able service. For it is self-worship-worship of the creature's own conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness, in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command the praise and adoration of his fellow mortals. Those lofty speculations, alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment of waterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude the hold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment and impatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escap ing from the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support to his steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him to everlasting life.

Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little of the light of revelation, and they all speak of the theological doctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressions as these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem often to have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are which human reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it is impossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely to itself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or in express, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; and we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting its powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In these circumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions

which regard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfy itself in such great enquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer of truth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is able to deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it in their belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, it has means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing one from the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would be impossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which has been poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertain what self-left reason could find out. Yet this much we are able to do in the speculations of our philosophy. We can

enquire, in this light, what are the grounds of evidence which nature and reason themselves offer for belief in the same truths. A like remark must be extended to the morality which we seem now to inculcate from the authority of human reason. We no longer possess any such independent morality. The spirit of a higher, purer, moral law than man could discover, has been breathed over the world, and we have grown up in the air and the light of a system so congenial to the highest feelings of our human nature, that the wisest spirits amongst us have sometimes been tempted to forget that its origin is divine.

Had the Excursion been written in the poet's later life, it had not been so liable to such objections as these; for much of his poetry composed since that era is imbued with a religious spirit, answering the soul's desire of the

devoutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are sacred poetry indeed. How comprehensive the sympathy of a truly pious heart! How religion reconciles different forms, and modes, and signs, and symbols of worship, provided only they are all imbued with the spirit of faith! This is the toleration Christianity sanctions-for it is inspired by its own universal love. No sectarian feeling here, that would exclude or debar from the holiest chamber in the poet's bosom one sincere worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. Christian brethren! By that mysterious bond our natures are brought into more endearing communion -now more than ever brethren, because of the blood that was shed for us all from His blessed side! Even of that most awful mystery in some prayer-like strains the Poet tremblingly speaks, in many a strain, at once so affecting and so elevating-breathing so divinely of Christian charity to all whose trust is in the Cross! Who shall say what form of worship is most acceptable to the Almighty? All are holy in which the soul seeks to approach him-holy

"The chapel lurking among trees,

Where a few villagers on bended knees
Find solace which a busy world disdains ;"

we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the image of some old abbey

"Once ye were holy, ye are holy still!"

And what heart partakes not the awe of his

"Beneath that branching roof

Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die?"

Read the first of these sonnets with the last-and then once more the strains that come between-and you will be made to feel how various and how vast beneath the sky are the regions set apart by the soul for prayer and worship; and that all places become consecrated—the high and the humble-the mean and the magnificentin which Faith and Piety have sought to hold communion with Heaven.

But they who duly worship God in temples made with hands, meet every hour of their lives" Devotional Excitements" as they walk among his works; and in the later poetry of Wordsworth these abound-age having solemnized the whole frame of his being, that was always alive to religious emotions-but more than ever now, as around his paths in the evening of life longer fall the mysterious shadows. More fervid lines have seldom flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, than some awakened by the sounds and sights of a happy day in May-to him-though no church-bell was heard a Sabbath. His occasional poems are often felt by us to be linked together by the finest affinities, which perhaps are but affinities between the feelings they inspire. Thus we turn from those lines to some on a subject seemingly very different, from a feeling of such fine affinities—which haply are but those subsisting between all things and thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in them how the Poet, as he gazes on a Family that holds not the Christian Faith, embraces them in the folds of Christian Love-and how religion as well as nature sanctifies the tenderness that is yearning at his heart to

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wards them" a Jewish Family"-who, though outcasts by Heaven's decree, are not by Heaven, still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth.

How exquisite the stanzas composed in one of the Catholic Chapels in Switzerland—

"Doom'd as we are our native dust

To wet with many a bitter shower,
It ill befits us to disdain

The Altar, to deride the Fane,
Where patient sufferers bend, in trust
To win a happier hour.

"I love, where spreads the village lawn,
Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze;
Hail to the firm unmoving Cross,
Aloft, where pine their branches toss!
And to the Chapel far withdrawn,
That lurks by lonely ways!

"Where'er we roam-along the brink
Of Rhine or by the sweeping Po,
Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide,
Whate'er we look on, at our side

Be Charity-to bid us think
And feel, if we would know."

How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, most touching in their simple pathos— such as a Hymn for the boatmen as they approach the Rapids-Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damsels floating homeward on the lake of Brientz—the Italian Itinerant and the Swiss Goatherd-and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives of Italian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as if by magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace the peculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Such gentle visions disap