age. As it was, however, he said he believed Coleridge's mind to have been a widely fertilising one, and that the seed he had so lavishly sown in his conversational discourses, and the Sibylline leaves (not the poems so called by him) which he had scattered abroad so extensively covered with his annotations, had done much to form the opinions of the best-educated men of the day; although this might be an influence not likely to meet with adequate recognition. After mentioning, in answer to our inquiries about the circumstances of their friendship, that though a considerable period had elapsed during which they had not seen much of each other, Coleridge and he had been, for more than two years, uninterruptedly, in as close intimacy as man could be with man, he proceeded to read to us the letter from Henry Nelson Coleridge which conveyed the tidings of his great relation's death, and of the manner of it. It appeared that his death was a relief from intense pain, which, however, subsided at the interval of a few days before the event; and that shortly after this cessation of agony he fell into a comatose state. The most interesting part of the letter was the statement, that the last use he made of his faculties was to call his children, and other relatives and friends around him, to give them his blessing, and to express his hope to them that the manner of his end might manifest the depth of his trust in his Saviour. As I heard this, I was at once deeply glad at the substance, and deeply affected by Wordsworth's emotion in reading it. When he came to this part his voice at first faltered, and then broke. Before I quit this subject, I will tell you what I was interested in hearing from a person of the highest abilities, whom I had the good fortune of meeting at Rydal Mount. He said that he had visited Coleridge about a month before his death, and had perceived at once his countenance pervaded by a most remarkable serenity. On being congratulated on his appearance, Coleridge 'replied that what he felt most thankful for was the deep calm peace of mind which he then enjoyed; a peace such as he had never before experienced, or scarcely hoped for. This, he said, seemed now settled upon him; and all things were thus looked at by him through an atmosphere by which all were reconciled and harmonised." As the years went on, the younger members of the households at Rydal Mount and Greta Hall carried on a constant correspondence on behalf of their seniors, who, at the beginning of the century, had stood on such familiar terms. Dora Wordsworth and Edith Southey were now the letter-writers; and they kept up the intimacy begun by their parents in former years. Southey told his friend May, that the death of Miss Hutchinson at Rydal Mount had drawn Dora Wordsworth much nearer to his daughter, "who was almost equally dear to the dead." The sadness, which now overspread both households, was scarcely broken by events in themselves joyous. Edith Southey's marriage to Mr. Warter, in January 1834, was an event of mingled joy and sorrow to the Rydal family. Dora went over to Keswick to spend a few last days with Edith, and to be one of her bridesmaids; and after the wedding, we have a touching account of Wordsworth and his wife going down to the foot of the Rydal Mount hill, and pacing backwards and forwards for some time, waiting to see the bride and bridegroom as they passed, to shake hands with them, and give them a blessing. An extremely interesting account of an interview with Wordsworth in 1833 is given by an American, the Rev. Orville Dewey, in a book recording his travels in Europe, which he called The Old World and the New. It gives us a better insight than anything else that has been written, except his own letters, into Wordsworth's opinion of the social and the political state of the country, and of the rocks which he fancied he saw ahead in the immediate future. His fears may have been exaggerated and unwise. they were his. It is enough for us, meanwhile, to note that I was so much disappointed in the appearance of Mr. Wordsworth, that I actually began to suspect that I had come to the cottage of one of his neighbours. After ten minutes' commonplace talk about the weather, the travelling, etc., had passed, I determined to find out whether I was mistaken; and, aware of his deep interest in the politics of England, I availed myself of some remark that was made to introduce that subject. He immediately left all commonplace, and went into the subject with a flow, a flood almost, of conversation, that soon left me in no doubt. After this had gone on an hour or two, wishing to change the theme, I took occasion of a pause to observe that, in this great political agitation, poetry seemed to have died out entirely. He said it had; but that was not the only cause; for there had been, as he thought, some years ago, an over-production and a surfeit. Mr. Wordsworth converses with great earnestness, and has a habit, as he walks and talks, of stopping every fourth or fifth step, and turning round to you to enforce what he is saying. The subjects, the first evening I passed with him, were, as I have said, politics and poetry. He remarked afterwards, that, although he was known to the world only as a poet, he had given twelve hours' thought to the condition and prospects of society for one to poetry. I replied that there appeared to me to be no contradiction in this, since the spirit of poetry is the spirit of humanity—since sympathy with humanity, and with all its fortunes, is an essential characteristic of poetryand politics is one of the grandest forms under which the welfare of the human race presents itself. In politics, Mr. Wordsworth professes to be a reformer, but upon the most deliberate plan and gradual scale; and he indulges in the most indignant and yet argumentative diatribes against the present course of things in England, and in the saddest forebodings of what is to come. The tide is beating now against aristocracy and an established religion, and, if it prevails, anarchy and irreligion must follow. He will see no other result. He has no confidence in the people; they are not fit to govern themselves-not yet certainly. Public opinion, the foolish opinion of the depraved, ignorant, and conceited mass, ought not to be the law; it ought not to be expressed in law; it ought not to be represented in government. The true representative government should represent the mind of a country, and that is not found in mass, nor is it to be expressed by universal suffrage. Mr. Wordsworth constantly protested against the example of America as not being in point. He insisted that the state of society, the crowded population, the urgency of want, the tenures of property, in England, made a totally different case from ours. He seemed evidently to admit, though he did not say so in terms, that hereditary rank and an established priesthood are indefensible in the broadest views of human rights and interests; but the argument for them is, that they cannot be removed without opening the door to greater evils-to the unrestrained license of the multitudeto incessant change, disorder, uncertainty; and, finally, to oppression and tyranny. He says the world is running mad with the notion that all its evils are to be relieved by political changes, political remedies, political nostrums-whereas the great evils, sin, bondage, misery, lie deep in the heart, and nothing but virtue and religion can remove them; and upon the value, and preciousness, and indispensableness of religion, indeed, he talked very sagely, earnestly, and devoutly. The next evening, I went to tea to Mr. Wordsworth's, on a hospitable invitation to come to breakfast, dinner, or tea, as I liked. The conversation very soon again ran upon politics. He thought there could be no independence in legislators, who were dependent for their places upon the ever-wavering breath of popular opinion, and he wanted my opinion about the fact in our country. I replied that, as a secluded man, and accustomed to look at the morale of these matters, I certainly had felt that there was likely to be, and probably was, a great want of independence—that I had often expressed the apprehension that our distinguished men were almost necessarily acting under biasses that did not permit them to sit down in their closets and examine great political questions and measures in a fair and philosophical spirit. Then,' he said, 'how can there be any safety?' I answered, as I had frequently said before, that our only safety lay in making the people wise: but I added that our practical politicians were accustomed to say that there was a principle of safety in our conflicts, in the necessarily conflicting opinions of the mass-that they neutralised and balanced each other. I admitted, however, that there was danger; that all popular institutions involved danger; that freedom was a trust, and a perilous trust. Still I insisted that this was only an instance of a general principle; that all probation was perilous; that the greatest opportunity was always the greatest peril. I maintained, also, that, think as we might of political liberty, there was no helping it; that, in the civilised world, the course of opinion was irresistibly setting towards universal education and popular forms of government; and nothing was to be done but to direct, modify, and control the tendency. He fully admitted this; said that, in other centuries, some glorious results might be brought out, but that he saw nothing but darkness, disorder, and misery in the immediate prospect, and that all he could do was to cast himself on Providence. I ventured to suggest that it seemed to me that all good and wise men had a work to do. I said that I admitted, friend to popular institutions as I was, that the world was full of errors about liberty; that there was a mistake and madness about popular freedom, as if it were the grand panacea |