be written; recalled it from pale abstrac- of it, if other nations look at the land tions to living personalities, and peopled with feelings of romance, and on the the past no longer with mere phantoms, or doctrinaire notions, but with men and women in whom the life-blood is warm. If you wish to estimate the change he wrought in this way, compare the his toric characters of Hume and Robertson with the lifelike portraits of Carlyle and Macaulay. Though these two last have said nasty things of Scott, it little became them to do so; for from him alone they learnt that art which gives to their descriptions of men, and scenes, and events their peculiar charm. If we now look back on many characters of past ages with an intimate acquaintance and a personal affection unknown to our grandfathers, it was Scott who taught us this. These may be said to be intellectual results of Scott's ascendancy; but there are also great social changes wrought by his influence, which are patent to every eye. Look at modern architecture. The whole mediæval revival, whether we admire it or not, must be credited to Scott. Likely enough Scott was not deeply versed in the secrets of Gothic architecture and its inner proprieties - as, I believe, his own attempts at Abbotsford, as well as his descriptions of castles and churches prove. But it was he who turned men's eyes and thoughts that way, and touched those inner springs of interest from which, in due time, the whole move ment came. Another social result is, that he not only changed the whole sentiment with which Scotchmen regard their country, but he awakened in other nations an in people themselves with respect if not with interest, this we owe to Scott, more than to any other human agency. And not the past only, with its heroic figures, but the lowly peasant life of his own time he first revealed to the world in its worth and beauty. Jeanie Deans, Edie Ochiltree, Caleb Balderstone, Dandie Dinmont, these and many more are characters which his eye first discerned in their quiet, commonplace obscurity, read the inner movements of their hearts, and gave them to the world, a possession for all time. And this he did by his own wonderful human-heartedness - so broad, so clear, so genial, so humorous, more than any man since Shakespeare. He had in him that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, and he so imparted it to his own creations, that they won men's sympathies to himself not less than to his country and his people. Wordsworth has well called Scott "the whole world's darling." If strangers and foreigners now look upon Scotland and its people with other eyes and another heart, it is because they see them through the personality of Scott, and through the creations with which he peopled the land; not through those modern democratic aspects which since Scott's day have obliterated so much that he most loved in the character of his countrymen. I have spoken of how Scott has been a power of social and beneficent influence by the flood of fresh sentiment which he let in on men's minds. But I am aware that to your "practical" man, romance what terest in it which was till his time un-is moonshine and sentiment a delusion. known. When Scott was born, Scotland Such an one may, however, be led to had not yet recovered from the long de-esteem them more highly, when he is cadence and despondency into which she made aware how much sentiment and had fallen after she had lost her kings and her Parliament. Throughout last century a sense of something like degradation lay on the hearts of those who still loved their country, and could not be content with the cold cosmopolitanism affected by the Edinburgh wits. Burns felt this deeply, as his poems show, and he did something in his way to redress it. But still the prevailing feeling entertained by Englishmen towards Scots and Scotland was that which is so well represented in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Till the end of the last century the attitude of Dr. Johnson was still shared by most of his countrymen. If all this has entirely changed, if Scots are now proud of their country instead of being ashamed romance are worth in the market. The I have been speaking of the power poetry has, by bringing in on men's minds recently been written about Wordsworth's way of dealing with nature - and I have made my own contribution to that heap - that I should be ashamed to increase it now; the more that in this, as in other good things, our attempts to analyze the gift spoil our enjoyment of it. Two remarks only I shall make and pass on. First, he did not attempt to describe rural objects as they are in themselves, but rather as they affect human hearts. As it has been well expressed, he stood at the meetingpoint where nature's inflowing and the soul touch each other, showed how they fit in each to each, and what exquisite joy did not hold with Coleridge that from nature we "receive but what we give," but rather that we receive much we do not give. He held that nature is a "living presence, ," which exerts on us active powers of her own - a bodily image through which the Sovereign Mind holds intercourse with man. When face to face with nature Wordsworth would sometimes seem too much of an optimist. At such times it was that he exclaimed, Naught Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Nature had done so much to restore himself from his deepest mental dejection, that he sometimes spoke as if she was able to do as much for all men. But, when he so spoke, he forgot how many people there are whom, either from inward disposition or from outward circumstances, nature never reaches. But in the poems which deal with human life and character there is none of this optimistic tendency. It has been recently said that "no poet of any day has sunk a sounding-line deeper than Wordsworth into the fathomless secret of suffering that is in no sense retributive." His mind seemed fascinated by the thought of the sorrow that is in the world, and brooded o'er it as something infinite, unfathomable. His deepest convictions on this are expressed in these lines: Action is transitory—a step, a blow, new tides of feeling, to effect great and visible social changes. I shall now turn to another poet, a contemporary and a friend of Scott's, whose influence has affected a much narrower area, but who within that area has probably worked more intensely. Wordsworth is nothing if he is not a revealer of new truth. That this was the view he himself took of his office may be gathered from many words of his own. In "The Prelude" he speaks of the animating faith, That poets, even as prophets, . . . Heaven's gift, a sense that fits them to per- comes from the contact. Secondly, he ceive Objects unseen before. And then goes on to express his conviction that to him also had been vouch safed An insight that in some sense he possesses If Wordsworth was a revealer, what did he reveal? The subjects of his own poetry, he tells us, are man, and nature, and human life. What did he teach? what new light did he shed on each of these? He had a gift of soul and eye with regard to nature which enabled him in her presence to feel a vivid and sensitive delight which it has been given to few to feel. The outward world lay before him with the dew still fresh upon it, the splendor of morning still undulled by custom or routine. The earliest poets of every nation, Homer and Chaucer, had no doubt delighted in rural sights and sounds in their own simple, unconscious way. It was Wordsworth's special merit that, coming late in time, when the thick veil of custom and centuries of artificial civilization had come between us and this natural delight, and made the familiar things of earth seem trivial and commonplace, he saw nature anew, with a freshness as of the morning, with a sensibility of soul that was like a new inspiration; and not only saw, but so expressed it, as to remove the scales from the eyes of others, and make them see something of the fresh beauty which nature wore for himself -feel some occasional touch of that rapture in her presence with which he himself was visited. This power especially resides in his "Lyrical Ballads," composed between 1798 and 1808. Such a heap of stuff has seems And unremovable), gracious openings lie, tic way of sympathizing with, yet meditating upon, human suffering. The reflection which closes the narrative is peculiarly Wordsworthian. The Now toiling, wafted now on wings of prayer - bonds Yet undelivered, rise with sure ascent moved by the tale, says, My friend! enough to sorrow you have given, wall, This is the keynote of his deepest By mist and silent raindrops silvered o'er, Affliction of Margaret," the story of Mar- Solitary anguish! That what we feel of sorrow and despair No poet but Wordsworth would have concluded such a tale with these words. In this "meditative rapture" which could so absorb into itself the most desolating sorrow, there is, it must be owned, something too high, too isolated, too remote Few minds are competent to such philosophic hardihood. Even Wordsworth himself, as he grew older and experienced home sorrows, came down from this solitary height, and changed the passage into a humbler tone of Christian sentiment. I have taken this one story as a good sample of Wordsworth's general attitude, as seen in all his estimate of men. It is specially to be noted that their trappings and appendages and outward circumstances were nothing to him; the inner man of the heart was everything. What was a man's ancestry, what his social position, what were even his intellectual attainments? - to these things he was almost as indifferent as the writers of the Holy Scriptures are. There was a quite Biblical severity and inwardness about his estimate of things. It was the intrinsic man, the man within the man, the permanent affections, the will, the purpose of the life, on which alone his eye rested. He looked solely on men as they are men within themselves. He cared too, I gather, but little for that culture, these are the subjects over which his spirit broods, as with a strange fascination. This might be well illustrated could I have dwelt in detail on the story of Margaret in the first book of "The Excursion." Those, however, who are in- literary, esthetic, and scientific, of which terested in the subject, should study that we now hear so much, as though the posaffecting tale, as it is one in which is session or the want of it made all possispecially seen Wordsworth's characteris- | ble difference between man and man. This kind of culture, I fancy, he lightly esteemed, for he had found something worthier than all class culture, often among the lowliest and most despised. He tells us that he was convinced at heart How little those formalities, to which, It has sometimes been said that Wordsworth's estimate of men was essentially democratic. Inasmuch as it looked only at intrinsic worthiness, and made nothing of distinctions of rank, or of polished manners, or even of intellectual or æs thetic culture, it may be said to have been democratic. Inasmuch, however, as he valued only that which is intrinsic and essentially the best in men, he may be said to have upheld a moral and spiritual aristocracy, but it is an aristocracy which knows no exclusiveness, and freely welcomes all who will to enter it. No one, indeed, could be farther from flattering the average man by preaching to him equality, and telling him that he was as good as any other man. Rather he taught him that there are moral heights far above him, to which some had attained, to which he too may attain, but that only by thinking lowlily of himself, and by thinking highly of the things above him - only by upward looking and by reverence may he rise higher. One thing is noticeable. The ideas and sentiments which fill Wordsworth's mind, and color all his delineations of men and of nature, are not those which pass current in society. You feel intuitively that they would sound strange and out of place there. They are too unworldly to breathe in that atmosphere. Hence you will never find your man of the world, who takes his tone from society, really cares for Wordsworth's poetry. The aspect of things he has to reveal does not interest such men. But others there are who are anything but worldly-minded, whom nevertheless Wordsworth's poetry fails to reach; and this not from their fault, but from his limitations. His sympathies were deep rather than keen or broad. There is a large part of human life which lies outside of his interest. He was, as all know, entirely destitute of humor - a great want, but one which he shared with Milton. This want, often seen in very earnest natures, shut him out from much of the play and movement that make up life. Again, he was not at home in the stormy regions of the soul; he stands aloof alike from the Titanic passions and also from the more tender and palpitating emotions. If he contemplates these at all, whether in others or as felt by himself, it is from a distance, viewing the stormy spectacle from a place of meditative calm. This agrees with his saying, that poetry arises from emotion remembered in tranquillity. If his heart ever was hot, it was not then that he spake, but when it had time to cool by after reflection. To many sensitive and even imaginative natures this attitude is provoking and repellent. Those things about Lucy, they say, are these all he had to give to the tenderest affection he ever knew? And they turn from them impatiently away to such poems as Byron's on Thyrza, or to his When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, or to the passion of Shakespeare, or to the proud pathos of Mrs. Barrett Browning's sonnets, tingling through every syllable with emotion. Compared with these, Wordsworth's most feeling poems seem to them cold and impassive, not to say soporific. But this is hardly the true account of them. Byron and such poets as he, when they express emotion, are wholly absorbed in it, lose themselves entirely in the feeling of the moment. For the time it is the whole world to them. Wordsworth and such as he, however deeply they sympathize with any suffering, never wholly lose themselves in it, never forget that the quick and throbbing emotions are but "moments in the being of the eternal silence." They make you feel that you are, after all, encompassed by an everlasting calm. The passionate kind of lyric is sure to be the most universally popular. The meditative lyric is likely to commend itself to those natures which, without being co cold, try to balance feeling with reflection. Which of them is the higher style of poetry I shall not seek to determine. In one mood of mind we relish the one; in another mood we turn to the other. Let us keep our hearts open to both. In a word, Wordsworth is the prophet of the spiritual aspects of the external world, the prophet, too, of the moral depths of the soul. The intrinsic and permanent affections he contemplated till he saw "joy that springs out of human darkness. In the clearness and strength with which he saw these things there is something almost superhuman. sufferings," a light beyond the deepest | One might have shown too how Mr. It is a large subject on which I have been dwelling, and yet I feel that I have only touched the surface of it. Fully to illustrate what contributions of new thought and sentiment Scott and Wordsworth made to their age would require at least a separate treatise for each. But, besides these, there were poets among their contemporaries who had something of the prophetic light in them, though it was a more lurid light; pre-eminently the two poets of revolt, Byron and Shelley. It was with something of quite prophetic fervor that each of these, in his own way, Browning, disdaining the great highway of the universal emotions, has, from the most hidden nooks of consciousness, fetched novel situations and hard problems of thought, and in his own peculiar style uttered Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. In the younger poets of the day, as far as I know them, I have not yet perceived much of that original prophetic power which has been so distinctive of many of "the dead kings of melody." If it exists, and I have failed to discern it, no one will welcome it more gladly than I. But what seems to me most to distinguish the poetry of the time is, elaborately ornate tore off the mask from the social com- diction and luscious music expended promises and hollownesses which they on themes not weighty in themselves. believed they saw around them, and denounced the hypocrisies. Neither of them perhaps had much positive truth with which to replace the things they would destroy. Byron did not pretend to have. Yet in the far and fierce delight of his sympathy with the tempests and the austere grandeurs of nature, and in the strength with which he portrayed the turbid and Titanic movements of the soul, there was an element of power hitherto unknown in English poetry. Shelley, on the other hand, had this quite unique gift. He has caught and fixed forever movements and hues both in nature and in the mind of man, which were too subtle, too delicate, too evanescent for any eye but his. He may be said to be the prophet of many shades of emotion, which before him had no language; the poet, as he has been called, of unsatisfied desire, of insatiable longing. An antidote for all human ills he fancied that he had found in that universal love which he preached in such variety of tones. But one may doubt if the love that he dreamt of was substantial, or moral, or self-sacrificing enough to bring any healing. I do not wish to discuss now poets who are still living. Else one might have tried to show how the Laureate in some of his works, specially in "In Memoriam," if he has not exactl exactly imported new truths into his age, has yet so expressed much of the highest truth that was dawning on men's consciousness, that he has become in some sort the first unveiler of it: also how great inroads he has made into the domains of science, bringing thence truths, hitherto unsung, and wedding them to his own exquisite music. Prophet souls, burning with great and new truth, can afford to be severe, plain, even bare in diction. Charged with the utterance of large substantive thoughts, they can seldom give their strength to studied ornamentation. We wait for the day of more substance in our poetry. Shall we have to wait till the ploughshare of revolution has been again driven through the field of European society, and has brought to the surface some subsoil of original and substantive truth which lies as yet undiscerned ? From The Cornhill Magazine. FINA'S AUNT. SOME PASSAGES FROM MISS WILLIAMSON'S DIARY. ΧΙ. So we took leave of our friendly nuns, who came about us in their veils to say good-bye. Fina, from her chair, waved her thin hand to the sisters as they stood in the doorway and on the steps that led to it. The porters lifted her from the ground gently and started off smoothly at a rapid pace. The doctor, with his green plant-box and his battered alpenstock, followed with long strides and many diversions on the road in search of one and another mysterious treasure, and my fat mule carried me bravely over the stones and up the steep. Josephine was also riding, but towards the end of the ascent she got down, seeing that Fina was alone, and walked beside her. Josephine had a knack of always being composed and graceful. She was little used to moun |