but it came suddenly, in flashes of impulse in the midst of holiday delights. On Windermere were lovely and lonely islands, and to these he and his companions rowed in rivalry. But when they landed and wandered among the lilies or beneath the oaks or by the ruined shrine, emulation, jealousy, and pride were insensibly tempered by the stillness of the place, so that they did not care, after a time, whether they had the crown of boyish fame or no. was such silent influences of Nature frequently repeated that instilled drop by drop into Wordsworth's being that "quiet independence of the heart," that sense of

The self-sufficing power of solitude,

so remarkable in him afterwards as man and poet.

Again, in the midst of noisy sport, a single, sharp impression came, the voice of Nature, not in rebuke of their delight, but in her desire to make herself felt, which stilled them for a moment into thoughtfulness. Once in St. Mary's nave the sudden song of the wren singing to herself, invisible, made one of those hushed surprises which no one can ever forget. Sometimes, pausing for a moment when racing home, the sound of streams among rocks and the "still spirit shed from evening air" made their presence felt in his heart. Sometimes when the games were over, and the minstrel of their troop blew his flute alone on the island, and they lay resting and listening upon the lake, the whole scene entered into his soul:

The calm

And dead still water lay upon my mind

Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,

Never before so beautiful, sank down

Into my heart, and held me like a dream.

He imputes the same experience to the boy, his playmate who lived by Winander, and of whom he tells in a famous passage. After describing him as in wild mirth he stood by the shore of the lake and blew hootings to the owls that answered till all the hills re-echoed-he marks how, suddenly, in the midst came a lengthened pause of silence. Then it was that the invisible quiet Life in the world spoke to him.

Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
Listening a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents: or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

Those are the lines of which Coleridge said,-" Had I met these lines running wild in the deserts of Arabia, I should instantly have screamed out-Wordsworth." But the deep meaning of them is, that there is in the material universe a spirit at work on us, to calm, to exalt, and to suggest to our boyhood thoughts which sleep within like seeds, till future events develop them.

And now, accumulating from every quarter, these accidental impressions enlarged his sympathies till every day some new scene in Nature becoming dear, the conception of Nature as an organic Being, having a life beyond his, and existing in a direct relation to him, began, not to be realized, but to quicken in his mind.

A change then took place. Nature had been secondary in his life; his boyish sports were first, and she had intervened among them with these surprises. She was

5

But now, he sought her

the seeker, he the sought. directly for the pleasure she gave. She had conquered his unthinking pleasure in play and replaced it by the enthusiasm of herself. He did not know well why he sought her, but a trouble came into his mind, which drove him away from the sports of boyhood. They had been the props of the impressions he had received from Nature. But, behold, when the scaffolding was removed, there was the building, sustained by its own spirit, the building of the love of natural Beauty and Life, a house not made with hands. Hence, the trouble was the first trouble of a youth who was leaving boyhood and who had begun to realize consciously all he had learnt unconsciously. was such a trouble as moved the waters of the Bethesda spring.

It

The sensibility of his soul to Nature now went directly and with known purpose to commune with her. It was like two lovers who had seen one another only at intervals meeting at last for daily communion. Every hour brought new happiness, because it brought new knowledge of the life of things. And the source of the knowledge was love, refined to intense watchfulness by desire. Formerly he had received large indefinite impressions, now he saw into the "transitory qualities " of things, such as, if I may explain the phrase by an illustration, the subtle changes in colour of the lime-tree leaves as summer draws on day by day from spring, or the difference of the sound of a brook in winter and summer, or the way in which a passing cloud will alter the whole sentiment of a landscape, or even closer still, the way in which a sudden stroke of life will enlighten a

lonely place; as when, in one of his own inimitable touches, he says of a lonely mountain lake—

There sometimes doth a leaping fish

Send through the tarn a lonely cheer.

Running along with these numberless small impressions, and derived from them, were "gentle agitations of the mind" from observation of these manifold differences, so that whatever came from Nature was answered by a different but correspondent feeling, and that marriage of the soul and the world began to grow towards its fulfilment.

One might object that this minute habit of observance would take away from the Poet the power of receiving a grand impression of the whole. On the contrary, when the soul is freely receiving, and this sort of work is done by the feeling, and not by the understanding, it prepares the soul, by kindling and quickening emotion, for a sublime impression. Nay more, since it brings the knowledge of particulars, it educates us for the moment when the vast, single conception of the Whole dawns like a sun upon the mind.

But this has its stages of growth in single impressions, made by separate scenes of sublimity and calm, and Wordsworth dwells on both. I would walk alone, he says, Under the quiet stars, and at that time

Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound
To breathe an elevated mood, by form
Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,
If the night blackened with a coming storm,
Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are
The ghostly language of the ancient earth,
Or make their dim abode in distant winds.
Thence did I drink the visionary power:

These moments were the origin of an ideal of sublimity. In after life, we forget what we felt, but not how we felt at such times: remembrance of the way in which we have been impressed creates and supports the obscure sense of a sublimity possible to the soul, to which with growing faculties the soul aspires―

To have such an ideal is in itself a kind of religion. And Wordsworth, in the "Excursion," taking up the same point, shows how an ideal of sublimity, won in early life from Nature, will make a man impatient of any pettiness of temper or life, of any wanting in noble simplicity, of any want of directness, of any of those meannesses, which, though they seem only paltry, have their root in some foulness or other. Nor will he ever become basely content. He shall feel

congenial stirrings late and long

In spite of all the weakness that life brings

however tranquil—

Wake sometimes to a noble restlessness.

Correlative with sublimity is calm; it is the other side of the shield. The power which, in Nature, moves the mind to delight, and which arises from her inner order, made her hours of calm produce calm in him. And a certain love of calm in himself strengthened the impression. When, in early morning walks, he saw beneath him the valley sleeping in the lonely dawn-" How shall I seek the origin," he breaks out: