"A gift
Of aspect most sublime; that blessed mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."--Vol. ii. p. 181.
This is perfect Quakerism; the grand demand of which is, that you
shall put down "this meddling intellect, which misshapes the beauteous
forms of things;" shall lay at rest the actions and motions of your
own minds, and subdue the impatience of the body, till, as Wordsworth
has most clearly stated it,
"The breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood.
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul."
It was this very doctrine of the non-necessity of human interference
between us and all knowledge, of the all-sufficiency of this invisible
and "great teacher," as Wordsworth calls him, which led George Fox and
the Quakers to abandon all forms of worship, to strip divine service
of all music, singing, formal prayers, written sermons, and to sit
down in a perfectly passive state of silence, to gather some of
"All this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,"
into
"A heart
That watches and receives."
Whoever sees a Friends' meeting, sees a body of men and women sitting
in the full and abstract practice of this very doctrine, by which
Wordsworth, in the very words of George Fox, says we come to
"See into the life of things."
"Come out," says Fox, "from all your vain learning and philosophy,
from your schools and colleges, from all your teachings and preachings
of human instruction, from all your will-worship and your man-made
ministers, and sit down in the presence of Him who made all things,
and lives through all things; who made the ear, the eye, and the heart
of man, and lives in and through them, and can and will inform them.
Put down every high and airy imagination, every carnal willing and
doing; cease to strive in your own strength, and learn to depend on
the teaching and strength of the Holy Spirit that filleth heaven and
earth; and the light given to enlighten every man that cometh into the
world will soon shine in upon you, and the truth in all its fullness
will be made known to you far beyond the teaching of all bishops,
archbishops, professors, or other swelling men, puffed with the vain
wind of human learning. Come out from among them; be not of them;
leave the dead to bury the dead. He that sits at the king's table
needeth not the dry crumbs and the waste offal of hireling servitors;
he that hath the sun itself shining on his head, needeth no lesser,
much less artificial lights."
In this state he regards man as restored to the original privilege of
his nature, and admitted to communion with the spirit of the Creator,
and into contact with all knowledge. "He sees into the life of
things." So duly did Fox consider that he saw into the life of things,
that he believed that the knowledge of the quality of all plants,
minerals, and physical substances was imparted to him, and that had he
not had a still higher vocation assigned him, as a discerner and
comforter of spirits, he could have practiced most successfully as a
physician. He believed and taught, and Barclay, his great disciple, in
his famous Apology, teaches the same thing, that in this state of
communion with the Spirit of all knowledge, a man needs no interpreter
of the Scriptures; that without any knowledge of the original
languages, he can instinctively tell where they are erroneously
rendered, and what is the true meaning. He has penetrated to the
fountain of truth, and not only of truth, but, to use Wordsworth's
words again, of "the deep power of joy." He is raised above all
earthly evil and anxiety, and breathes in the invisible presence, the
pure air of heaven. He is in a kind restored to the unity of his
nature, of power, intelligence, and felicity. How exactly is this the
language of our poet!
"I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows, and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive: well pleased to recognize,
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being."--Vol. ii. pp. 183, 184.
But this great Quaker doctrine is not the casual doctrine of one or
two casual or isolated poems; it is the foundation and fabric of the
whole. It is the great theme everywhere pursued. Of his principal and
noblest production, The Excursion, it is the brain, the very backbone,
the vitals, and the moving sinews. Take away that, and you take all.
Take that, and you reduce the poet to a level with a hundred others.
His hero, the wanderer, is a shepherd boy grown into a pedler, or
pack-merchant, who has been educated and baptized into this sublime
knowledge of God speaking through nature. In his sixth year he tended
cattle on the hills.
"He, many an evening, to his distant home
In solitude returning, saw the hills
Grow larger in the darkness, all alone
Beheld the stars come out above his head,
And traveled through the wood, with no one near
To whom he might confess the things he saw.
So the foundations of his mind were laid.
In such communion, not from terror free,
While yet a child, and long before his time,
He had perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness."
"He had received a precious gift," the poet tells us, that gift of
spiritual perception which the poet himself tells he also has
received.
"Thus informed,
He had small need of books:
In the fixed lineaments of nature, rocks and caves,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments,
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varied."
There "was wanting yet the pure delight of love" in his inspiration,
but that came also, and--
"Such was the boy; but for the growing youth
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked--
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him: they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live: they were his life.
_In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not: in enjoyment it expired._
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request,
_Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him; it was blessedness and love_!"
That is one of the finest pieces of Quakerism that ever was written;
there is nothing in George Fox himself more perfect. It is a
description of that state to which every true Quaker aspires; which he
believes attainable without the mediation of any priest, or the
presence of any church; which Fox and the early Friends so often
describe as having been accorded to them in the midst of their public
meetings, or in the solitude of the closet, or the journey. It is that
state of exaltation, the very flower and glorious moment of a
religious life, which is the privilege of him who draws near to and
walks with God. That
"Access of mind,
Of visitation from the living God,"
when
"Thought is not; in enjoyment it expires."
It is an eloquent exposition of the genuine worship to which,
according to the Friends, every sincere seeker may and will be
admitted, when
"Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind is a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him; it is blessedness and love."
But to show how completely Wordsworth's system is a system of poetical
Quakerism, I should be obliged to take his Excursion, and collate the
whole with passages from the writings of the early Friends, Fox, Penn,
Barclay, Pennington, and others. The Excursion is a very bible of
Quakerism. Every page abounds with it. It is, in fact, wholly and
fervently permeated by the soul of Quaker theology. The Friends teach
that the great guide of life is "the light which enlighteneth every
man that cometh into the world;" hence they were originally termed
"children of light," till the nickname of Quakers superseded it. They
declare this light to be "the infallible guide" of all men who will
follow it. What says Wordsworth?
"Early he perceives
Within himself a measure and a rule,
Which to the Sun of Truth he can apply,
That shines for him, and shines for all mankind.
* * * he refers
His notions to this standard; on this rock
Rest his desires; and hence in after-life,
Soul-strengthening patience, and sublime content."
The whole of the fourth Book, from which this extract is made, is no
other than a luminous and vivid exposition of pure Quakerism. The
Wanderer is its apostle. He shows how in all ages and countries men
have been influenced by this voice of God in nature; and, not
comprehending it fully, have mixed it up with the forms and phenomena
of nature itself, and shaped religions out of it. Hence the Chaldean
faith; hence the Grecian mythology.
"They felt
A spiritual Presence, ofttimes misconceived,
But still a high dependence, a divine
Beauty and government, that filled their hearts
With joy and gratitude, and fear and love;
And from their fervent lips drew hymns of praise,
That through the desert rung. Though favored less,
Far less than these, yet rich in their degree,
Were those bewildered pagans of old time."--P. 169.
So say the Friends; and to such a pitch do they carry their belief in
their "universal and saving light," that they contend, that to the
most savage nations, "having not law, it becomes a law," and that
through it the spirit, if not the history of the Savior is revealed
and made operative, and that thus the voice of salvation is preached
in the heart where never outward gospel has been heard. The Friends
contend that science and mere human wisdom most commonly tend to
darken and weigh down this divine principle, to cloud this eternal
luster in the soul. So says the eloquent Wanderer, the preacher of the
Quakerism of poetry. He asks, Shall our great discoverers obtain less
from sense and reason than these obtained?
"Shall men for whom our age
Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared,
To explore the world without, and world within,
Be joyless as the blind? Ambitious souls,
Whom earth, at this late season, hath produced
To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh
The planets in the hollow of their hand;
And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains
Have solved the elements, or analyzed
The thinking principle;--shall they in fact
Prove a degraded race? And what avails
Renown, if their presumption makes them such?
O! there is laughter at their work in heaven!
Inquire of ancient wisdom; go, demand
Of mighty nature, if 'twas ever meant
That we should pray far off, yet be unraised;
That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore.
* * * * *
That this magnificent effect of power,
The earth we tread, the sky that we behold
By day, and all the pomp which night reveals--
That these, and that superior mystery,
Our vital frame, so fearfully devised,
And the dread soul within it, should exist
Only to be examined, pondered, searched,
Probed, vexed, and criticised?--Accuse me not
Of arrogance, unknown Wanderer as I am,
If, having walked with nature three score years,
And offered, far as frailty would allow,
My heart a daily sacrifice to Truth,
I now affirm of Nature and of Truth,
Whom I have served, that their DIVINITY
Revolts, offended at the ways of men,
Swayed by such motives, to such ends employed."--Pp. 170-1.
This divine principle, which can thus outsoar and put to shame the
vanity and conceit of science, can also baffle and repulse all the
sophistries of metaphysics.
"Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp, and serve to exalt
Her native brightness."--P. 174.
There, too, Wordsworth and the Friends are entirely agreed, and yet
further. This faculty exists in and operates for all; and whoever
trusts in it shall, like the Friends, pursue their way careless of all
the changes of fashions or opinions.
"Access for you
Is yet preserved to principles of truth,
Which the imaginative Will upholds
In seats of wisdom, not to be approached
By the inferior faculty that molds,
With her minute and speculative pains,
Opinion, ever changing."
He illustrates the operation of this inward and primeval faculty by
the simile of the child listening to a shell, and hearing, as it were,
the murmurs of its native sea. Such a shell, he says, is
"The universe itself
Unto the ear of faith;"
and in this you have a sanctuary to retire to at will, where you will
become victorious over every delusive power and principle. The Friends
consider this the glory of our mortal state, and Wordsworth says,--
"Yes, you have felt, and may not cease to feel,
The estate of man would be indeed forlorn,
If false conclusions of the reasoning power
Made the eye blind, and closed the passages
Through which the ear converses with the heart."--P. 178.
But the poet and the Friends agree that there is a power seated in the
human soul, superior to the understanding, superior to the reasoning
faculty, the sure test of truth, to which every man may confidently
appeal in all cases, for it is the voice of God himself. With the poet
and the Friends the result of this divine philosophy is the same;--the
most perfect patience, the most holy confidence in the ever present
divinity; connected with no forms, no creeds, no particular conditions
of men; not confined by, not approachable only in, temples and
churches, but free as his own winds, boundless as his own seas,
universal as his own sunshine over all his varied lands and people;
whispering peace in the lonely forest, courage on the seas, adoration
on the mountain tops, hope under the burning tropics and the
blistering lash of the savage white man, joy in the dungeon, and glory
on the death-bed.
"Religion tells of amity sublime,
Which no condition can preclude: of One
Who sees all suffering, comprehends all wants,
All weakness fathoms, can supply all needs."--P. 175.
Perhaps this perfected spirit, this divine patience, this God-pervaded
soul of man, gentle, loving, yet stronger than death or evil, never
were more beautifully expressed than by the repentant and dying
Quaker, James Naylor.
"There is a spirit which I feel, that delights to do no evil, nor to
revenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy
its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention,
to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature
contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears
no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other; if it
be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring are the mercies
and forgiveness of God. Its course is meekness; its life is
everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty, and
not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone
it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is
conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor
doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It rejoiceth, but through
sufferings, for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone,
being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with those who live in dens
and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this
resurrection, and eternal holy life."
There is an illumination for the critics! For these thirty years have
they been astounding themselves at the originality of Wordsworth's
philosophy, and expounding it by all imaginable aids of metaphysics.
We have heard endless lectures on the ideality, the psychological
profundity, the abstract doctrines of the poet; his new views, his
spiritual communion with and exposition of the mysteries of nature,
and of the soul in harmony with nature, etc., etc. That is the simple
solution; it is Quakerism in poetry, neither more nor less. The
question is, how Wordsworth stumbled on this doctrine; a doctrine on
which his great poetical reputation is, in fact, built. Possibly, like
George Fox, he found it in his solitary wanderings, and cogitations;
but more probably he drew it direct from his Journal itself. It is a
curious, but a well known fact, that all that knot of young and
enthusiastic writers at Bristol, and afterward at Stowey and
Allfoxden, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, were deeply read and
imbued with the old Quaker worthies. Probably they were made
acquainted with them by their two Quaker friends Lovell and Lloyd.
Coleridge was so impressed with their principles that, though he
preached, he did it in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that, as he
said, "he might not have a rag of the woman of Babylon on him." He
imbibed and proclaimed all the Quaker hatred of slavery and war. He
declares in his Biographia Literaria his admiration of Fox. "One
assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience,
that there exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature of
man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and
celebrity, if, in the whole huge volume, there could be found as much
fullness of heart and intellect, as bursts forth in many a simple page
of George Fox." Southey always cherished the idea of writing the life
of George Fox, but never accomplished it. Charles Lamb, another
visitor of Stowey, at the time of this youthful effervescence, has
recorded his visit to a Friends' meeting, and says, that in it he soon
began to ask himself far more questions than he could quickly answer.
He declares Sewell's History of the Quakers worth all ecclesiastical
history put together. Wordsworth was not only as deeply read in these
books as any of them, but is still, to my knowledge, remarkably well
acquainted with the history and opinions of Friends; he has
immortalized the very spade of one of them, Thomas Wilkinson,
and--_Ecce signum_--has perfected the development of this great
poetical system.
Whence Wordsworth, however, gathered his philosophy, whether from the
books of the Friends, or from his own meditations, it is,
nevertheless, a great truth. Jacob Behmen, Emanuel Swedenborg, Kant,
Justinus Kerner, and many another philosopher and poet, proclaim and
maintain the same. That the Spirit of God lives throughout the
universe and in the soul of man; that the more we commune with his
Spirit, the more our ears and eyes, or, in better phrase, our
spiritual sense, becomes open to perceive it. The closer we draw
to it, and live in it, the more we become strengthened, purified,
and enriched by it; the more we are able to walk amid all the
fascinations, glories, and deceptions of the world, as the men of God
walked in the midst of the fiery furnace, so scathless that the very
smell of fire passed not on their garments. It is called by the
Friends THE TRUTH, as superior to, and including all other truths.
Wordsworth gives it the same magnificent title. Standing by this
central light of the universe, man learns to see how far all other
offered lights, whether of books or spoken doctrines, are lights, or
are actually darkness--are great or small. Holding fast by this true
substance, he learns to feel how far all other things are substance or
shadow; and, if he hold on, at length walks the highway of life free,
invincible, and rejoicing; all nature yielding him aliment and peace.
"As the ample moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green trees; and kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporate, by power
Capacious and serene: like power abides
In man's celestial spirit: virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the incumbrances of mortal life,
From even disappointment--nay, from guilt:
And sometimes, so relenting justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of despair."--P. 174, 175.
As this is a curious subject, and particularly curious, as it has
escaped the research of those who have thought themselves the most
profound, I have gone the more fully into it. But to compare all such
passages in Wordsworth and the writings of the early Friends, as would
amply prove the fact here introduced, would make a very large volume.
The writings of these old worthies are one mass of Wordsworthisms. In
some particulars, he has not reached the sublime moral elevation of
his masters, as in regard to war; he is martial, and thinks Slaughter,
God's daughter. They very sensibly set Slaughter down as the daughter
of a very opposite personage. In fact, had not the Friends
overshadowed their great doctrines by broad brims, and disguised them
in collarless coats; had they not put forward as the outward signs of
their community, formality and singularity, the great doctrines which
they hold of the great and immutable truth, more than any other
people, would have made them far greater than any other people; the
high and universally acknowledged instructors of the world in the
principles of freedom, moral greatness, and social happiness. As it
is, they have made them the most sturdy and efficient agents of peace,
right notions of church government, and liberty to the enslaved; and,
not the less certainly, the greatest of modern reformers in poetical
philosophy. As Fox and his disciples were fiercely attacked as
innovators in religion, so Wordsworth was as fiercely attacked as an
innovator in literature. Little did the cold and material spirit of
Scotch skeptical criticism dream that it was running its head against
the old sturdy spirit of Quakerism, in the new heresy, of what they
were pleased to term the Lake school.
There is, perhaps, no residence in England better known than that of
William Wordsworth. Rydal Mount, where he has now lived for more than
thirty years, is as perfectly poetical in its location as any poet
could possibly conceive in his brightest moment of inspiration. As you
advance a mile or more on the road from Ambleside toward Grasmere, a
lane overhung with trees turns up to the right, and there, at some few
hundred yards from the highway, stands the modest cottage of the poet,
elevated on Rydal Mount, so as to look out over the surrounding sea of
foliage, and to take in a glorious view. Before it, at some distance
across the valley, stretches a high screen of bold and picturesque
mountains; behind, it is overtowered by a precipitous hill, called
Nab-scar; but to the left, you look down over the broad waters of
Windermere, and to the right over the still and more embosomed flood
of Grasmere. Whichever way the poet pleases to advance from his house,
it must be into scenery of that beauty for mountain, stream, wood, and
lake, which has made Cumberland so famous over all England. He may
steal away up backward from his gate, and ascend into the solitary
hills, or diverging into the grounds of Lady Mary Fleming, his near
neighbor, may traverse the deep shades of the woodland, wander along
the banks of the rocky rivulet, and finally stand before the well
known water-fall there. If he descend into the highway, objects of
beauty still present themselves. Cottages and quiet houses here and
there glance from their little spots of Paradise, through the richest
boughs of trees; Windermere, with its wide expanse of waters, its
fairy islands, its noble hills, allures his steps in one direction;
while the sweet little lake of Rydal, with its heronry and its fine
background of rocks, invites him in another. In this direction the
vale of Grasmere, the scene of his early married life, opens before
him, and Dunmail-raise and Langdale-pikes lift their naked corky
summits, as hailing him to the pleasures of old companionship. Into no
quarter of this region of lakes, and mountains, and vales of primitive
life, can he penetrate without coming upon ground celebrated by his
muse. He is truly "sole king of rocky Cumberland."
The immediate grounds in which his house stands are worthy of the
country and the man. It is, as its name implies, a mount. Before the
house opens a considerable platform, and around and beneath lie
various terraces and descend various walks, winding on amid a
profusion of trees and luxuriant evergreens. Beyond the house, you
ascend various terraces, planted with trees now completely
overshadowing them; and these terraces conduct you to a level above
the house-top, and extend your view of the enchanting scenery on all
sides. Above you tower the rocks and precipitous slopes of Nab-scar;
and below you, embosomed in its trees, lies the richly ornate villa of
Mr. William Ball, a Friend, whose family and the poet's are on such
social terms, that a little gate between their premises opens them
both to each family alike. This cottage and grounds were formerly the
property of Charles Lloyd, also a Friend, and one of the Bristol and
Stowey coterie. Both he and Lovell have long been dead; Lovell,
indeed, was drowned, on a voyage to Ireland, in the very heyday of the
dreams of Pantisocracy, in which he was an eager participant.
The poet's house, itself, is a proper poet's abode. It is at once
modest, plain, yet tasteful and elegant. An ordinary dining-room, a
breakfast-room in the center, and a library beyond, form the chief
apartments. There are a few pictures and bust, especially those of
Scott and himself, a good engraving of Burns, and the like, with a
good collection of books, few of them very modern. In the dining-room
there stands an old cabinet, which is a sort of genealogical piece of
furniture, bearing this inscription:--
Hoc op' fiebat Aº D ni MºCCCCCºXXVº ex suptu Will'mi Wordsworsh,
filii W. fil. Joh. fil. W. fil. Nich. viri Elizabeth filia et
hered W. P'ctor de Pengsto qoru aneabus p' picietur De'!
A great part of the labor of laying out the garden, raising the
terraces at Rydal, and planting the trees, has been that of the poet
himself. The property belongs to Lady Fleming, but Wordsworth has
bought a piece of land lying just below, with the fatherly intent,
that should his daughter at any time incline to live there, she may,
if she choose, erect a house for herself in the old and endeared
situation.
The trees display a prodigality of growth, that make what are meant
for walks almost a wilderness. On observing to the poet that he really
should have his laurels pruned a little, the old man smiled, paused,
and said, with a pardonable self-complacency,--"Ay, I will tell you an
anecdote about that. A certain general was going round the place,
attended by the gardener, when he suddenly remarked, as you do, the
flourishing growth of the trees, especially of the evergreens, and
said, 'Which of all your trees do you think flourishes most here?"
"'I don't know, sir,' said James; "but I think the laurel.'
"'Well, that is as it should be, you know,' added the general.
"'Why it should be so, James could not tell, and made the remark.
"'Don't you know,' continued the general, 'that the laurel is the
symbol of distinction for some achievement, and especially in that art
of which Mr. Wordsworth is so eminent a master? therefore it is quite
right that it should flourish so conspicuously here.'
"By this," continued the poet, "James acquired two new pieces of
intelligence; first, that the laurel was a symbol of eminence, and,
that his master was an eminent man, of both which facts he had been
before very innocently ignorant."
It may be supposed that, during the summer, Wordsworth being in the
very center of a region swarming with tourists and hunters of the
picturesque, and in the very highway of their route is regularly beset
by them. Day after day brings up whole troops of them from every
quarter of these kingdoms, and no few from America. The worthy old man
professes a good deal of annoyance at being thus lionized, but it is
an annoyance which obviously has its agreeable side. No one can doubt
that it would be a far greater annoyance, if, after a life devoted to
poetry, people, all in quest of "the sublime and beautiful," hurried
past, scoured over all the hills and dales, and passed unnoticed the
poet's gate. As it is, he has an ever swinging censer of the flattery
of public curiosity tossing at his door. Note after note is sent in,
the long levee continues from day to day--the aged minstrel votes it a
bore, and quietly enjoys it. If not, how easy it would be, just,
during the laking season, to vanish from the spot to another equally
pleasant, and yet more retired. Yet why should he? It is not as if the
visitor interrupted the progress of a life's great labor. That labor
is done; competence and fame are acquired; the laurel and the larder
have equally flourished at Rydal Mount: and what is more agreeable
than to receive the respect of his fellow-men, and diffuse the
pleasure of having seen and conversed with one of the lights of the
age?
Some years ago, spending a few days there with Mrs. Howitt, we
witnessed a curious scene. The servant came in, announcing that a
gentleman and a large party of ladies wished to see the place. "Very
well, they can see it," said Mr. Wordsworth.
"But the gentleman wished to see you, sir."
"Who is it?--Did he give his name?"
"No, sir."
"Then ask him for it."
The servant went, and returned, saying, "The gentleman said that he
knew Mr. Wordsworth's name very well, as every body did, but that Mr.
Wordsworth would not know his if he sent him his card."
"Then say, I am sorry, but I can not see him."
The servant once more disappeared, and the poet broke forth into a
declamation on the bore of these continual and importunate, not to say
impudent, visits. In the midst of it the servant entered.
"Well, what did the man say?"
"That he had had the honor to shake hands with the Duke of Wellington,
and that his last remaining wish in life was to shake hands with Mr.
Wordsworth."
This was too good. A universal scream of merriment burst from us. The
poet rose, laughing heartily. Mrs. and Miss Dora Wordsworth, laughing
as heartily, gently seized him, each by an arm, and thus merrily
pushed him out of the room. In another minute, we beheld the worthy
host bowing to the man who possessed such irresistible rhetoric, and
to his large accompaniment of ladies, and doing the amiable, by
pointing out to them the prominent beauties of the view. The cunning
fellow was a Manchester manufacturer.
It is well known that the dread of a railroad into the lake country
has alarmed Wordsworth into the firing off a sonnet against it, and
that his annoyance has been increased by the lanch of a steamboat on
Windermere. There is some mitigation of our surprise, that the poet
who knows and has so well described the nuisances of cities and
manufacturing towns, should thus see with disgust the beautiful and
breezy region of the lakes laid open to them, when we know that this
railroad is proposed to be carried close under his beloved retirement;
but still it is befitting the generosity of the man, who has, in so
many forms, given us an interest in the toil-worn and the lowly, to be
prepared to make some sacrifice of that quiet which he has so long and
so richly enjoyed, to the spread of truth and rational pleasure among
the humble workers of the mill; remembering his own impressive words:--
"Turn to private life
And social neighborhood: look we to ourselves;
A light of duty shines on every day
For all, and yet how few are warmed or cheered!"
[Illustration: Fulneck Moravian Settlement]