aside his curtain, he awoke from a quiet sleep, and said, "Is that Dora?" He breathed his last, almost imperceptibly, on Tuesday, the 23d, at noon, the same day as that on which Shakspeare was born and died. A few days after, he was laid in that corner of Grasmere churchyard where his children had been laid before him, and to which his wife and sister have since been gathered. A plain stone, with no other word on it than "William Wordsworth," marks the spot. On one side of it are the yew-trees planted there long before by his desire (are we wrong in thinking by his own hand?) On the other, the Rotha, through a calm, clear pool, creeps quietly by. Fairfield, Helm-crag, and SilverHow look down upon his grave. Westminster contains no resting-place so fit for him. And now, looking back on those fourscore years, it may be said, that if any life in modern times has been wellrounded and complete, Wordsworth's was. From first to last it was one noble purpose, faithfully kept, thoroughly fulfilled. The world has rarely seen so strong and capacious a soul devote itself to one, and that a lofty end, with such singleness and concentration of aim. No doubt there was a great original mind to begin with, one that saw more things, and deeper, than any other poet of his time. But what would this have achieved, had it not been backed by that moral strength, that ironness of resolve? It was this that enabled him to turn aside from professions that he was little suited for, and with something less than a hundred a year to face the future. In time, doubtless, other helps were added, and long before the end he was possessed of competent means. But this is only another instance of the maxim, " Providence helps them who help themselves." That life at Townend had encountered and overcome the difficulty before the help came. Again, the same moral fortitude appears in the firmness with which he kept his purpose, and the industry with which he wrought it out. Undiscouraged by neglect, undeterred by obloquy and ridicule, in the face of obstacles that would have daunted almost any other man, he kept on his way unmoved, and wrought out the gift that was in him till the work was complete. Few poets have ever so fully uttered the thing that was given them to speak. And the result has been that he has bequeathed to the world a body of high thought and noble feeling which will continue to make all who apprehend it think more deeply and feel more wisely to the end of time. The question has often been asked how far Wordsworth was a religious poet; that he was a religious man no one doubts. In his earlier poems, especially, as in "Tintern Abbey," and others, men have pointed to passages, and said, These are Pantheistic in their tendency. The supposition that Wordsworth ever maintained a Pantheistic philosophy, ever held a deliberate theory of the Divine Being as impersonal, is contradicted both by many an express declaration of his own, and by what is known of his life. The truth seems to be that, during that period of his life when his feelings about nature were most vivid, and most imaginatively expressed in verse, he felt the presence in all nature of a vast life, a moving spirit, which he did not, at least in his verse, identify with the living personal God of whom conscience and the Bible witness. His earlier poetry generally stops short of such distinct personality. But whether he so stopped short because nature does not in itself, and from its unaided resources, suggest more, or whether he stopped short because he was merely describing his own experience, and that experience was defective, this we do not venture to determine. If defect there is, who is he that has a right to blame him? Only he who, having felt as broadly and profoundly the vast life that is in nature, has bridged over the gulf between this and the higher religious truth, and taught men so to do. To this man, and to none other, shall be conceded the right of finding fault with what Wordsworth has done. In Wordsworth's treatment of human nature, the same question meets us in another form. In the "Prelude," and other poems of the first epoch, it cannot be denied that the self-restorative power of the soul seems asserted, and the sufficingness of nature to console the wounded spirit is implied, in a way which Wordsworth, if distinctly questioned, would, perhaps at any time, certainly in his later years, have been the first to disavow. That he was himself conscious of this defect may be gathered from the change he made in the reflections with which the story of Margaret, in the "Excursion," closes. This story was written among the last years of last century, at Racedown or Alfoxden. Through all the early editions of his poems it stood thus "The old man, noting this, resumed, and said, Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read In the one-volume edition of his works, which appeared some- The unbounded might of prayer; and learned, with soul Fixed on the Cross, that consolation springs, For the meek Sufferer. Why then should we read A little farther on the "Wanderer" proceeds to say that once as he passed that way the ruined cottage conveyed to his heart "So still an image of tranquillity, So calm and still, and looked so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind, Instead of the last line and a half, the later editions have the following: "Appeared an idle dream, that could maintain, Upon the breast of faith." To say that as years increased Wordsworth's faith in the vital Christian truths grew more confirmed and deep, that in himself were fulfilled his own words "Peace settles where the intellect is meek, The faith heaven strengthens where He moulds the creed," is only to say that he was growingly a good man. This growth many a line of his later poems, besides incidental notices in his letters, and other memoranda of his nephew's biography, clearly exhibit. No doubt the wish will at times arise, that the unequalled power of spiritualizing nature, and of originating tender and solemn views of human life, had, for the sake of other men, been oftener and more unreservedly turned on the great truths of Christian faith. At the same time, when such a regret does arise, it is but fair that it should be tempered by remembering, as he himself urges, that "his works, as well as those of other poets, should not be considered as developing all the influences which his own heart recognised, but rather those which he felt able as an artist to display to advantage." At another time he assured a correspondent that he had been averse to frequent mention of the mysteries of Christian faith, not because he did not duly feel them, but because he felt them too deeply to venture on too free handling of them. Above all, if he has not, any more than the greatest of former poets, done all that our hearts desire, let us not on that account fail to appreciate the good work he has done. What that work is cannot be better described than in the words in which the greatest purely religious poet of the age, dedicated to Wordsworth his Oxford lectures on poetry: "Ut animos, ad sanctiora erigeret," to "raise men's minds to holier thoughts" both of nature and of man. This is the tendency of every line he wrote. Taking the commonest sights of earth, and the lowliest facts of life, to elevate and ennoble these, to find pathways by which the mind may naturally pass upward, to an ampler ether, a diviner air, this is his peculiar function. If he seldom ventures within the inner sanctuary, he everywhere leads to its outer court, lifts our thoughts into a region "neighbouring to heaven, and that no foreign land." If he was not universal in the sense in which Shakspeare was, and Goethe aimed to be, it was because he was smitten with too deep an enthusiasm for those truths by which he was possessed. His eye was too intense, too prophetic, to admit of his looking at life dramatically. In fact, no poet of modern times has had in him so much of the prophet. In the world of nature, to be a revealer of things hidden, an interpreter of new and unsuspected relations, the opener of a new sense in in the moral world, the teacher of truths hitherto neglected or unobserved, the awakener of the consciousness to the solemnities that encompass life, deepening our reverence for the essential soul, apart from accident and circumstance, making men feel more truly, more tenderly, more profoundly, lifting the thoughts upward through the shows of time to that which is permanent and eternal,-this is the office which he will not cease to fulfil, as long as the English language lasts. What earth's far-off lonely mountains do for the plains and the cities, that Wordsworth has done and will do for literature, and through literature for society; sending down great rivers of higher truth, fresh purifying winds of feeling, to those who least dream from what quarter they come. The more thoughtful of each generation will draw nearer and observe him more closely, will ascend his imaginative heights, and sit under the shadow of his profound meditations, and, in proportion as they drink in his spirit, will become purer and nobler men. ART. II.--Défense de Sébastopol. Ouvrage Rédigé sous la Direction du Lieutenant-Général Todleben, Aide-de-Camp Général de S. M. l'Empereur. Tome I., Première Partie. Tome II., Seconde Partie. Quarto, pp. 720. Saint Pétersbourg: Imprimerie N. Phieblin et Cie., 1863. It is an old maxim, that occasions make men, yet it is an indisputable fact that the Crimean War produced only one man of genius, founded only one high and durable reputation, and added only one invention or discovery of magnitude to our pre-existing knowledge of the art of war. Many soldiers and sailors of all ranks did their devoir bravely; many individual acts of heroism might be singled out for unqualified praise. There was no lack of zeal, courage, or devotedness in either of the armies engaged, nor in their chiefs; but (blunders apart) they proceeded regularly and systematically, without one original conception, without one flash of light; whilst Todleben, with his combinations of earthworks, changed the entire face of things at the very crisis of the enterprise. And this he did, after a calm survey and careful calculation of the respective means and resources of the assailants and the assailed. It is both fitting and fortunate, therefore, that he should be selected by the Russians to write or edit their version of the events which the cultivated world have hitherto been obliged to learn almost exclusively from French and English histories; histories differing so essentially, that a mediator of authority will be gladly welcomed by readers of all countries who are not utterly indifferent about the truth.1 Questions of conflicting evidence exercise a kind of fascination on the mind, inspiring a lively interest quite independently of their inherent importance; and as the controversies raised by M. Bazancourt and Mr. Kinglake largely affect both national 1 "Francis Todleben, whose name was to be made illustrious by the siege of Sebastopol, was at the commencement of his military career when the Eastern war broke out. It is to this war, and the inexhaustible genius he displayed in his obstinate defence of Sebastopol, that he owes the elevated rank he now holds. "Son of a merchant of Mittau, Todleben was born on the 25th May 1818. After having completed his studies in the schools of Riga, he was admitted into the College of Engineers at St. Petersburgh. At the beginning of the war, he was only second captain of engineers: he distinguished himself under the orders of General Childers, and was then sent to the Crimea. In less than a year he passed successively through the grades of captain, commandant, lieut.-colonel, adjutant-colonel, marshal de camp, and adjutantgeneral, and received from his sovereign the highest marks of esteem and consideration."-Bazancourt, vol. ii. p. 8. He is uniformly named LieutenantColonel in his book. |