others, mystic and cloudy. This will vary according to the intellectual and imaginative endowments of different readers. A matter-of-fact philosophy, not conversant with man's inner being, may demand what is the spot of reality from which the poet's imagination has soured so high. A dogmatic fanaticism may arraign the heart of childhood-beholding there, not as with the poet's eye, "glimpses of glory," but only spots of sin the feebleness of our fallen nature and symptoms of incipient depravity. The poet's creed, divested of its radiance, is thisthat recollections of early childhood awaken in the mind conceptions of a state of being purer and better than what belongs to our after-years-that those conceptions wrought upon by the imagination become endowed with attributes not limitable by time or space-that thus the soul acquires a sense of something within itself that is more than earthly a consciousness of communings with eternity—and in this spiritual mood it passes over the limits at once of physical birth and death, and is borne forward from its youngest memory into an existence beyond the grave. In the image of childhood the heart recognizes its own imperishable nature, and in the innocence of those days it discovers faintly shadowed forth promises of the soul redeemed and happy." In that little Goshen the heart of childhood," says Charles Lamb, "there will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality.' Wordsworth's devotion to the beauty of early life is the same trait of genius which produced Shakspeare's sweet pictures of childhood — Jeremy Taylor's-and Southey's affectionate playfulness with his "good little women and men." But the question may occur, what authority has Wordsworth for thus regarding childhood as emblematic of a happy hereafter? How dare he so deeply reverence any era of man's life? How dare he in any form of humanity-corrupt, and wretched, and down-trodden as it is in the feebleness of infancy or the flutterings of childhood - trace intimations of immortality - foretokenings and assurances of heaven? This shall be fully met -but by no other vindication than an allusion to that narrative which tells us that Jesus bade his busy disciples suffer the little children to come unto him—and proclaiming that "of such is the kingdom of God," "took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." Now, to turn the questioning back, who will impute to Wordsworth a heresy, in thus, as it were in obedience to the Saviour's teaching, announcing that childhood is a consecrated thing for man to medi

tate on? We have before spoken of all poetry of a high order partaking of a sacred character in a more comprehensive sense than that to which as a metrical expression of doctrine, the term is usually appropriated. Poetry becomes auxiliar to Divine truth, with which it acts in harmony without identifying itself with the same forms of its lessons. For fear of misapprehension, it may be well to illustrate this by the present instance. The Saviour announces in one short sentence that "of such (the little children) is the kingdom of heaven:" then it is a fit theme for uninspired wisdom to disclose what is the nature of the little child. Thus, when Wordsworth sends his spirit to explore the heart of childhood and bring to light the beauty of its innocence, the impulse of his chastened poetic instinct, is in accordance with the teachings of childlike simplicity which distinguish Christianity, and the deepest of his musings is consecrated to the truth of revelation.

This subject has been dwelt on, to illustrate the sublime tone of Wordsworth's poetry when treating even the simplest forms of humanity. From the emotions of childhood, another law of our moral being is evolved in the lines with which the poet meets his reader on his first page:

"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

Bound each to each by natural piety."

It is one of the sorrows of humanity that we are feeble in carrying forward into life the freshness of our early days, and that our self-consciousness loses its continuity. "Men exist," remarks Coleridge, "in fragments." The elements of the heart are wasted when the sympathy between different periods of existence is broken. No recollection of youthful innocence rises up to plead with the sophistications of manhood-impulses are received only from what is outward and accidental—and, when animal decay comes on, the heart which has never recognised its inner modes of feeling, is found to be desolate. How affectionately does Charles Lamb-"the man Elia"-regard his other self" the child Elia, in the back ground," as "a guardian giving the rule to his unpractised steps, and regulating the

tones of his moral being!" It is one of Wordsworth's great aims to preserve the freshness of the spirit by cherishing the sensibility to the beauty of external nature; but with that fidelity to truth which never leaves him, it is acknowledged, that the feeling is not exempt from the influence of time. The change from the passionate gaze on nature to meditative contemplation, is feelingly described in the admirable "Tintern Abbey" lines. To do any thing like justice to Wordsworth's descriptive powers is impossible within our limits. A hundred passages might be cited to show the world of sense, painted not only in its bolder features, but in its most delicate lines. The study of external nature pervades the Excursion, the Memorials of Tours, the beautiful series of "Evening Voluntaries," and is scattered through the small pieces. We shall not attempt more than a few detached specimens of the minute accuracy of his descriptions:

"A single beech-tree grew
Within this grove of firs! and on the fork
Of that one beech, appeared a thrush's nest;
A last year's nest, conspicuously built
At such small elevation from the ground
As gave sure sign that they, who in that house
Of nature and of love had made their home
Amid the fir-trees, all the summer long
Dwelt in a tranquil spot.”.

Naming of Places, 6.

"We paused, one now

And now the other; to point out, perchance
To pluck, some flower or water-weed, too fair
Either to be divided from the place

On which it grew, or to be left alone

To its own beauty."

"the lake

Naming of Places, 4.

Just at the point of issue, where it fears

The form and motion of a stream to take;

Where it begins to stir, yet voiceless as a snake."

Desultory Stanzas.

The Idiot Boy.

the description of a clear, and tranquil winter morning :

"Bright shines the Sun, as if his beams would wake The tender insects sleeping in their cells;

Bright shines the Sun and not a breeze to shake

The drops that tip the melting icicles :" - Thanksgiving Ode.

the picture of the repose and dimness of an evening scene :

"A stream is heard - I see it not, but know

By its soft music whence the waters flow;

Wheels and the tread of hoofs are heard no more;
One boat there was, but it will touch the shore
With the next dipping of its slackened oar;
Faint sound, that, for the gayest of the gay,

Might give to serious thought a moment's sway,

As a last token of man's toilsome day!"-Evening Voluntaries. These may show how faithful a student of nature Wordsworth has been. But the world of the eye and the ear, like the senses that observe them, are subject to decay, and it is not the character of his genius to pause upon what is perishable. The true service of nature cannot be divorced from man's inner spirit:

"Oh! 'tis the heart that magnifies this life

Making a truth and beauty of her own."

Deep and habitual as is Wordsworth's devotion to nature, it is no idolatry of what is material. He fails not to impress on us that her forms, loved as they are, are fugitive valueless except when contemplated in their relation to man and to his Makerthat "the earth, the dear green earth," when the soul is alienated from it, becomes, as to Hamlet's morbid mood, "a steril promontory," and that the universe is hollow without the presence of faith and imagination:

"I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely! and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith."

Excursion, b. iv.

It is the principle of the poet's love of nature that the soul, during its abode in our mortal frame, can gather, from all that meets the senses, food for its nobler faculties, and, in relation to its immortal endowment of spiritual aspirations, the earth is only "the homely Nurse, with something of a Mother's mind." In all Wordsworth's descriptive poetry may be observed

"The glorious habit by which sense is made Subservient still to moral purposes,

Auxiliar to divine."

In this spirit are given the beautiful exhortations to his sister: "Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, nor disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstacies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling place'

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations!"

-Tintern Abbey.

Such is Wordsworth's faith in the Infinite Wisdom, that framed the earth, the elements, and the physical heavens, to foster the heart of man, that no spot is too desolate or silent for the communion with nature:

"The estate of man would be indeed forlorn,
If false conclusions of the reasoning power
Made the eye blind and closed the passages
Through which the ear converses with the heart.
6

NO. VII.-VOL. IV.