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itself into all the intercourse between the up-| rived from them as teaching, that in so far as per and lower classes of society, and enters the political institutions of a country place any into the most casual and trivial transactions. man in such circumstances as to give avarice, Any little service rendered by an inferior, ambition, or pride, the dominion over his heart, which in another country would be repaid by whatever may be the name given or the virtue a smile and a cordial word, the English gentle- ascribed to those institutions, they cost that man remunerates by the tossing of his misera- man his liberty. ble sixpence-creating the mercenary spirit that he feeds, and checking the growth of the independent good-will in which he places no

trust.

We now come to the series which Mr. Wordsworth has entitled 'Itinerary,' and which we have already alluded to as 'the sunThe truth is, that there is nothing so unin- dry contemplation of his travels.' Scenery, teresting to man, nothing so ungenial and un- cities, manners, local traditions, recorded fruitful, as social equality. Man's nature and events, incidents of the moment, remains of the wants of his imagination call for the con- antiquity, products of modern taste, abodes, trary, and where institutions are ostensibly sites and occupants, viaducts, railways and calculated to remove the sense of inequality, steam-boats, names, clouds, and echoes,— they will in reality remove only so much of nothing comes amiss to Mr. Wordsworth on his it as is connected with our better nature, and travels, and sonnets spring up in his path bring into strong and naked operation the in- wherever he goes. And amidst the multitude equalities of a monied scale. This is no doubt of objects which attract his attention, it is one of the tendencies of our institutions at the difficult to say that any one class has more present time a tendency which will be coun- power over him than another. Natural obteracted and conquered, as we trust-one ten- jects have undoubtedly had the greatest infludency only amongst many; but one against ence originally, as we may learn from the which those who value the true liberty of celebrated lines written on visiting Tintern their country, the liberty of its individual Abbey, and from many other passages, and minds and hearts, should strenuously contend; amongst these 'the family of floods' are menand it is not a tendency as regards the lower tioned by the poet as standing first in his reclasses only. Social distinction is an object gard, and many members of that family are to high and low, and is open to every one of celebrated in the Sonnets, from 'the stately us through money, and money will procure Eden' in his own country, to for every one consideration, service, and what is equally indispensable to mankind, civility ; and in this state of society the liberty of the higher classes is not less in danger than that of the lower. For with the restless activity, But natural objects are so vividly recalled to the ambition, the importance attached to mo- his memory when others are presented to his ney, the pecuniary taint which infects all the eyes, the colours of them are so interwoven relations between the upper and lower clas- with the whole tissue of his mind, that hardly ses, the absence of the disinterested courtesies any subject is treated separately from them. and unpaid good offices of life, which inspire And on the other hand, his sense of the beauty confidence between those classes and seem to of external nature is seldom merely passive; place them in a relation of human brotherhood the activities of his intellect are excited by it with each other-with all these elements of rather than merged in it, and his poetry is not our society, there arises naturally its chief often purely descriptive. We will quote the characteristic on the evil side of the account, sonnet we can find which is the most so,--a pride, or a pusillanimous fear of opinion-description of the plain between Namur and pride which,

'Howe'er disguised

In its own majesty, is littleness-'*

'-that young stream that smites the throb-
bing rocks
Of Viamala.'

Liege, in which the effect of nature's tranquillity is heightened by allusion to the frequent warfare of which that plain has been the theatre:--

and invariably undermines the strength and independence of the heart. The study of Mr.What lovelier home could gentle Fancy choose? Wordsworth's writings will assist more than Is this the Stream, whose cities, heights, and plains, any other literary influence that is now abroad to abate the spirit of pride and cherish the spirit of independence; and in closing our remarks upon the Political series of his Sonnets, we will sum up the doctrine to be de.

Mr. Wordsworth's lines left under a Yew-tree seat.

stains

War's favourite playground, are with crimson
Familiar, as the Morn with pearly dews?
The Morn, that now, along the silver MEUSE,
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews

The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes the very modes of conveyance ' have their
Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,
How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its grey rocks clustering in pensive
shade-

That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise
From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and
Sonnets, p. 197.

still!'

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authentic comment,' and suggest thoughts,
recollections and feelings. We find him, in
1820, in a carriage on the banks of the Rhine,
travelling with a speed which cheats him of
half his enjoyment, and wishing to be on foot
as in the days of his youth :---

Amid this dance of objects sadness steals
O'er the defrauded heart-while sweeping by,
As in a fit of Thespian jollity,
Beneath her vine-leaf crown the green Earth
reels:

Backward, in rapid evanescence, wheels
The venerable pageantry of Time,
Each beetling rampart, and each tower sublime,
And what the Dell unwillingly reveals
Of lurking cloistral arch, through trees espied
Near the bright River's edge. Yet why repine?
To muse, to creep, to halt at will, to gaze-
Such sweet wayfaring-of life's spring the
pride,

Her summer's faithful joy--that still is mine,
And in fit measure cheers autumnal days.'
Ibid., p. 200.

We are happy to know that the 'fit measure' of pedestrian strength which remained to Mr. Wordsworth in the year 1820 is yet with him in 1841, and that the fainting London tourist may still meet with him, robust and fresh, on the top of Helvellyn or other cloudsequestered heights,' exercising his functions as one of Nature's Privy Council.'

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How skilfully does that suggestion in the parenthesis, of the sunshiny colouring of the If Mr. Wordsworth was not quite content aspen in October, adumbrate the cheerfulness to be whirled along the banks of the Rhine to be bestowed by natural piety upon the de- in a carriage, it was to be expected that he cline of life! preparing for the principal illus- should betray more impatience in a steamtration of the same idea in the song of the boat :red-breast, which only begins to sing when other birds have ceased. We will annex toWho but must covet a cloud-seat, or skiff this a sonnet, congenial in sentiment and ima- Built for the air, or winged Hippogriff? That he might fly, where no one could pursue, gery, written at Bala-sala, Isle of Man, in the From this dull Monster and her sooty crew.' person of a friend of the author. The convent spoken of is Rushen Abbey:

'Broken in fortune, but in mind entire

And sound in principle, I seek repose
Where ancient trees this convent-pile enclose
In ruin beautiful. When vain desire
Intrudes on peace, I pray the eternal Sire
To cast a soul-subduing shade on me,
A grey-haired, pensive, thankful Refugee;
A shade--but with some sparks of heavenly fire
Once to these cells vouchsafed. And when I
note

Ibid., p. 260.

But what some persons would consider the poetic or romantic view of things never shuts out from Mr. Wordsworth's mind the contemplation of the whole truth. For the whole. truth received into a poetic mind of the highest, that is, of the philosophic order, may always take a poetical shape, and cannot but be more fruitful than half-truths. And thus we have a notice, in a sonnet on steam-boats,

The old Tower's brow yellowed as with the viaducts, and railways, that Mr. Wordsworth

beams

Of sunset ever there, albeit streams
Of stormy weather-stains that semblance
wrought,

I thank the silent Monitor, and say
"Shine so, my aged brow, at all hours of the
day!"
Ibid., p. 256.

When Mr. Wordsworth is upon his travels,

is not to be misled by any false lights into regarding with other feelings than those of hope and gratulation the victories of mind

over matter:

Motions and Means, on land and sea at war
With old poetic feeling, not for this
Shall ye, by Poets even, be judged amiss!
Nor shall your presence, howsoe'er it mar

The loveliness of Nature, prove a bar
To the Mind's gaining that prophetic sense
Of future change, that point of vision, whence
May be discovered what in soul ye are.
In spite of all that beauty may disown
In your harsh features, Nature doth embrace
Her lawful offspring in Man's art; and Tinie,
Pleased with your triumphs o'er his brother
Space,

Accepts from your bold hands the proffer'd crown
Of hope, and smiles on you with cheer sublime.'
Ibid., p. 277.
Twenty years ago our readers may remem-
ber that there was a literary controversy of
some celebrity, in which Lord Byron, Mr.
Campbell, and Mr. Bowles were the principal
performers, on the subject of the comparative
merits of nature and art in supplying subjects
for poetry. A little of Mr. Wordsworth's
philosophy, or a little of Shakspeare's, would
have taught the disputants either not to dis-
tinguish at all between these subjects, or to
distinguish more clearly. There are a few
words in the Winter's Tale' which say more
than anything which we can recollect to have

been said then :

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Do you neglect them? 'Perdita.

For I have heard it said,

feelings, to think that the material sciences.
are the highest walks of human contempla-
tion. Yet in reality neither the sciolist nor
the adept has any reason to complain. For
the former Mr. Wordsworth has not perhaps
absolute respect, but certainly a genuine in-
dulgence, witness the sketches, in the 'Ex-
cursion,' of the Wandering Herbalist' and
his fellow-wanderer-

'He who with pocket-hammer smites the edge
Of luckless rock or prominent stone, disguised
In weather-stains or crusted o'er by Nature
With her first growths-detaching by the stroke
A chip or splinter to resolve his doubts;'

He finds no fault with either of these gentlemen :

Intrusted safely each to his pursuit,
Earnest alike, let both from hill to hill
Range; if it please them speed from clime to
clime;

The mind is full-no pain is in their sport.'

Thus gently does Mr. Wordsworth, even when speaking by the mouth of the least gentle of his poëmatis persona, deal with the dabblers in science. Shakspeare also was a good-natured observer; yet these men of nomenclatures did not escape so easily in his hands:

'These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are.'*

So much for the sciolist. And next for the There is an art which in their piedness shares complaint of the adept. We do not desire to

With great creating Nature.

'Polixenes. Say there be;

Yet Nature is made better by no mean,

maintain that Mr. Wordsworth pays kneeworship even to his idol, or that he reverences as the highest knowledge that which,

But Nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, however consummate in its kind, is limited
Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes.'-(Act. iv., sc. 3.)

to the purely material sciences. All that we contend for is, that, as in the sonnets heretofore quoted, so in his other writings, Mr. This is the philosophical view of the mat- Wordsworth invariably treats the material ter, and Mr. Wordsworth's taste is as univer- sciences with the respect which is due to sal as philosophy itself; and his philosophy their place amongst the powers and instruand his poetry are never found in collision mentalities of nature. He would not deny with each other, but always in an easy alli- that they are powers of stupendous impor

ance.

tance in their results, but neither would he We are aware, however, that it has some-admit that they are on that account entitled, times been said that Mr. Wordsworth has when standing alone, to confer the highest written in disparagement of science. How rank upon the intellects through which those incapable he is of doing so, our readers have results are brought about. He would not dehad some means of judging. The charge has been brought, we believe, by two very differ-ny, certainly, that stupendous moral as well as material results are the offspring of the ent classes of persons,-by those who mistake certain scientific nomenclatures and purely material sciences; for as matter is alclassifications for sciences themselves, and, on ways acting upon spirit with prodigious force throughout the portion of the universe which the other hand, by those who have a genuine comprehension of science, but are led, from the want of other knowledge, faculties, or

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Love's Labour's Lost.

is known to man, so there can be no doubt mankind without the aid of either science or that the material products of science operate imagination-will not be disparaged if they incalculable changes in the moral condition are placed last.

of mankind. But neither would he admit But Mr. Wordsworth, as we collect, would that that which acts upon spirit through mat- be better pleased to contemplate the conjuncter, however important the agency may be in tion, than the subordinated separation of these its consequences, can be regarded as an agen-powers, and he anticipates the time when cy of an equally high order with that which science, allying itself with the imaginative acts upon spirit through spirit. faculty, and through this reaching and inspir ing the heart, shall be exalted into philosophy:'Science then

Thus, in the eighth book of the Excursion, he rejoices and exults in the mastery exercised by science over the elements, but rejoices in it hoping that the time will come when man, 'strengthened yet not dazzled' by his scientific conquests,

Shall be a precious visitant; and then,
And only then, be worthy of her name.
For then her heart shall kindle; her dull eye,
Dull and inanimate, no more shall hang

'Shall learn, though late, that all true glory rests, Chained to its object in brute slavery;
All praise, all safety, and all happiness,
Upon the moral law.'

And he proceeds to show that even the sci-
ences themselves must have the same support,
in order to ensure them against decay and

oblivion:

'Egyptian Thebes,

But taught with patient interest to watch
The processes of things, and serve the cause
Of order and distinctness, not for this
Its most illustrious province, must be found
Shall it forget that its most noble use,
In furnishing clear guidance, a support
Not treacherous, to the mind's excursive power."

10

Nor does Mr. Wordsworth regard the advances of science with any jealousy, as if it were possible that they could tend to limit the province of imagination. That province he knows to be boundless;-and though many of the secrets of nature may be discovered, and the pride of man may for the moment exult inordinately, forgetting what mysteries remain which Science can never penetrate and Faith can but see darkly as in a glass, yet he is assured that man is and always will be an imaginative being; and that, whatever he may search out and lay open, he must still come to the unseen and the inscrutable at last, and be recalled to the awe and humility which befits his condition :-

Tyre, by the margin of the sounding waves, Palmyra, central in the desert, fell; And the arts died by which they had been raised. Call Archimedes from his buried tomb Upon the plain of vanished Syracuse, And feelingly the sage shall make report How insecure, how baseless in itself, Is the philosophy whose sway depends On mere material instruments; how weak Those arts and high inventions, if unpropped By Virtue! He, with sighs of pensive grief Amid his calm abstractions, would admit That not the slender privilege is theirs To save themselves from blank forgetfulness!' If, therefore, we are to separate what we cannot wish to see separated-if we must separate knowledge and intellectual power into degrees and orders of precedency-weDesire we past illusions to recall ? should concur with Mr. Wordsworth in giv-To reinstate wild Fancy, would we hide ing the first place to the kind which lives in Truths whose thick veil Science has drawn the hearts of men and fortifies the imaginative

ces.

aside?

fall,

The universe is infinitely wide;
And conquering Reason, if self-glorified,
Can nowhere move uncrossed by some new wall
Or gulf of mystery, which thou alone,
Imaginative Faith! canst overleap,

throne

faith, which kindles the affections, animates No, let this Age, high as she may, instal the belief in things unseen, and multiplies In her esteem the thirst that wrought man's The spiritual presences of absent things.' This kind of knowledge and power, depending immediately upon the imagination, but not to be cast loose from scientific laws, may, we think, without wrong to any other, be placed in the first rank of human intelligen-In progress toward the fount of Love,-the In the Celestial Hierarchy, according Of Power, whose ministers the records keep to Dionysius Areopagita, the Angels of Love Of periods fixed, and laws established, less hold the first place, the Angels of Light the Flesh to exalt than prove its nothingness.'second, and Thrones and Dominations the Sonnets, p. 250. third. Amongst Terrestrials, the intellects which act through the imagination upon the heart of man, may be accounted the first in order, the merely scientific intellects the second, and the merely ruling intellects—those which apply themselves to the government of

It was in no other spirit-it was in the profound humility of his own nature, and with a deep insight into man's nature, that the great

Excursion, book iv.

founder of modern material philosophy offered net entitled 'Mary Queen of Scots (landing at up his Students' Prayer':the mouth of the Derwent, Workington).'

This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine, neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather that, by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given up to Faith the things which are Faith's.

Devoutly is it to be wished that, along with the principles of material philosophy which have been as the light of day to the natural world in the generations succeeding Lord Bacon, there could have been communicated to all of his disciples, as it has been in degree to some, the greatness of that man's religious heart.

But we are to proceed with the Itinerant. Manners are regarded by him, no less than arts and sciences, with an inquisitive eye, and pondered in a spirit of comprehensive appreciation. He observes the decay of ancient manners and the progress of innovation, reaching even to the Scotch Highlands,-but he observes them with no predisposition to prefer what is old to what is modern on any other than just and reasonable grounds: his desire is only to examine into the different effects of changes, to weigh losses against gains, and to 'have a right judgment in all things.' When indeed, he sees

'the umbrella spread
To weather-fend the Celtic herdsman's head'
there arise in his mind some doubts and mis-
givings, and he pauses before he can regard the
superior comforts of the Celtic herdsman with
unmixed satisfaction. Still it is but a doubt
and an inquiry, not a decision; and he does
not fail to intimate that there is another side to
the question:-

The pibroch's note, discountenanced or
The Roman kilt, degraded to a toy
Of quaint apparel for a half-spoilt boy;
The target, mouldering like ungathered fruit;
The smoking steam-boat eager in pursuit,
As eagerly pursued; the umbrella spread
To weather-fend the Celtic herdsman's head-
All speak of manners withering to the root,
And some old honours, too, and passions high:
Then may we ask, though pleased that thought
should range

'Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore;

While to the throng that on the Cambrian
shore

Her landing hailed, how touchingly she bowed!
And like a star (that, from a sombre cloud
Of pine-tree foliage poised in air, forth darts,
When a soft summer gale at evening parts
The gloom that did its loveliness enshroud)
She smiled: but Time, the old Saturnian Seer,
Sighed on the wing as her foot pressed the
strand,

With a step prelusive to a long array
Of woes and degradations hand in hand;
Weeping captivity, and shuddering fear—
Stilled by the ensanguined block of Fotherin-
gay?'-Ibid.,
p. 247.

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The last line expresses one of those truths mute;which present themselves with peculiar force to an imaginative mind, owing to its individual experience. For to such a mind the absent and the distant appear with a vividness of colouring which realities when present will generally be found to fall short of; and when fear is the passion by which such a mind is seized, it will be apt to lose sight, in the liveliness of its prospective emotions, of the resources with which its imaginative an susceptible nature abounds, and which might enable it to deal victoriously with the actual presence of the thing feared, or even with the nearer approach of danger. For fear itself is not more the characteristic of a highly imaginative mind than faith; and the love which casteth The last we shall quote from this itinerary se-out fear will grow in power, and all the antagories shall be an historical recollection-the son-nist emotions will be awakened, as the thing

Among the conquests of civility,
Survives Imagination-to the change
Superior? Help to Virtue does it give?
If not, O Mortals, better cease

to live!' Ibid., p. 218.

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