And not presumptuously, I trust, of Age,
As of a final Eminence; though bare
In aspect and forbidding, yet a point
On which 'tis not impossible to sit
In awful sovereignty; a place of power,

A throne, that may be likened unto his,

Who, in some placid day of summer, looks
Down from a mountain-top,-say one of those
High peaks that bound the vale where now we are.
Faint, and diminished to the gazing eye,

Forest and field, and hill and dale appear,

With all the shapes over their surface spread :
But, while the gross and visible frame of things
Relinquishes its hold upon the sense,

Yea almost on the Mind herself, and seems
All unsubstantialized,—how loud the voice
Of waters, with invigorated peal
From the full river in the vale below,
Ascending? For on that superior height
Who sits, is disencumbered from the press
Of near obstructions, and is privileged
To breathe in solitude, above the host
Of ever-humming insects, 'mid thin air

That suits not them. The murmur of the leaves,
Many and idle, visits not his ear;

This he is freed from, and from thousand notes
(Not less unceasing, not less vain than these,)
By which the finer passages of sense

Are occupied; and the Soul, that would incline
To listen, is prevented or deterred.

And may it not be hoped, that, placed by age
In like removal, tranquil though severe,

We are not so removed for utter loss;

But for some favour, suited to our need?

What more than that the severing should confer

Fresh power to commune with the invisible world,
And hear the mighty stream of tendency
Uttering, for elevation of our thought,

A clear sonorous voice, inaudible

To the vast multitude, whose doom it is
To run the giddy round of vain delight,
Or fret and labour on the Plain below.

Excursion, book ix.

It was in the calm

It was in this faith that Wordsworth lived and died. It was in deep belief in God and Immortality, and in a Saviour from sin, that he passed his quiet days, and found peace far from the strifes of men. alike removed from stormy passion, and from the disturbing lusts of the world-that this faith gave him, that he wrought out and lived the high morality which he has given to us in the "Ode to Duty," in the fine strain of the

Happy Warrior," and in many noble passages in the "Excursion." It was in this faith that he quietly reposed in his domestic life, and by it enhanced all the faithful affection for wife and sister, children and brother, that nowhere in English poetry burns with a lovelier or a purer light. As age grew on, his calm deepened; he had "the silent thoughts that search for steadfast light;' he wished, and realised the wish, to present to God his life as a pure oblation of divine tranquillity." Nor was he without joy in the midst of calm; there was no stagnant water in the deep lake of his heart; such poems as the "Ode to Duty" and others are filled with a resolute and exalted joy; and there were times when, as the old man prayed, his delight was transfigured:

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I bent before Thy gracious throne,

And asked for peace on suppliant knee,
And peace was given-nor peace alone,
But faith sublimed to ecstasy.

Nor can I better close these lectures upon him than by the sonnet in which he looks back and looks forward in a strain, where clear knowledge of what Man is in himself alone, is mingled with quiet faith in what he is in God.

AFTER-THOUGHT.

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.-Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide ;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish ;-be it so !

Enough, if something from our hands have power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.

LECTURE XIV.

ROBERT BURNS.

WHEN speaking at the beginning of these lectures of theology in the earlier poets of the Natural School, in Cowper and Crabbe who preceded the great outbreak of song, I omitted Robert Burns. I now fill up that gap, which was left for a sufficiently good reason—that though the influences which came on England at that time did have their result upon Burns, they had far less result than on others, because he was essentially the creation of his own land, and of another poetic descent than that of England. With regard to the poetry of Nature, he only carried on in a more vivid and tender way, and on precisely the same lines, the same sort of natural description which had been worked by the Scottish poets from the time they began to write. With regard to what I have called, along with others, the poetry of Man, he was less universal and more national than the English poets who followed him. But when we look at his work on this subject, and compare it with that of the English poets who preceded him, or with that of his contemporaries, Cowper and Crabbe, we find in him a peculiar quality which gives him a distinct

rank in the history of English poetry, of which I may as well speak in this connection. He restored passion to our poetry. It had not belonged to it since the days of Elizabeth. No one would guess, who began to read our poetic literature shortly after the death of Shakespeare, how rich the veins of nature and emotion had been in our country. He might read through the whole of our poetry, with the exception of a few songs and sonnets, down to Burns, and not find any poetry which could truly be called passionate. So, when the fire broke out again in Burns, it was like a new revelation; men were swept back to the age of Elizabeth, and heard again, though in different chords, the music which had then enchanted the world. And since his time, our poetry has not only been the poetry of Man and of Nature, but also of Passion. And it sprang clean and clear out of the natural soil of a wild heath, not out of a cultivated garden; it was underived from other poets, for Burns read nothing but a collection of English songs; it was unassisted by the general culture of a literary class, for it was born when he was reaping in the fields, and when he held the handles of the plough; it came direct out of a fresh stratum of popular life. It was as if the Muse had said, I am weary of philosophy and satire, weary faded sentiment, of refined and classic verse, and of stern pictures of misery, and I will have something fresh, at last; and had driven a shaft down through layer after layer of dry clay, till she touched far below, a source of new and hidden waters, that, loosened from their prison, rushed upwards to the surface, and ran away a mountain torrent of clear bright verse, living and life

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