following (as far as they are capable) our example, they may fashion to themselves, making use of what is best in their own ancient laws and institutions, new forms of government, which may secure posterity from a repetition of such calamities as the present age has brought forth. The materials of a new balance of power exist in the language, and name, and territory of Spain, in those of France, and those of Italy, Germany, Russia, and the British Isles. The smaller states must disappear, and merge in the large nations and wide-spread languages. The possibility of this remodelling of Europe I see clearly; earnestly do I pray for it; and I have in my mind a strong conviction that your invaluable work will be a powerful instrument in preparing the way for that happy issue. Yet, still, we must go deeper than the nature of your labour requires you to penetrate. Military policy merely will not perform all that is needful, nor mere military virtues. If the Roman state was saved from overthrow, by the attack of the slaves and of the gladiators, through the excellence of its armies, yet this was not without great difficulty1; and Rome would have been destroyed by Carthage, had she not been preserved by a civic fortitude in which she surpassed all the nations of the earth. The reception which the senate gave to Terentius Varro, after the battle of Cannæ, is the sublimest event in human history. What a contrast to the wretched conduct of the Austrian government after the battle at Wagram! England requires, as you have shown so eloquently and ably, a new system of martial policy; but England, as well as the rest of

1 "Totis imperii viribus consurgitur," says the historian, speaking of the war of the gladiators.

Europe, requires what is more difficult to give it, — a new course of education, a higher tone of moral feeling, more of the grandeur of the imaginative faculties, and less of the petty processes of the unfeeling and purblind understanding, that would manage the concerns of nations in the same calculating spirit with which it would set about building a house. Now a state ought to be governed (at least in these times), the labours of the statesman ought to advance, upon calculations and from impulses similar to those which give motion to the hand of a great artist when he is preparing a picture, or of a mighty poet when he is determining the proportions and march of a poem ; - much is to be done by rule; the great outline is previously to be conceived in distinctness, but the consummation of the work must be trusted to resources that are not tangible, though known to exist. Much as I admire the political sagacity displayed in your work, I respect you still more for the lofty spirit that supports it; for the animation and courage with which it is replete; for the contempt, in a just cause, of death and danger by which it is ennobled; for its heroic confidence in the valour of your countrymen; and the absolute determination which it everywhere expresses to maintain in all points the honour of the soldier's profession, and that of the noble nation of which you are a member of the land in which you were born. No insults, no indignities, no vile stooping, will your politics admit of; and therefore, more than for any other cause, do I congratulate my country on the appearance of a book which, resting in this point our national safety upon the purity of our national character, will, I trust, lead naturally to

make us, at the same time, a more powerful and a highminded nation.

"Affectionately yours,

"W. WORDSWORTH."

The following was written by Mr. Wordsworth, in the year 1840, to his friend, Professor Reed, of Philadelphia:

"I am much pleased by what you say in your letter of the 18th of May last, upon the Tract of the 'Convention of Cintra,' and I think myself with some interest upon its being reprinted hereafter, along with my other writings. But the respect, which, in common with all the rest of the rational part of the world, I bear for the Duke of Wellington, will prevent my reprinting the pamphlet during his lifetime. It has not been in my power to read the volumes of his Despatches, which I hear so highly spoken of, but I am convinced that nothing they contain could alter my opinion of the injurious tendency of that, or any other convention, conducted upon such principles. It was, I repeat, gratifying to me that you should have spoken of that work as you do, and particularly that you should have considered it in relation to my poems, somewhat in the same manner you had done in respect to my little volume on the Lakes.

"I send you a sonnet, composed the other day, while I was climbing our mountain Helvellyn, upon Haydon's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, supposed to be on the field of Waterloo, twenty years after the battle:

'By Art's bold privilege, warrior, and war-horse stand On ground yet strewn with their last battle's wreck;

Let the steed glory, while his master's hand
Lies, fixed for ages, on his conscious neck;
But by the chieftain's look, though at his side
Hangs that day's treasured sword, how firm a check
Is given to triumph and all human pride!'"1

1 Vol. ii. p. 311.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ADVICE TO THE YOUNG.

In the 17th Number of "THE FRIEND," published on Dec. 14. 1809, is an interesting Letter to the Editor, from a correspondent who subscribes himself MATHETES, and who is generally understood to be a person eminent in the various departments of Poetry, Philosophy, and Criticism - Professor Wilson.

The writer begins with describing the danger to which a young man is exposed on emerging from a state of tutelage into the world. There are, he thinks, numerous causes conspiring to bring his mind into bondage to popular fallacies, which will impair its simplicity, its energy, and its love of truth. He is dazzled by the fame of those who occupy the highest places in the world; his affections attach him to them and their opinions; and, in a degenerate age, such as the writer affirms the present to be, the ardour and enthusiasm of youth is thus enlisted in the cause of what is often illusory and pernicious.

This danger, it is alleged, is increased by the common belief, that human nature is gradually advancing by a continuous progress towards perfection. The necessary consequence of this supposition is, a confident presumption that the opinions of the present time are wiser than those of the past; and an overweening reliance on contemporary judgment grows up with a contemptuous disregard for antiquity.