Than did to her due honour, and to me
Yielded, that day, a confidence sublime
In what I had to build upon)—this bride,
Young, modest, meek, and beautiful, I led
To a low cottage in a sunny bay,

Where the salt sea innocuously breaks,

And the sea-breeze as innocently breathes,
On Devon's leafy shores."

Then after an enchanting picture of their "embowered abode," their daily walks, and joint pursuits; he continues

"But nature called my partner to resign

Her share in the pure freedom of that life,
Enjoyed by us in common. To my hope,
To my heart's wish, my tender mate became
The thankful captive of maternal bonds,
And those wild paths were left to me alone.
There could I meditate on follies past;
And, like a weary voyager escaped

From risk, and hardship, inwardly retrace

A course of vain delights and thoughtless guilt,

And self-indulgence, without shame pursued.
There, undisturbed, could think of, and could thank
Her whose submissive spirit was to me

Rule and restraint,-my guardian, shall I say,
That earthly Providence, whose guiding love
Within a port of rest had lodged me safe-
Safe from temptation, and from danger far?
Strains followed of acknowledgment, addressed
To an Authority enthroned above

The reach of sight."

"These acts of mind, and memory, and heart,

(He continues)—

Endeared my wanderings; and the mother's kiss,
And infant's smile, awaited my return."

"In privacy we dwelt, a wedded pair,
Companions daily, often all day long;
Not placed by fortune within easy reach
Of various intercourse, nor wishing aught
Beyond the allowance of our own fireside,
The twain within our happy cottage born,
Inmates and heirs of our united love;
Graced, mutually, by difference of sex,
By the endearing names of nature bound,

And with no wider interval of time

Between their several births than served for one

To establish something of a leader's sway,
Yet left them joined by sympathy in age,
Equals in pleasure, fellows in pursuit.
On these two pillars rested, as in air,
Our solitude.

Seven years of occupation undisturbed
Established, seemingly, a right to hold
That happiness; and use and habit gave
To what an alien spirit had acquired,
A patrimonial right. And thus

With thoughts and wishes bounded to this world
I lived and breathed; most grateful, if to enjoy
Without repining, or desire for more,

For different lot, or change to higher sphere-
(Only except some impulses of pride,
With no determined object, though upheld
By theories with suitable support)—
Most grateful, if in such wise to enjoy
Be proof of gratitude for what we have;
Else, I allow, most thankless. But, at once,
From some dark seat of fatal power was urged
A claim that shattered all. Our blooming girl,
Caught in the gripe of death, with such brief time
To struggle in as scarcely would allow

Her cheek to change its colour, was conveyed
From us to regions inaccessible;

Where height, or depth, admits not the approach
Of living man, though longing to pursue.
With even as brief a warning—and how soon!
With what short interval of time between,
I tremble yet to think of-our last prop,
Our happy life's only remaining stay,
The brother followed, and was seen no more.
Calm as a frozen lake when ruthless winds

Blow fiercely, agitating earth and sky,
The mother now remained; as if in her,
Who to the lowest region of the soul

Had been, erewhile, unsettled and disturbed,
This second visitation had no power
To shake, but only to bind up and seal;
And to establish thankfulness of heart
In Heaven's determinations, ever just.
The eminence on which her spirit stood
Mine was unable to attain. Immense
The space that severed us! But, as the sight
Communicates with heaven's ethereal orbs

Incalculably distant; so, I felt

That consolation may descend from far,
(And that is intercourse, and union too);

While, overcome with speechless gratitude,
And, with a holier love inspired, I looked
On her, at once superior to my woes
And partner of my loss. O heavy change!
Dimness o'er this clear luminary crept
Insensibly. The immortal and divine
Yielded to mortal reflux; her pure glory,
As from the pinnacle of worldly state
Wretched ambition drops astounded, fell
Into a gulf obscure of silent grief,

And keen heart-anguish, of itself ashamed,
Yet obstinately cherishing itself:

And, so consumed, she melted from my arms,
And left me, on this earth, disconsolate!
What followed cannot be reviewed in thought;
Much less, retraced in words. If she, of life
Blameless, so intimate with love and joy,
And all the tender motions of the soul,
Had been supplanted, could I hope to stand,
Infirm, dependent, and now destitute?

I called on dreams and visions, to disclose

That which is veiled from waking thought; conjured
Eternity, as men constrain a ghost

To appear and answer; to the grave I spake

Imploringly; looked up, and asked the heavens,

If angels traversed their cerulean floors,

If fixed or wandering star could tidings yield

Of the departed spirit, what abode
It occupies, what consciousness retains

Of former loves and interests. Then my soul
Turned inward, to examine of what stuff
Time's fetters are composed; and life was put
To inquisition long and profitless!

By pain of heart, uow checked, and now impelled,
The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way.

For all this we claim no praise short of that due, not to superiority, but to perfection. There is not a demand of the head or heart, which it does not satisfy; how brief, yet how full! how terse, yet how tender! how elevated, yet how sustained the elevation! What an exquisite union of sublimity and beauty, thought and sensibility! We have praised highly, but not more highly than they deserve, Byron's stanzas on the Dying Gladiator; but surely they are no more to be compared with the above strain than a simple air with an oratorio, or a national song with the Paradise Lost. The elements of Byron's description are few, and natural, obvious to universal perception, and they are most

naturally and forcibly developed, but Wordsworth expresses not only those thoughts and feelings which are common to all men, but such also as are peculiar to the refined, the reflecting, the high-minded, and the high-souled, and in language which none but such can fully understand.

Roused from dejection by the French Revolution, the survivor was "reconverted to the world," "society became his glittering bride, and airy hopes his children."

"Not less than Gallic zeal

Kindled and burnt among the sapless twigs

Of my exhausted heart."

But, disappointed and disgusted with the results, he forgoes all hope in humanity, and all faith in Revelation, and finding no rest in the Old World, he flees to the New

"Fresh blew the wind, when o'er the Atlantic main
The ship went gliding, with her thoughtless crew;
But, ye powers

Of soul and sense, mysteriously allied,

Oh, never let the Wretched, if a choice

Be left him, trust the freight of his distress

To a long voyage on the silent deep:

For, like a plague, will memory break out,

And, in the blank and solitude of things,

Upon his spirit, with a fever's strength,

Will conscience prey. Feebly must they have felt
Who in old time attired with snakes and whips

The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards

Were turned on me, the face of her I loved;
The wife and mother pitifully fixing

Tender reproaches, insupportable !"

He arrives in the Western World; but disappointment and disgust still pursue him; he returns, and settles down in this mountainembedded retreat, "in languor and depression of mind, from want of faith in the great truths of religion, and want of confidence in the virtue of mankind."

Of the FOURTH BOOK, entitled "Despondency Corrected," an early Quarterly Reviewer observes, that "for moral grandeur, for wide scope of thought, and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender appeals, and a versification, which we feel we ought to notice, but feel it also so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly mention it as a distinct excellence ;—it stands without competition amongst our didactic and descriptive verse."

How grandly expressed the opening declaration of the Wanderer, that a belief in a superintending Providence is the only adequate support under affliction (p. 116)

"Then, as we issued from that covert nook,

He thus continued, lifting up his eyes

To heaven :- How beautiful this dome of sky!

And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed

At thy command, how awful! Shall the soul,
Human and rational, report of thee

Even less than these? Be mute who will, who can,
Yet I will praise thee with impassioned voice,

My lips, that may forget thee in the crowd,

Cannot forget thee here, where thou hast built
For thy own glory in the wilderness"-

with the rest of that sublime ejaculation, which we commend alike to the admiration of Wordsworth's friends, and to the despairing hostility of his foes.

The tender-hearted moralist then proceeds to acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining a realizing faith, of fixing

"A satisfying view upon that state

Of pure, imperishable blessedness,
Which reason promises, and holy writ
Ensures to all believers ;"

which difficulty occasions immoderate sorrow in the bereaved, but does not necessitate or justify that mistrust, despondency, and absolute despair as to a reunion in a future state, which so embittered the Solitary's sense of bereavement. But the wife had perished under it. Had she not been the victim of such despair, or at least, pining regret? Mark with what mingled tenderness and sublimity the poet anticipates and meets the objection—

"And if there be whose tender frames have drooped

Even to the dust; apparently, through weight

Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power

An agonizing sorrow to transmute;

Deem not that proof is here of hope withheld
When wanted most; a confidence impaired

So pitiably, that, having ceased to see
With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love
Of what is lost, and perish through regret.
Oh no, the innocent sufferer often sees
Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs
To realize the vision, with intense
And over-constant yearning;-there-there lies
The excess, by which the balance is destroyed.