mortal sickness, and, in the other, of the pangs of a broken faith, with the added anguish of a mother's mourning.

To the passion of love itself the most common property in the tenure of poets but little of Wordsworth's poetry is devoted,-partly, perhaps, because his forward-looking mind finds in beauty food for meditation more than rapture, and partly because a more expanded theory of love pervades all his strains. In the fanciful lines, "The Poet and the Caged Dove," the reproach of having kept aloof from lays of love is met by the plea,

"Love, blessed Love, is every where

The spirit of my song:

'Mid grove, and by the calm fireside,
Love animates my lyre."

Besides, the passion in most of its developments is a fitful and restless one, and the home of Wordsworth's spirit is in "the depths, and not the tumult of the soul." It is his delight to portray the emotion which is fervent, but not ungovernable; almost "such love as Spirits feel

In worlds whose course is equable, and pure;
No fears to beat away- no strife to heal-
The past unsighed for, and the future sure;”

and to show not so much its transports as its enduring stead-
fastness, and the heroism it inspires into the heart of woman:
"mightier far

Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway

Of magic potent over sun and star,

Is love, though oft to agony distrest,

And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast."

But if the poet has refrained from lays of love, he has made amends in that poem which Laudor has spoken of as "a composition which Sophocles might have exulted to own," by a single stanza, containing a moral conception of love worth volumes of amatory stuff:

"Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend

Seeking a higher object. Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end;
For this the passion to excess was driven -
That self might be annulled: her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream opposed to love."

Laodamia.

It might be thought that Wordsworth's love of external nature and of ideal beauty, not less than his affection for homely life, would withdraw his genius from sympathy with the bolder impulses of public and national emotions. But the soul of a great poet is large, and strong to range through the whole sphere of humanity. So far from his poetry being divorced from public feeling, it is rich in the lessons of a thoughtful patriotism, and in the universal principles of genuine freedom. This is the fellowship between the Briton and his republican kinsman; and it would be interesting to show that the strains Wordsworth has dedicated to liberty are instinct with a spirit not limited to any fashion of government. His poems on the subject of liberty are thoroughly British in spirit, they would be false and defective were they otherwise, but they involve principles that are the common inheritance of all who are sprung from British ancestry -spiritual truths not limited by soil or by time. Like all his poetry, they are fraught with the imperishable, and may foster a love of freedom and of country, the wide world over.

Mr. Wordsworth's life has been coincident with a period full of instruction, on these subjects, to the philosophic mind. During the early part of the French Revolution he was in France for a short time, and his was not a spirit to remain unmoved, when to the eye of enthusiasm, "the whole earth the beauty wore of promise." But soon, in sober mood, he detected in the form of Liberty which started from that soil, Licentiousness disguised and at length transformed into "an armed creature - abhorred by Heaven, a terror to the Earth;" and when to England seemed assigned the exalted office of not only defending her own shores, but of redeeming Europe, it was a glorious theme for the greatest of her poets, from his native mountains, to sound

"Wo! wo, to all that face her in the field!

Appalled she may not be, and cannot yield."

But the sympathies of Wordsworth are not only with his countrymen in arms. His heart is wherever the battle of freedom is fought with the Venetians, the Tyrolese, and the Spaniards -with Hôffer, and Palafox-in the fastnesses of the Alps, and in the streets of Zaragoza, made glorious by "meek-eyed women without fear," and by more than martial courage in the breast of peaceful civic virtue."-The " Sonnets dedicated to Liberty," with the accompanying Odes, are worthy of affectionate study, as a series of the noblest effusions of a pure and phi

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Wordsworth.

[January, losophic patriotism. They address every element by which the sense of nationality may be quickened. The genius of the republican Milton is sublimely apostrophized — the memory of the great men of other days the moral associations of England's ancient glory-of her language and her faith- all are appealed to breathe new life into the nation's heart. Shame and sorrow are in the poet's strains, when he fancies his countrymen unequal to "the good old cause" of freedom, and faint-hearted and dispirited by apathy and selfishness and monied apprehensions. But the most precious lesson in these poems, is that a people's power is not in martial array- fleets, and armies, and external wealth-nor even in Nature's protection-mountains and the Ocean - but in man's unconquerable mind, and in the majesty of right:

"The power of armies is a visible thing,

Formal and circumscribed in time and space;
But who the limits of that power shall trace,
Which a brave People into light can bring
Or hide at will,- for freedom combating
By just revenge inflamed? No foot may chase,
Νο eye can follow, to a fatal place

That power, that spirit, whether on the wing
Like the strong wind, or sleeping like the wind
Within its awful caves.- From year to year
Springs this indigenous produce far and near;
No craft this subtle element can bind,
Rising like water from the soil, to find
In every nook a lip that it may cheer."

This same truth is illustrated in the Tract on the Cintra Convention, by a reference to the vile policy of the British ministry in hiring Hessians against revolted America. which these troops would attack, was gross, tangible, and might "The force with be calculated; but the spirit of resistance which their presence would create, was subtle, ethereal, mighty, and incalculable." It is admirably in character, that, while Wordsworth recognises in the magnificent sonnet on the two voices of the Sea and of the Mountains the shelter that Nature gives to liberty, he proclaims the greater might of the human soul, and of a protecting Providence :

"Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood;

And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear,
The coast of France the coast of France how near!
Drawn almost into frightful neighborhood.

I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,
A span of waters; yet what power is there!
What mightiness for evil and for good!
Even so doth God protect us if we be

Virtuous and wise. Winds blow and waters roll,
Strength to the brave, and Power, and Deity;
Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree
Spake laws to them, and said that by the soul
Only the Nations shall be great and free."

Wordsworth's perfect self-possession is finely shown in his mode of treating the career of Buonaparte, which does not so much provoke vehement denunciation, as suggest meditations on the frailty of all lawless and immoral force. His heart is chiefly moved because of the warfare" against the life of virtue in mankind," but still he looked on the Adventurer of France. with a confidence that "old judgments keep their sacred course," and that at no distant day he might raise the triumphant song"the horse and his rider are thrown into the sea." The poet's sense of truth is manifest in repudiating with scorn the pretexts with which, as from a Roman master, liberty-a French boonwas proclaimed to captive nations, and in this spirit, in the animated lines," Rob Roy's Grave," he recalls a hasty comparison between the Emperor and the Scottish Outlaw :

"O! say not so; compare them not;

I would not wrong thee, Champion brave!
Would wrong thee nowhere; least of all
Here standing on thy grave.

For thou, although with some wild thoughts,
Wild Chieftain of a savage Clan!
Hadst this to boast of; thou didst love
The liberty of man.

And had it been thy lot to live

With us who now behold the light,

Thou would'st have nobly stirred thyself
And battled for the Right.

For thou wert still the

The

poor man's stay,

poor man's heart, the poor man's hand;

And all the oppressed, who wanted strength,

Had thine at their command."

During the struggles with France, it was Wordsworth's purpose to kindle a holy indignation against their enemy, and a

martial spirit in the bosoms of his countrymen. In this he never faltered, "for, if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" But in these impassioned strains of war, it is beautiful to perceive the poet's heart essentially the same as when asserting the native diguity of man in the homely paths of peace. When he gathers into one dark cloud his indignant emotions, we can still perceive the soft radiance of his gentle and meditative spirit. In this blending of various elements there is a beauty, which may not unaptly be compared to that unusual appearance in the sky, when a thunder-cloud is suffused with the light of sunset, and the flashes of the storm take a milder hue from the rays of evening.

The poems on public topics are full of that close clinging to the human heart, and faith in "one Almighty sway," which characterize Wordsworth's poetry. A fine instance may be observed in the pieces on the destruction of the French Army in Russia: the first is a bold personification of Winter:

"He smote the blossoms of their warrior youth;

He called on Frost's inexorable tooth

Life to consume in Manhood's firmest hold;

Nor spared the reverend blood that feebly runs ;

For why unless for liberty enrolled

And sacred home-ah! why should hoary Age be bold?"

"Fleet the Tartar's reinless steed,

But fleeter far the pinions of the Wind,
Which from Siberian caves the Monarch freed,
And sent him forth, with squadrons of his kind,
And bade the Snow their ample backs bestride,
And to the battle ride.

No pitying voice commands a halt,

No courage can repel the dire assault;
Distracted, spiritless, benumbed, and blind,
Whole legions sink-

and in one instant, find

Burial and death: look for them- and descry,

When morn returns, beneath the clear blue sky,

A soundless waste, a trackless vacancy."

From this high mood of imagination, he passes to a strain in the next piece, overflowing with fancy:

"Ye Storms, resound the praises of your King!

And ye, mild Seasons in a sunny clime,

Midway on some high hill, while father Time
Looks on delighted meet in festal ring,
And loud and long of Winter's triumph sing!