How much of trick may mix with this we will not ask; but the display of precocious intellectual power in these branches is often astonishing: and, in proportion as it is so, may, for the most part, be pronounced not only useless, but injurious. The training that fits a boxer for victory in the ring gives him strength that cannot, and is not required to, be kept up for ordinary labour, and often lays the foundation of subsequent weakness and fatal disease. In like manner, there being in after life no call for these extraordinary powers of mind, and little use for the knowledge, the powers decay, and the knowledge withers and drops off. Here is then not only a positive injury, but a loss of opportunities for culture of intellect and acquiring information, which, as being in a course of regular demand, would be, hereafter, the one strengthened, and the other, naturally increased.

All this mischief, my friends, originates in a decay of that feeling which our fathers had uppermost in their hearts, viz., that the business of education should be conducted for the honour of God. And here I must direct your attention to a fundamental mistake, by which this age, so distinguished for its marvellous progress in arts and sciences, is unhappily characterised-a mistake, manifested in the use of the word education, which is habitually confounded with tuition, or school instruction; this is indeed a very important part of education, but when it is taken for the whole, we are deceived and betrayed. Education, according to the derivation of the word, and in the only use of which it is strictly justifiable, comprehends all those processes and influences, come from whence they may, that conduce to the best development of the bodily powers, and of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual faculties which the position of the individual admits of. . . . To education like this vigilance of parents is indispensably

necessary.

. .

It is through the silent operation of example that parents become infinitely the most important tutors of their children, without appearing, or positively meaning, to be so. It is related of Burns, the celebrated Scottish poet, that once, while, in the company of a friend, he was looking from an eminence over a wide tract of country, he said that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind that none could understand who had not witnessed, like himself, the happiness and worth which they contained. How were those happy and worthy people educated? By the influence of hereditary good example at home, and by their parochial schoolmasters opening the way for the admonitions and exhortations of their clergy; that was at a time when knowledge was, perhaps, better than now distinguished from smatterings of information, and when knowledge was more thought of in due subordination to wisdom.

And now, after renewing our expression of regret that the benevolent founder is not here to perform the ceremony himself, we will proceed to lay the first stone of the intended edifice."

APPENDIX V.

ON THE PORTRAITS OF WORDSWORTH.

I.

THE earliest portrait of Wordsworth, of which there is any record, was taken in 1797,-during the Alfoxden days, -by an artist then living at Stowey. It was a half-length figure (14 in. by 10), and is mentioned by Joseph Cottle in his Early Recollections chiefly relating to S. T. Coleridge, vol.

i.

p. 317. It represented Wordsworth as he was in his twenty-seventh year.

Nothing seems to have been heard of this picture for ninety years, till it turned up at Sotheby's saleroom in London, in July 1887. It is now in the possession of Mr George, bookseller, Bristol. Its artistic merit is not

great, but its historical interest is considerable.

II.

In the following year (1798) Robert Hancock took a drawing in black chalk for Joseph Cottle. This was engraved by R. Woodman for Cottle's Recollections, along with portraits of Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb-all drawn by Hancock-in the years in which each published his first volume of poems. The originals are now together in the National Portrait Gallery at South Kensington, having been purchased by the trustees in May 1877. Like all the rest, Wordsworth's is on a small scale. He is represented as wearing a dark buttoned coat and white cravat, seated in a wooden chair. The face is seen in profile, turned to the left; the complexion tinted with red. Of this picture Cottle says, 'The portrait of Mr Wordsworth was taken also by Hancock, and was an undoubted likeness, universally acknowledged to be such at the time.' Referring to the four portraits together he adds, "The time in which these four men of genius were drawn was perhaps the most advantageous for exhibiting their genuine characters; in which case the likenesses contained in the following work are those which might most faithfully and favourably descend to posterity.'* This picture of Wordsworth passed from Cottle to his daughter, Mrs Green; thence to Messrs Fawcett and Noseda, after which it was bought by Colonel Francis

* See Early Recollections chiefly relating to S. T. Coleridge, by Joseph Cottle. London, 1837. Preface, p. xxxiii.

Cunningham, and sold at his sale in 1876 to Mr De la Rue, from whom the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery bought it in the following year. When Dora Wordsworth, the poet's daughter, saw this picture of her father in 1836, she remarked that it reminded her of her brother John.' In Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, August 29, 1836, the following allusion to this picture occurs, In Cottle's house at Bristol, my attention was drawn to five miniatures, rather say small portraits of Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, and Wordsworth. W. resembles E. Lytton Bulwer more than himself now.

All (C. assures me) were excellent likenesses.'

III.

In the year 1803 a portrait of Wordsworth was painted by Hazlitt (the literary critic and artist). Of this picture Southey wrote to his friend Richard Duppa, from Keswick, December 14, 1803: 'Hazlitt has been here. He has painted Wordsworth, but so dismally-though Wordsworth's face is his ideal of physiognomical perfection-that one of his friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, "At the gallows-deeply affected by his deserved fate, yet determined to die like a man;' and if you saw the picture, you would admire the criticism.' (See Southey's Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 238.)

I may add that almost all the portraits of that period were artistically bad.

On June 11, 1804, Southey wrote to Coleridge, 'I went into the Exhibition merely to see your picture, which perfectly provoked me. Hazlitt's does look as if you were on your trial, and certainly had stolen the horse; but then you did it cleverly-it had been a deep, well-laid scheme, and it was no fault of yours that you had been detected. But this portrait by Northcote looks like a grinning idiot, and the worst is, that it is just like enough to pass for a good

likeness, with those who only know your features imperfectly. Dance's drawing has that merit at least that nobody would ever suspect you of having been the original!' (See his Life and Correspondence, vol. v. p. 291.)

IV.

For fifteen years after this-i.e. from his thirty-third to his forty-eighth year-no portrait seems to have been taken of Wordsworth; but about the year 1818, Edward Nash (who was a friend of Southey's, and had painted several portraits of the Southey family) took a likeness of Wordsworth for Southey.* Mrs Joshua Stanger (of Fieldside, Keswick), who now possesses it, bought this picture at the Greta Bank sale of Southey's effects, and an engraving of it is prefixed to The Prose Works of Wordsworth. is a pencil drawing (9 in. by 7 in.); three-quarters length; and the face is three-quarters turned to the left. The figure is seated, the head resting on the right hand, the right elbow on a table; and the left hand is placed inside the waistcoat.

It

V.

In the summer of 1817 Mr Richard Carruthers visited Rydal Mount, and took a sketch for a picture in oil, which was finished in November of that year. The artist himself, in writing to Mr Thomas Monkhouse, mentions the dates. This picture is now in the possession of the Rev. Thomas Hutchinson, the Rector of Kimbolton, Leominster, in Herefordshire, a nephew of Mr Monkhouse, and also of Mrs Wordsworth. It is a half-length picture, three-quarters face, turned to the right. The figure is in a sitting posture, with the back against the trunk of a tree, the right elbow

See Life and Correspondence of Southey, vol. v. pp. 50, 51.