tensity from the silent depths of the soul and being. "For the gods approve The depth and not the tumult of the soul; A fervent not ungovernable love." Strong but controlled passion, intense rather than vehement, is the second feature of a poet. The greatness of the poet depends upon the dignity or importance of the truths that excite him. A noble spirit is only roused by a noble thought. It is only a great thought that kindles to its brightest flame a great mind. Pompous speech, perfect melody and images, passion tempestuous as the sea, unless they are the legitimate expressions of a subject that demands their use, are simply sound and fury, signifying nothing. Hence Shakspere, who may be said to possess a faculty that distinguishes with unerring accuracy the proportions of high and low, allows a Falstaff and a gravedigger to speak only in prose, while the fiery thoughts of Macbeth, that rush like wind and flash like lightnings, are rolled off in magnificent measures. His noblest verse embodies his noblest thoughts. His best poetry comes from his greatest characters, as it should be. A great poet must deal in great thoughts. But he must be able to see these in all things; till in stones and weeds he sees divine meanings as well as in sun and sea. He must be able to see in the tattered beggar, as well as in robed royalty, that the greatness of human nature is the great thing, not its outward form. What are then these great truths that the great poet lives among, reveals to us, inspires us with, and by which he exalts our mood and mind to his own pitch? If we can answer this we supply an unfailing test wherewith to discover the highest from what may be only high or higher in the scale of greatness. The secret of there being two plains of truth lies in the fact that man moves at the same moment in two worlds-the visible and the invisible. Man lives in time, but the roots and depths of his being are in eternity. In time he is a finite being; but he has in him principles and springs of life that are of an infinite nature; and we shall, if we ponder over it, and call up to our minds our own highest moments, and study the nature of the thought or emotion that stirred our whole being to its depths, that there was something in it more than our immediate or temporal interests or desires. It is when we are raised in feeling or imagination above our petty affairs and every-day doings, by deep sorrow, or awful suffering, or roused conscience, or the stern voice of duty when realities face us : then the littleness of the common truth and the greatness of those that are eternal dawn upon us. : This class of truths can be brought home to our imaginations by art. Music is perhaps the swiftest to exalt us, and bewitch us with infinite desires; though poetry has more substance, because it is defined thought, whereas music is thought diffused in emotion. The poet then that does not raise us to our highest mood; who does not satisfy the spirit that is in us all with truth and with beauty that are eternal; who cannot touch the deepest chords of our nature; who cannot counsel, inform, and inspire man in his struggles and duties in the time world, by light, and hope, and promise of eternal beauty and joy; of which all the changing present is but a symbol; he is no true poet for men. He cannot be called the highest. But he who does, and in the greatest measure, is the greatest poet, for he looks through nature and man to the essence behind the veil. If his emotion be equal to his vision, and his words adequate to the right utterance of both, he must be ranked among the greatest of the sons of men. But a poet may confine himself mainly to the visible. He may rise into rapture with the natural beauty that appeals to the eye only. He may take real delight in man and his ways as a creature of time. To reveal, to describe, and to animate the natural is the field of his talent. To do this well, requires great gifts. It only lacks the highest; more depth, not more clearness in the eye; more penetrating power, not more accuracy of sight, is what is wanting, that's all. No one man will ever completely represent either class; but we would take Sir Walter Scott as a good representation of the second, and William Wordsworth of the first; but the man of men who was equally at home in both spheres, was William Shakspere. Yet we do not hesitate to say that Wordsworth dived into depths that Shakspere and the men of his day never dreamed of. The great poet then, gifted with the vision. and the faculty divine; with the love of love, that makes his thoughts burn; and with imagination that makes his words live and breathe, becomes of necessity the interpreter and the prophet to us of Man and Nature. He utters, in inspired, impressive words, the divine meanings and affections that are diffused and dumb in the visible world. He possesses the key to the hieroglyphics of Nature. What she would say to us, if she could, he utters in words. It is his to interpret her infinite symbols. Nature is to him the infinite love striving to express itself to eye and ear. The ear of the poet catches her deep undertones, inaudible to grosser ears, in sounds as common as the hum of the insect's wing, in the notes of birds in springtime, in the rustling of the autumn corn, in the breezes that stir the forests. These are to him audible breathings of a spirit that lives and moves through all things. In all her sounds, in all her colours, in all her forms and changes, he sees operating living, not a mechanical force; a loving spirit, not a cold material law. The poet is the very antipodes of "The fingering slave Who would peep and botanize on his mother's grave." In proportion to the strength of this faith in him, to his boundless love for and unspeakable joy in all created things is he able to interpret, and utter forth the enchanting song of the universe. From delicate sensibility to natural impressions, and from passionate love to all created things arises the habit of closely watching, of minute observation, and that wondrous accuracy of description in which all the great poets excel. We cannot name nor recall, out of the wide field of our literature, one poet in whom these conditions of true poetry met with such fullness and strength as in William Wordsworth. Take his own words: "To every natural form, rock, fruits, or flower, : Or linked them to some feeling the great mass Or Beauty, Nature's daily face put on From transitory passion, unto this I was as sensitive as waters are To the sky's influence in a kindred mood Of passion; was obedient as a lute That waits upon the touches of the wind. I made it, for it only lived to me, Does the poetry that springs from a nature like this come from the will or from thought merely ? A man, sensitive to all external impressions, as the Eolian harp or the barometer, what will need he put forth to describe who was as sensitive as waters are to the crisping breeze, or open as a lute to resound to the lightest touch of the wind? To attribute the poetry of Wordsworth to the strength of mere volition and thought, as Mill has done, is to be ignorant of the characteristic elements of his nature. From childhood he is haunted by the Spirit of the Woods. He is given to lonely rambles, and deep communings. He is thrilled into awe and rapture where most youths of his age would find only occasions for bold adventures or boisterous mirth. This is his own description of it : What then I was. "I cannot paint The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, That had no need of a remoter charm, Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, A strange youth, and, it must be confessed, one of no common instincts who, at those years, like a bashful lover, fled with fear from the object of his deepest worship, and whom the voice of lonely torrents and thundering cataracts haunted as the moaning voices of unknown powers dwelling among the mountain solitudes. Another illustration, out of a multitude that might be given, is from the well-known poem Nutting." The adventure related occurred in one of the school holidays in Autumn, when country boys have leave to go to the woods to bring home a winter stock of nuts. We know it to be a merry, boisterous time: the restraints of the school are thrown off, and away with a shout and a bound to the free, wild woods, with their boundless wonders and rich treasures. We remember well with what cruel joy we stoned squirrels, chased rabbits, scared the birds, and ravaged the tall, erect hazel branches of their milk-white and crimson-red clusters, and with no compunctious visitings of anything more divine than a gamekeeper. The boy William Wordsworth no doubt could and did do all this, too; but there were times when he could feel about such acts altogether in another way: and the intensity and permanency of that other feeling is the significant thing about him. He will now describe the scene himself: "O'er pathless rocks, Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, He felt the silent, uncomplaining trees rebuke him with their very silence. And the broad open eye of heaven looked upon him with a tender reproof. What a deep, tender, exquisitely sensitive nature these touches reveal to us! The true, real essence of poetry already lives and thrills in him long before his tongue was trained to utter it in the majestic verse of his manhood. We find in him the true relation between youth and manhood. No forced or artificial growth, but a steady unfolding of the same mind from bud to blossom, from blossom to fruit,-development spontaneous and necessary and beautiful as spring into summer or the dawn into noon. "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man ; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be as Bound each to each by natural piety." Thus was he endowed and trained. Nature herself had called him, inspired and consecrated him from his youth to be her high priest, and the pure and lofty interpreter of her holiest mysteries. This intense sympathy with nature would, we might expect, develop in Wordsworth the faculty of clearest and minutest vision for natural objects. De Quincey points out several instances in which Wordsworth brought to light, and into life, too, both for the eye and the understanding, many truths which previously had slumbered indistinctly to all men. For instance, the desperate rush of a cataract possessing, if any natural object can, the most headlong fury of motion, in its most furious form, yet when seen at a distance of a mile or two, you will in a moment discern the magical strength of truth in the words in which he has described it. "Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice : Motionless as ice! Dizzy turbulence that eludes the eye now being frozen by distance! Here we have the accurate seeing eye, discerning the very truth of natural fact, not fancy, and it comes floating in a stream of noble enthusiastic feeling, which cements together the description of a natural fact into that musical whole that constitutes it poetry.-besides being a fact in itself, rightly seen, rightly felt, and rightly worded, which would constitute Wordsworth a descriptive poet of the first class. He is not satisfied with a mere description of any one grand feature, however perfect in itself; to him uniformly it is nothing, excepting as it can be transmuted into a fitting and expressive symbol of a higher than physical truth or beauty. Its spiritual import, the secret of its power over us, he wants to discern behind the veil of phenomenon. In his own words, in this very poem, "that invisible life that breathes not, those powers that touch each other to the quick, in modes which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, no soul to dream of." It is to this real essence and living power of the scene that he wants to do justice, to show it us, make us see it, and hear and feel that which eludes the gross sense of the materialist. So this foaming flood, frozen by distance, is the apt symbol of the subject of the poem-the ruined castle of Kilchurn, upon Loch Awe. As in that flood that now seems motionless as a stiffened column of ice, there is a life of dizzy turbulence, though it eludes the eye, so there is also in the hard material form of things around us a breathless flood of foaming life, and powers that touch each other to the quick, if our gross world senses were only purged, and we could draw nearer in spirit to the infinite flood that rolls around and beneath us. This is the higher application of the fact; it The also no less happily illustrates the immediate "Child of loud-throated War! the mountain stream Oh! there is life that breathes not. Powers there are Yet he, not loth, in favour of thy claims Whose mountains, torrents, lakes, and woods, unite Two Hearts, which in thy presence might be called The chronicle were welcome that should call Talk of word power, of condensed bolts. What do you call it, when a ruined feudal castle is said to be the "Child of loud-throated War," the wild times that reared it, its "rugged Sire," and now, in its shattered state," the memorial majesty of Time impersonated in thy calm decay." And a sufficiently condensed bolt surely we have in the two phrases, "Shade of departed Power," "Skeleton of unfleshed humanity," and the delicate yet condensed essence of pure poetry in the last line "Lost on the aërial heights of the Crusades! " has no healing in it, and, instead of carrying a remedy, often demoralises the recipient. It takes from independence its proper pride, and from mendicity its salutary shame, and has no compensatory virtue in it at all. If a man is really suffering from a stroke of ill-luck, if illness or accident or misfortune has thrown him out of employ, a solitary dole will not put him on his feet; but if a fair number of charitable people combine their gifts, it will be possible from that central fund to afford substantial help until such time as fortune should smile again, and the man be able to support himself. The very worst way of "helping" a man is to make him think that he is released from the duty of supporting himself; the very best method of helping a man is to set him in the way of helping himself. Now, it is perfectly obvious that the only way to set to work to accomplish the desirable end of rendering substantial help to needy souls, instead of frittering away idle doles, is to induce existing charitable societies to lay aside all their rivalries, and frankly co-operate with all their hearts. There are at the present time four classes of forces in independent action in this city, all bent on the relief of the indigent : The adminstrators of the poor law; religious societies, nearly a hundred in number; benevolent institutions, about thirty; and all the indefinite charity of private persons. These are entirely unacquainted with one another's beneficences, and their activities are perpetually overlapping. To make my meaning perfectly THE PUBLIC CHARITIES OF NEWCASTLE. clear, I will give an instance of a poor widow, BY THE REV. BERNARD J. SNELL, M.A., B.SC. who thoroughly understands the art of getting all she can she may receive three shillings a "THE time of the wise men of the world is week from the parish authorities, without much taken up with undoing the evil that is contrivance become a pensioner on three or done by the good men." There is as much four churches or chapels, have free medical truth in that remark as there is of cynicism. treatment, soup tickets ad lib, clothing and Benevolence is not a good thing when it blankets from another source, and as many is practised thoughtlessly. doles from private individuals as her impertiOur political nence will permit her to solicit. If she be economists and poor-law administrators have undeserving, the more hypocrisy and impudence been trying to drill that thought into us any she possesses the more fraud may she perpetrate. time these last twenty years, and still the If she be deserving, some will be inclined to majority of people imagine that if they give condone the whole; but it is a short-sighted way to what they call their "better feelings," condonation, since the showering of bounty upon if they toss sixpence to an importunate beggar, her implies the neglect of some less obtrusive case of equal merit. It cannot be too often they are of necessity conferring a benefit. repeated that the capital of charity is practiIt is often utter selfishness that prompts cally a limited fund, though from the nature of acquiescence to the beggar's demand, for not things it is impossible to define its limits; proonly do you get rid of him and his plaint, but digality of relief in one direction means you ease your own conscience into the bargain. stinting of it in another. There is no If there is real need, it is not adequately ameliorative force in all that surplusage of dealt with by the bestowal of a few haphazard charity bestowed in that individual case; nay, shillings; it can only be properly alleviated its effects may readily be conceived to be by the due consideration and co-operation of thoroughly baneful. But were there co-operacharitable persons. The indiscriminate doletion between those various agencies, the widow would be more certainly, though not as prodigally, helped, and in addition she might be directed into a method of wholly or partially sustaining herself. Another typical case will accentuate the same moral in quite another direction. The father of a family falls ill, and is unable to work; his wife's time and strength are taken up in nursing him, and his savings are spent in the small luxuries which sickness makes necessaries. Under present conditions, the clergyman may, perhaps, in the extremity of their want give a dole from the church-box (a driblet, for his list is large and his funds are small); the charitable, who happen to know, may send temporary assistance once or twice, but slowly, surely, the case ends in parish relief and the pauperisation of a worthy family. Were our charitable agencies cooperative, not only would sufficient assistance be afforded, without invoking parochial aid, but it would be the agent's business to procure suitable medical treatment, to secure the attention of the right people to watch the case, to get work for any of the children who could do anything, and so the family could be saved some of that terrible mental and physical suffering which comes on the very poor. There is a vast amount of active benevolence in Newcastle; large numbers of people are willing to give their money, if they can be assured that a decent amount of discrimination is exercised in the distribution of their alms, and large numbers, too, are eager to give their time and energies to any work which they can see to be distinctly philanthropic. The overflow from the strong fountain of charity is allowed simply to waste itself harmfully, whereas, directed into proper courses, it might be made a beneficent irrigator. The charity of the public flows on all sides, but there is no reservoir, no regular channel, and the stream is dissipated in little rivulets, and wasted in innumerable small conduits. With a concentration of effort and co-ordination of method, not only would there be an immense saving in the working expenses, but there might be a thorough weeding out of the sturdy vagabonds and howling blackguards that live in idleness; and far more effective assistance might be ensured to the really deserving than is possible under the discreditable system that exists. Surely there are no societies in Newcastle that would refuse to concur in some such arrangement. At least we might have a public register of charitable institutions, enabling those who want, and those who are ready to give, to find each other out. There is already in existence a society which includes among its objects the prevention of indiscriminate and duplicate giving, by inducing some such co-operation as I have suggested; but it is too weak, and its principles too little known, for its most devoted adherents to hope for success, were it, all unaided, to attack so huge and so delicate a problem. Its central design is the promotion of whatever tends to the permanent improvement of the condition of the poor, and this end it endeavours to secure by exposing imposture, making employment the basis of relief, and rendering substantial aid wherever there is any hope of effecting real good. Its censors are many, for it is very easy to say "A society is always hard-hearted in its methods." The man who cannot refuse a copper to a beggar, but who never in his life gave half-an-hour's thought to a beggar's home, invariably suggests that this organised charity has no bowels of compassion. Is the surgeon less tender in proportion to the accuracy of his knowledge and the greatness of his skill? Or, under subtler conditions, is any one less tender to the man for whom he takes trouble and entertains foresight? The powers of an organisation can accomplish far more definite and extending good than any isolated effort can possibly effect. Many scores have been saved by the Charity Organization Society from the Workhouse, by being helped again and again until the bright day came, -scores, whom a solitary dole would not have benefited for a single day. But the income of that society is ridiculously inadequate for it to cope successfully with any such scheme as the organization of existing charities. It has machinery for the careful sifting of cases of distress, for obtaining and supplying aid to those in grievous need; and it has rendered good service in exposing imposition and fraud. But no one will say more willingly than its Executive "The little done doth vanish to the mind That forward sees how much remains to do." Were there to be a conference of the working heads of the various local agencies of relief, something might possibly be effected; but just as important does it seem to me that by the free expression of the opinions of those practically engaged in philanthropic endeavours, the reading public should be familiarised with the idea. And for that reason I have penned this paper, with the utmost candour and the most unfeigned humility. THE YEOVILLES OF YEOVILLE TOWERS. BY LIZZIE A. GLEN. Author of "The Manse on the Leven," &c. N the first chapter of this interesting story we are introduced to a poor but respectable family named Mansfield, and we have a |