NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for. to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. WORDSWORTH. O CROWN of venerable age! O brighter crown of well-spent years! Others, perchance, as keenly felt, But none with those ethereal notes, The fever of our fretful life, The soul with its own self at strife, To his own self not always just, WORDSWORTH. F. T. Palgrave. AND Wordsworth! Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice! and ye, Of doubts, disputes, distractions, and fears, Ah, since dark days still bring to light Keep fresh the grass upon his grave, VOICE OF NATURE IN THE HEART. - VOICE of Nature in the heart, Narrow though our science, though Here we only know in part, Give us faith in what we know! Tell us of a force behind Than the partial power we own: Toning down the pride of mind Weak to know, and prompt to guess, On the mighty shores that bound us Childlike gathering trifles round us: — Teach how, yet, what here we know How the marr'd unequal scheme, That on all sides here we meet, Either is a lawless dream, Or must somewhere be complete: Where or when, if near, or distant, Known but to the One Existent. - He is. We meanwhile repair From the noise of human things To the fields of larger air. To the shadow of his wings; Listening for his message only In the wild with Nature lonely. Lyrical Poems. F. T Palgrave. From Fraser's Magazine. of Julian. Strauss's exposition of a new Christianity almost independent of Christ was already before the world, and had produced no small effect in Germany. With these expectations, we can well imagine that the German doctor regarded with vexation and contempt the reluctance of Frederick William to fling his sceptre into the scale of the new era, and that he should seek in the dying days of old pa SOME three-and-twenty years ago or thereabouts Herr David Friedrich Strauss (the well-known author of the Leben Jesu) published a Vortrag on the character and motives of the Emperor Julian, under the title of "The Romanticist (Romantiker) on the Throne of the Cæsars." Although this essay purported to set before itself nothing more than a purely historical ob-ganism for a parallel to such strange and ject, it was well understood that the au- wayward devotion to by-gone faiths and thor designed the application of his sketch fealties. not so much for Julian himself as for In his eyes Frederick William was Frederick William IV. of Prussia, with simply a Romantiker — a man prompted by whom at that time the thoughts of politic- mere sentiment to an abortive effort al speculators in Germany were much en- towards reviving a dead past, in preference gaged, both as regarded the development to associating himself with the vigorous of constitutional government in Prussia future. The Romanticist (we quote the herself, and perhaps to a still greater de- words of the Edinburgh reviewer in sumgree in connection with the various proj-marizing Strauss's explanations on the ects of Teutonic unity. The parallel subject) is one who refuses to accept the which Strauss wished to suggest is traced fiat of history; refuses to acknowledge and illustrated in an interesting article that the past is past, that it has grown contained in the 88th volume of the Ed- old and obsolete: one who regards the inburgh Review. The reviewer (as might present age as in a state of chronic malabe expected during the summer of 1848) dy, curable only by a reproduction of is more occupied with the bearing of some distant age, of which the present is Strauss's volume on the Prussian politics not the child but the abortion. And this of that exciting crisis than with the accu- class of men, Strauss will have it, spring racy of the representation given of Julian. up more particularly in those epochs of Under the circumstances, however, it is human history when an old system has alhardly likely that this picture should be ready fallen into decay, and the new one faithfully drawn. Probably Strauss would which is to succeed has not yet fully dehimself admit that he had stretched his veloped itself; - still wearing the charachistorical judgment for the purpose of ter of an innovation, and exciting the giving point to his modern application. alarm and disgust of those whose fancy Perhaps there was something of personal still lingers round the old system though bitterness in the feeling with which he con- their convictions are but feebly enlisted templated the weakness, as it seemed to on its side. Such men are Romanticists. him, of Frederick William in throwing away the brilliant opportunity offered him by destiny. Strauss thought he saw a grand new epoch just ready to unfold itself in religion, in politics, in society. All the rising influences were calling across the deep to Frederick William of Prussia, claiming his hand to give them bian potentate? practical operation on German soil. And But was Julian such a man? That is to say, are we to suppose that the carnest desire to rehabilitate the old religion, to which he devoted his life, was nothing more than a fancy or a sentiment-perhaps even a foppery and a pretence, like the Romanticism of Mr. Browning's Danu in such a proffered career of a new Con- All that the old Dukes had been, without knowstantine, who so fit to bear a distinguished ing it, part as Herr Strauss himself? The old This Duke would fain know he was, without he Christianity was worn out, like the old ing it. idolatries of the Pagan world in the days If the German doctor meant this, and this |