The poem, certainly through the woods of Lowther Castle. which he had begun in his last autumn vacation at Hawkshead, was now continued; and the belief that he must dedicate himself to song, "else sinning greatly"—which came upon him with such vivid force in his morning-walk after the rustic dance a year ago-deepened in the course of these wanderings with his sister and Mary Hutchinson, in that long holiday at Penrith. Its first fruit was the Poem,— which he dedicated to his sister after his return to "Granta's Cloisters" in October 1789,-but did not publish till five years later, in 1793. His last year at Cambridge-to the majority of studious men a year of intense labour at competitive examinationswas spent by Wordsworth pretty much as the two earlier ones had been. France In his third summer holiday, instead of returning to the north, he started with a friend, a fellow collegian in John's, on a pedestrian tour through France and Switzerland. They had discussed the Alps together, thought over Hannibal's achievements, and wished to see the mountains and the passes; but another impulse moved them. It was a wondrous time in modern European history. seemed to be "standing on the top of golden hours." revolution was in the air, and with the promise of that revolution both these young spirits were in sympathy. The year before, the Bastille had fallen in Paris, and to many of the youth of England it seemed the dawn of a new era, an era of cosmopolitan freedom. Even in the conservative seats of learning sympathy with the new movement was expressed, as well as felt. The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge had gone so far as to speak of the destruction of the Bastille as "a subject of triumph and congratulation." Wordsworth's friend was a Welshman, Robert Jones of Plasyu-llan, in Denbighshire, afterwards Fellow of John's College, and parson in Oxfordshire. They took with them walkingsticks, but no knapsacks, each tying up "in a pockethandkerchief" what they required for a three months' journey on foot, and "twenty pounds apiece in their pockets." In passing through London, Wordsworth did not tarry to call on his brother Richard (settled in business there), as he thought that their scheme of pedestrian travel would be regarded as “mad and impracticable." On the 13th July 1790 they left Dover for Calais, and were on the Continent till the month of October. They touched the French soil on the very day when King Louis XIV. swore fidelity to the new Constitution imposed on him. Calais was in high festival, and they saw "How bright a face is worn when joy of one They cast no regretful thoughts back to England, when everywhere as they wandered, even in sequestered villages along their route, they seemed to see the signs of present joy, and of coming blessedness to the people. There was as yet no evidence that in these "dances of liberty" there was the "pomp of a too credulous day." They avoided Paris, went on to Burgundy; and, at Chalons embarked, and with a crowd of delegates returning from Paris, floated down the Rhone. At night they landed, supped with their fellowvoyagers, danced, and pledged the new republic with glee, resuming their voyage in the morning, till they reached Lyons. Thence they again started on foot, and in two days reached the Convent of Chartreuse. In the first volume of this work will be found part of a long letter from Wordsworth to his sister, written at Keswick on September 6, 1790, giving a detailed account of this journey, which was almost "a marvel of military speed." They went on from the Chartreuse to Villeneuve, thence to Martigny and to Chamouny, saw the great glaciers under Mont Blanc, its dumb cataracts and streams of ice," returned to the Rhone valley, went up as far as Brieg, crossed over the Alps by the Simplon, heard at the summit with a pang of regret that the climb was over, and that they must thence descend to Como. Como seems to have impressed Wordsworth more than any other spot during this journey. He gives a minute account of it. They returned by the sources of the Rhine, went by Lucerne and Zurich to Schaffhausen, aud after sundry minor excursions, floated down the Rhine to Cologne, and returned by Calais. Wordsworth's long letter to his sister must be referred to, as it cannot be reproduced; and there it will be seen how much his thoughts turned to her while he was abroad, and how intense was his appreciation both of the magnificence of the Swiss scenery, and of the French and the Swiss character.* The two young pedestrians must have presented an odd appearance, and he admits that they raised many a smile in the villages as they passed on, carrying their bundles on their heads! A first visit to Switzerland usually opens the eye to certain aspects of the sublime in Nature never seen before. It was so with these Cambridge youths, and a poetical record of their travels, entitled Descriptive Sketches, was written by Wordsworth, and published in the same year as The Evening Walk, 1793. This journey, and all that it brought to Wordsworth, is also recorded, in much nobler verse, in the sixth book of The Prelude. There we learn that all he saw, and heard, and felt in that delightful journey, was a stream that flowed parallel to a kindred stream. It flowed "Confederate with the current of the soul." Wordsworth was more profoundly moved by the new * Wordsworth tells us they learned lessons of "genuine brotherhood." revelations which Nature made to him, in the Alps and in Italy than by the political revolution that was going on, or by the European strife for freedom which was the great question of the hour. Speaking to Coleridge of the "glorious and happy time" of this tour, Wordsworth says, that though they "crossed the Brabant armies in the front, for battle in the cause of Liberty," he looked upon the event "as from a distance." He indeed "heard, and saw, and felt, but with no intimate concern." The glories of the ever-living universe, opening up around him, and calling him to new delights, magnetised him, and he needed nothing more to satisfy him. When he came to write out the Descriptive Sketches, and dedicate them to his fellow traveller, the European conflict had touched him more deeply; and he concludes that poem. by expressing sympathy with the struggle for Liberty, and a hope for its realisation. The Sketches, however, were com posed for the most part in the year 1792, while he resided in France, and when his mind had undergone some new developments. His sister sent to her friend, Miss Pollard, an account of her brother's Swiss tour; and as it may be best to give several of her letters together as illustrative of her life in Norfolk, and of the family movements of the brothers, especially of William, John, and Christopher, we go back to the date of William's leaving the north for Cambridge in 1787. Dorothy was then at Penrith; she went thence to Halifax, and from Halifax to her uncle Cookson's rectory at Forncett, in Norfolk. Each letter will explain itself. "PENRITH, Monday Evening, 10 o'clock [1787]. Yesterday morning I parted with the kindest and the most affectionate of brothers. I cannot paint to you my distress at their departure. For a few hours I was absoItely miserable. as a thousand tormenting fears rushed upon me; the approaching winter, the ill-nature of my grandfather and Uncle Chris., the little probability there is of my soon again seeing my youngest brother, the still less likelihood of my visiting my Halifax friends, in quick succession filled my mind. . . . You know not how forlorn and dull I find myself now that my brothers are gone, neither can you imagine how I enjoyed their company, when I could contrive to be alone with them. If the partial affection of a sister does not greatly magnify all their merits they are charming boys, particularly the three youngest (William, John, and Kit). . . . I often say to myself I have the most affectionate brothers in the world. While I possess them can I ever be entirely miserable. . . . It is indeed mortifying to my brothers and me that amongst all those who visited at my father's house he had not one real friend. . . . Mr brother William goes to Cambridge in October. He wishes very much to be a lawyer, if his health will permit; but he is troubled with violent headaches. [She gives a catalogue of the books she had received from her brothers, including the Iliad, the Odyssey, Fielding's works, Gil Blas, Milton's works, Goldsmith's poems, with the promise of a Shakespeare. She tells her friend she is determined to pursue study in French and English though under difficulties, because she had work to do in the shop at Penrith, and it was only "by working particularly hard for one hour" that she could manage "to read the next without being discovered."] "I rise pretty early in the morning, so I hope in time to have perused them all. I am at present at the Iliad, and like it very much. My brother William read part of it. . . . I wear my hair curled about my face in light curls frizzled at the bottom." The following extracts, from three undated letters, seem to belong to the year 1787 |