the thought of how long, or how short a time they who remain on that shore, may have sight of me." It is, indeed, a lesson worthy to be learned by those who seek for happiness, and rest their utmost hopes in this world, that all it can bestow will appear utterly worthless when they stand on the brink of eternity.

Wordsworth, as we have seen, commenced life as a strong republican, and ardent admirer of the French Revolution. He had now passed from political indifferentism into strong and almost unreasoning Toryism. In a letter, dated May 15th, 1834, he says, "Since the night when the Reform Bill was first introduced, I have been convinced that the institutions of the country cannot be preserved." He strenuously opposed the concession of Catholic Emancipation; he objected to corporate reform, to a state provision for the education of the poor, and, indeed, to every innovation in the institutions of the country. But Wordsworth's prejudices did not so far blind him, as to render him incapable of seeing the beauty and the merits of that Church which alone had preserved Christianity. Indeed, it would be strange if a genius such as his had not sympathized with that glorious old Church, whose ritual is so full of pure and impassioned poetry; and if the splendour of her story, so deeply interwoven with all that is dearest and holiest upon earth, had not dispelled its prejudices, and taught it to prefer the gorgeous worship of the Catholic Church, which appeals so powerfully to the imagination and to the heart, to the cold and barren forms of Protestantism. Although his "Ecclesiastical Sonnets" are by no means untainted by the usual prejudices of Reformers, yet do they contain many just and glowing eulogiums on that old Church, which we still behold, like a bright and hopeful star, shining high above the gloom and darkness of bye-gone ages. It is thus she appeared to Wordsworth, whose writings contributed in no small degree to procure for her respect and reverence, and gave no slight impulse to that great movement, which is driving back so many into the one fold, under the one shepherd.

We wish that space permitted us to illustrate this tendency by a selection from the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets, which, although amongst the best in the language, are, we fear, not at all so generally known as they

VOL. XXXI.-No. LXII.

4

deserve. It is necessary to observe, that these sonnets are divided into three parts. The first relates to the introduction of Christianity into Britain, the holy lives of the early Saxon clergy, and the Crusades; the second extends to the close of the troubles in the reign of Charles; the third comprises the remaining period from the Restoration to the present time. We can only make room for the following on " The Dissolution of the Monasteries," and the kindred subjects of the Saints and the Blessed Virgin :

"Threats come which no submission may assuage,
No sacrifice avert, no power dispute;

The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute,
And 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,
The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage,
The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit,
And the green lizard and the gilded newt
Lead unmolested lives, and die of age.
The owl of evening and the woodland fox
For their abode the shrines of Waltham choose;
Proud Glastonbury can no more refuse

To stoop her head before these desperate shocks-
She whose high pomp displaced, as story tells,
Arimathean Joseph's wattled cells.

"The lovely nun (submissive, but more meek
Through saintly habit than from effort due
To unrelenting mandates, that pursue
With equal wrath the steps of strong and weak)
Goes forth-unveiling timidly a cheek
Suffused with blushes of celestial hue,

While through the convent's gate to open view
Softly she glides, another home to seek.
Not Iris, issuing from her cloudy shrine,
An apparition more divinely bright;
Not more attractive to the dazzled sight
Those watery glories, on the stormy brine

Poured forth, while summer suns at distance shine,
And the green vales lie hushed in sober light!"

"SAINTS.

"Ye too must fly before a chasing hand
Angels and saints, in every hamlet mourned!
Ah! if the old idolatry be spurned,

Let not your radient shapes desert the land!
Her adoration was not your demand,—

The fond heart proffered it-the servile heart;
And therefore are ye summoned to depart,

Michael, and thou, St. George, whose flaming brand
The dragon quelled; and valiant Margaret,
Whose rival sword a like opponent slew ;
And rapt Cecilia, seraph-haunted queen
Of harmony; and weeping Magdalene,
Who in the penitential desert met

Gales sweet as those that over Eden blew !"

"THE VIRGIN.

"Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman, above all women glorified;
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;

Brighter than eastern skies at day-break strewn
With fancied roses; than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast,
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's love and maiden purity,

Of high with low, celestial with terrene !"

Many, perhaps we should say all pious Protestants share these vain regrets. But the establishment is so far from resuming the "graceful rites and usages" of the old Church, that it is every day losing even those which it at first retained, and is rapidly hastening into frigid Calvinism. The more zealous of its ministers, who still proudly cling to that ritual which excites "a stir of mind too natural to deceive," and gives "the memory help when she would weave a crown for hope," are regarded as papists in disguise by "the boasted lights," which are, indeed, but the " fiery lights" of the establishment.

Wordsworth had five children, John, Dora, Thomas, Catherine, and William. Of these Thomas and Catherine, as we have seen, died whilst very young, and the family of the poet consisted of the remaining three, together with his wife, his sister, and sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson. Never was there a more loving or a more united family. The poet was almost worshipped by his own domestic

circle, and he returned their affection in no niggardly or stinted measure:

"Rich in love

And sweet humanity, he was himself

To the degree that he desired, beloved."

They, his first enthusiastic and almost sole admirers, saw his fame gradually rival that of his most illustrious contemporaries. They saw honorary degrees conferred on him by the universities of Durham and Oxford, and a majority of votes recorded in his favour in opposition to the Prime Minister, (Lord John Russell,) for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow. He was visited at Rydal by the most eminent and most illustrious persons in the land, amongst others, by the late Queen Dowager and her sister, and was received at court by her Majesty the Queen, with the most flattering distinction, when he went to thank her for his appointment to the Laureateship. Yet at this very culminating point of his fame, he was destined to feel that neither the gifts of genius, nor the applause of mankind, nor the smiles of princes, can confer happiness. His sister, the "Winsome Marrow," who accompanied him on so many romantic pedestrian excursions became a confirmed invalid, unable to stir from her bed, or couch. His sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, died, and in his letters he feelingly deplores the ravages which death and disease had made amongst his other friends and relations. But the severest stroke of all was the death of his only and adored daughter, Dora. She was married in 1841, being then in her thirty-seventh year, to Edward Quillinan, a widower of fifty; but her health was so delicate, that in 1845 she and her husband were obliged to seek a more genial climate in Portugal and Spain. In 1846 they came home, fondly imagining that Mrs. Quillinan's health was fully restored, but she died on the 9th of July, 1847, being little more than a year after her return to her native vale. It does not require the testimony of his biographer to prove that his only daughter was dearer to Wordsworth than any other earthly object, for the frequent mention of her, which occurs in his works, proves the depth and constancy of his affection. Writing to Mr. Moxon, a month after her death, he says, "We bear up under our affliction as well as God enables us to do; but, oh my dear friend, our loss is immeasurable."

And

again, 29th December, 1847, he writes, "Our sorrow is, I feel, for life; but God's will be done." When it was thought right to inform Wordsworth himself of his approaching dissolution, his wife announced the sad tidings to him on the 20th of April, 1850, in these words, "William, you are going to Dora;" and when, twentyfour hours later, one of his nieces was drawing aside the curtains, he said, as if awakening from a quiet sleep, "Is that Dora?" Two days afterwards he expired, the name of his beloved daughter having been the last upon his lips. He never recovered the shock he received by her death, it was, indeed, to him a sorrow for life.

ART. II.-The Life of the Rer. Aloysius Gentili, L. L. D., Father of the Institute of Charity, and Missionary Apostolic in England. Edited by the Very Reverend FATHER PAGANI. Richardson and Son, London. 1851.

ICOLE remarks, in one of his letters, that if he had to write the lives of the saints, he should try to find out some of their defects, as well as their virtues, for that the ordinary way in which their biographies were written, left the reader in some doubt whether or not they ever really belonged to that frail humanity, to which they were proposed as patterns. To what particular biographies he referred at the time he penned this somewhat cynical saying, he does not make known. The feeling, however, from which it appears to have proceeded, is not an inconceivable one, for the "canonized saint" is certainly the prominent feature in most biographies, to the concealment, in some degree, of the frail child of Adam, whom God, by His mercy and Providence, is training to sanctity, in order that he may become a light to future generations. In the lives of canonized saints, it is rather the mature saint every where that is visible, than the man in progress towards his sanctification, yet it is legitimate to wish that we might be