerland especially delighted him, and, with feelings of profound emotion, he crossed

"The lordly Alps themselves,

Those rosy peaks, from which the morning looks
Abroad on many nations."

In 1791, on leaving the University, attracted by the surface aspect of the political upheavals on the Continent, he again visited France. He remained there for fifteen months, and more closely observed the reeking results of revolution.

Here it may be well to advert to his political opinions. His early notions were very crude; and, like many other young men of that day, and the ignorant and immature multitude in our own, he mistakenly believed that revolutionary demagogues, as representing the people and therefore omnipotent, were destined to banish all oppression and want from the face of the earth; and that, "if existing institutions were swept away, peace and prosperity would emerge from the ruin."

What he himself heard and saw in Paris filled him with disappointment, sorrow, and dismay. Zealots were not patriots, license was not liberty, and he beheld anarchy and crime, of fearful and gigantic enormity, stalking by, in a pageantry of blood and death.

His false ideas had crumbled into dust. What he at first took for airs from heaven, as he himself tells us, turned out to be blasts from hell. On finding his

mistake, he wisely readjusted his reckoning. He loved liberty more than ever; but now he clearly saw that it could not be got in that way. This wholesome revulsion of feeling tended, gradually and permanently, to confirm his recovery and restore him to political sanity. Henceforth his sympathies were developed on other and different lines-lines which were true, natural, and satisfactory, because in harmony with the eternal laws of the universe.

His wise utterances on education are still in advance of our day. His views on the Irish question, on Popery, and Disestablishment, were shrewd and far-seeing. In fact, much that he feared and clearly foretold regarding democracy has already come to pass, and more is now going on around us. He saw that license was not only not liberty, but so thoroughly incompatible therewith as to be destructive of it. He no longer expected collective administrative wisdom to be evolved from the votes of a multitude, when the units of which that multitude was composed were not wise. He now believed in moral worth, intelligence, and position; that, from the beginning of the world, wisdom had dwelt with the few; and at no time was he ever so far left to himself as to think, as too many do, that mere numbers should be allowed to outweigh worth; although, from inexperience, in his younger days he had seriously and rashly blundered, by giving credit for purity of motive and patriotism in quarters where those qualities did not exist. Ultimately he became "the constant advocate of a strong government, which should rigidly administer the institutions matured in a long course of ages, and only suffer them to be altered slowly and gradually, according to the dictates of experience,' instead of looking favourably on radical measures which pluck up

everything by the roots, and seek to begin over again, as in France, at the year one.

An ardent lover of liberty, he nevertheless came to sce the danger of license, and the tyranny of democracy, with its tendency to destroy all existing institutions; and in order to attain his original goal, he became a firm supporter of a conservative policy. This outward modification of opinion, for twenty years exposed his writings to the ungenerous attacks of certain reviewers, who, utterly unable to comprehend either the greatness and spiritual depth of his poetry, or the mature and practical wisdom of his politics, continued persistently to abuse him.

In "The Warning" he finely says—

"If cowardly concession still must feed

The thirst for power in men who ne'er concede;
Nor turn aside, unless to shape a way
For domination at some riper day;
If generous Loyalty must stand in awe
Of subtle Treason, in his mask of law,
Or with bravado insolent and hard,
Provoking punishment, to win reward;
If office help the factious to conspire,

And they, who should extinguish, fan the fire-
Then will the sceptre be a straw, the crown
Sit loosely, like the thistle's crest of down;
To be blown off at will, by Power that spares it
In cunning patience, from the head that wears it.
Lost people, trained to theoretic feud !

Lost above all, ye labouring multitude!
Bewildered whether ye, by slanderous tongues
Deceived, mistake calamities for wrongs,
And over fancied usurpations brood;

Or, to the giddy top of self-esteem
By flatterers carried, mount into a dream
Of boundless suffrage, at whose sage behest
Justice shall rule, disorder be supprest,
And every man sit down as Plenty's Guest!
O for a bridle bitted with remorse

To stop your leaders in their headlong course!
Oh may the Almighty scatter with His grace
'These mists, and lead you to a safer place,
By paths no human wisdom can foretrace!
May He pour round you, from worlds far above
Men's feverish passions, His pure light of love,
That quietly restores the natural mien

To hope, and makes truth willing to be seen!

Be strong in faith, bid anxious thoughts be still;
Seek for the good and cherish it-the ill
Oppose, or bear with a submissive will."

A careful observer of "the mighty stream of tendency," which he clearly saw was rapidly and dangerously hurrying on towards democracy, Wordsworth thus raised his earnest, thoughtful, patriotic voice, trying if possible to arrest it, and save his country.

On the great questions of the day, strenuously and wisely, "in cheerful godliness," ever seeking the highest good and greatest happiness for the greatest number, not only of the British nation, but of mankind, he took up the firm and safe ground of thoughtful, farseeing, constitutional statesmanship. Religion and morality pervaded and potentially determined his ideas on education, social science, and politics,

"Pure religion breathing household laws;"

and these, all of a piece, and firmly compacted together by imagination, found a fitting and perfectly harmonious