could he preserved, they might not improbably be filled at no distant time by Catholic prelates. . . Two other (undated) letters evidently belong to the same year : I have read with the utmost attention the debates on the Catholic question. The opinion I share with you remains unaltered. We have heard much of candour and forbearance, etc., but these qualities appear to be all on one side, viz. on that of the advocates of existing laws. Among the Innovators there is a haughtiness, an air of insolent superiority to light and knowledge, which no strength of argument could justify, much less the sophisms and assumptions which they advance. I am aware that if the Catholics are to get into Parliament, ambition and worldly interest will have keen sway over them as over other men; and it need not be dreaded, therefore, that they will all be, upon every occasion, upon one side. But still the esprit de corps cannot but be stronger with them than other bodies for obvious reasons; and looking at the constitution of the House, how nicely balanced parties have often been, and what small majorities have repeatedly decided most momentous questions, I cannot but tremble at the prospect of introducing men who may turn, and (if they act consistently with the spirit of their religion, and even with its open professions) must turn their mutual fidelity against our Protestant Establishment, till, in co-operation with other dissenters and infidels, they have accomplished its overthrow. . . . The Catholic claims are to be referred to a committee ! God grant that these people may be baffled! How Mr. Canning and other enemies to Reform in Parliament can, without gross inconsistency, be favourers of their cause, I am unable to conceive. Mr. Canning objects to reform because it would be the means of sending into the House of Commons members whose station, opinions, and sentiments differ from those of the persons who are now elected, and who would prove less friendly to the Constitution in Church and State. Good heavens ! and won't this be the case to a most formidable extent if you admit Catholics, a measure to be followed up-as it inevitably will, sooner or later-with the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts, and a proportional increase of the political power of the dissenters, who are to a man hostile to the Church. . . . Another letter, written at the close of the same year, to his friend Loch, shows how Wordsworth's views on many questions underwent consistent change, and were developed by the progress of events, both in England and abroad. It is a specially interesting letter:- "Rydal Mount, Dec. 4, 1821. "I should think that I had lived to little purpose if my notions on the subject of government had undergone no modification. My youth must, in that case, have been without enthusiasm, and my manhood endued with small capability of profiting by reflection. If I were addressing those who have dealt so liberally with the words renegade, apostate, etc., I should retort the charge upon them, and say, you have been deluded by places and persons, while I have stuck to principles. I abandoned France, and her rulers, when they abandoned the struggle for liberty, gave themselves up to tyranny, and endeavoured to enslave the world. I disapproved of the war against France at its commencement, thinking-which was perhaps an error-that it might have been avoided; but after Buonaparte had violated the independence of Switzerland, my heart turned against him, and against the nation that could submit to be the instrument of such an outrage. Here it was that I parted, in feeling, from the Whigs, and to a certain degree united with their adversaries, who were free from the delusion (such I must ever regard it) of Mr. Fox and his party, that a safe and honourable peace was practicable with the French nation, and that an ambitious conqueror like Buonaparte could be softened down into a commercial rival. This is enough for foreign politics, as influencing my attachments. There are three great domestic questions, viz. the Liberty of the Press, Parliamentary Reform, and Roman Catholic concession, which, if I briefly advert to, no more need be said at present. A free discussion of public measures through the press I deem the only safeguard of liberty: without it I have neither confidence in kings, parliaments, judges, or divines. They have all in their turn betrayed their country. But the press, so potent for good, is scarcely less so for evil; and unfortunately they who are misled and abused by its means are the persons whom it can least benefit. It is the fatal characteristic of their disease to reject all remedies coming from the quarter that has caused or aggravated the malady. I am therefore for vigorous restrictions; but there is scarcely any abuse that I would not endure, rather than sacrifice or even endangerthis freedom. When I was young-giving myself credit for qualities which I did not possess, and measuring mankind by that standard—I thought it derogatory to human nature to set up property in preference to person, as a title for legislative power. That notion has vanished. I now perceive many advantages in our present complex system of representation, which formerly eluded my observation. This has tempered my ardour for reform but if any plan could be contrived for throwing the representation fairly into the hands of the property of the country, and not leaving it so much in the hands of the large proprietors as it now is, it should have my best support; though even in that event there would be a sacrifice of personal rights, independent of property, that are now frequently exercised for the benefit of the community. Be not startled when I say that I am averse to further concessions to the Roman Catholics. My reasons are, that such concessions will not produce harmony among the Roman Catholics themselves; that those among them who are most clamorous for the measure care little about it but as a step, first, to the overthrow of the Protestant Establishment in Ireland, as introductory to a separation of the two countries -their ultimate aim. . . . Deeming the Church Establishment not only a fundamental part of our Constitution, but one of the greatest upholders and propagators of Civilisation in our own country, and, lastly, the most effectual and main support of religious Toleration, I cannot but look with jealousy upon measures which must reduce her relative influence, unless they be accompanied with arrangements, more adequate than any yet adopted, for the preservation and increase of that influence, to keep pace with the other powers in the community." A sentence from an undated letter to Wrangham (probably belonging to the same year) is instructive. He had been speaking of the efforts of a Society to distribute copies of the Christian Scriptures, which he cordially approved of, but he added: "As to the indirect benefits expected from it, as producing a golden age of unanimity among Christians, all that I think fume and emptiness; nay, far worse. So deeply am I persuaded that discord and artifice, and pride and ambition would be fostered, by such an approximation and unnatural alliance of sects, that I am inclined to think the evil thus produced would more than outweigh the good done by dispersing the Bibles." A letter to his friend Richard Sharp, written in April 1822, shows Wordsworth's own estimate both of the Ecclesiastical Sketches and of the Memorials of a Tour on the Continent. "Rydal Mount, April 16, [Post-mark 1822]. "MY DEAR SIR,-I took the liberty of sending you the Memorials, for everything of this sort is a liberty (inasmuch as, to use Gibbon's phrase, it levies a tax of civility upon the receiving party), as a small acknowledgment of the great advantage I and my fellow-travellers had derived from your directions; which-as you might observe by the order in which the Poems are placed, and the limits of our Tour-we almost literally followed. The Ecclesiastical Sketches were offered to your notice merely as a contemporary publication. It gratifies me that you think well of these poems; but, I own, I am disappointed that they should have afforded you less pleasure than a single piece, which, from the very nature of it, as allegorical, and even imperfectly so, would horrify a German critic; and, whatever may be thought of the Germans as poets, there is no doubt of their being the best critics in Europe. But I think I have hit upon the secret. You, like myself, are-as Smollett says in his translation of the French phrase-no longer a chicken; and your heart beat in recollection of your late glorious performance, which has ranked you as a demigod among tourists Mounting from glorious deed to deed, As thou from clime to clime didst lead. You recollect that Gray, in one of his letters, affirms that Description-he means of natural scenery and the operations of Nature-though an admirable ornament, ought never to be the subject of Poetry. How many exclusive dogmas have been laid down, which genius from age to age has triumphantly refuted and grossly should I be deceived if, speaking freely to you as an old friend, these local poems do not contain many proofs that Gray was as much in the wrong in this interdict, |