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man is a trouble to us, who is among us, but not with us. He tells us how he felt the self-sufficing power of solitude. And solitude seems pressed upon our attention wherever we notice him; all other forms and figures are lost sight of. We see only the long chain of mountains, the loneliness of the lake, and the one figure of the musing boy by the side of all. The song of the invisible bird among the ruins of the Old Chauntry, over the cross-legged knight, and the old stone abbot, seems to strike more our thought, and his, than the picture of the village inn, and the sports and gladness of boyhood. The wren singing in the church was an incident principally subjective. Nothing was interesting to Wordsworth even at that early age that was not subjective. In that "Auxiliar power" which he has celebrated streaming from his own mind, and bestowing on the sun his splendour, and darkening in the presence of his eye the thunder storm,-we behold how the spirit of the boy begins to react on nature, and now trace the first intimations of that peculiarity of his genius to absorb the perception of personality in the sense of being. Even thus early his mind became an alembic in which things perceived, lost their identity in his own. It may seem premature and strange to discuss, or hint at this question and topic, now in these first years of boyhood. But Wordsworth was no ordinary boy, though it would be very wonderful to have revealed to us many a child's thoughts. He was haunted early as he plainly enough shows us with that mischievous tendency, that curse of our age, though it possibly never became this to him, to

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sponge out for the most part objective being, or to make it only a wing on which to float away through the vast void of subjective and indefinite abstraction. From this he was ultimately saved. But the feeling and the tendency beset him. The childhood of Wordsworth unfortunately has proved the manhood of millions of men in our age, he says

"I felt the sentiment of being spread

O'er all that moves, and all that seemeth still."

But it is a glittering, cold, unsubstantial page that sentiment of being, it affects us personally like the glaring wide open eyes of a beautiful corpse, or say, the eyeless socket of a dead universe.

We have reached the first pause in life-school days, school haunts, and school associations must be left behind, and the Mountains exchanged for the Fens: for Cambridge then was a very different place to Cambridge now, there were then the stately colleges, which awe the spirit and soothe the heart, the petrified religions of the middle ages; but many of those noble structures which now meet the eye were not erected until a later period; the change however would be great. Some time was allowed, during which thought collected her forces and perhaps arranged some plans. To such a youth surely a time like this, an interval between the School and the University, between the Youth and the Manhood of life, would not be thrown away. The mind perhaps needs some such pause as this-Milton had it: the time for concentrated and fixed review and forethought,-when all the powers are standing on tiptoe

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with expectation of what is to be,-when over the deep future, whisperings call, and from the deep heart, echoes answer,-when Imagination, and Conscience, and Motive, and Will, stand looking at each other, when all the powers are waiting for the curtain to draw up, and the drama to commence. How solemn to all eyes is that moment in the history of youth. But indeed every moment in life is solemn, for does not a vast ocean untracked lie before, and is there not a whole wide region behind?

The University is the portal to the world. The young Knight in the ancient days of chivalry watched all the long dark hours of the night in the church, before he received his spurs, his sword, and his knightly character. He was left to pace to and fro the aisles, to bow himself before the altar-the last sunbeam looked in through the lofty window and saw him there. Cold starbeam and moonbeam, and earliest sunbeam shone over the nave and transept, through the stained glass, and saw him still watching and praying preparing himself for the battle-field. The image may provoke a smile on many a face; the occupations may suppose so mournful a contrast between the knightly preparations and the University career, and to this it must be answered, the intention in either instance is the same-the consecration of lofty powers, and opportunities for lofty work. Say indeed if the hours intended for Sacrament be dedicated to folly, still now as in every age it is the Heart which constitutes the Sacrament. We indeed think that many of the most sacred purposes of the Univer

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sity are lost, but still the idea remains the same. Seclusion, thought, reading, holy preparation, with the advantage of a secular life rolling on every hand its turbulent waves, thus all things conspire to rend the young spirit to whom serious thought addresses itself. All things are saying to it, Watch, Wait, but Aspire. Home Education is very beautiful; it is a lovely thethe perpetual inter-ministration of brother and sister; the unvarying tenderness of the mother; and for ever may there be throughout the halls and cottages of our land, hearts to reciprocate and prize each other's tenderness, and to feel, and yield to the blessed influences and chastenings of moral power. But lovely as the thing looks in theory, it is not good in practice. No, let that young fellow who will by and by have to breast the ocean, begin at once to learn to swim. You fear to trust him alone. Alas, and yet you must trust him alone; he will most likely have to enter and go through the world alone. The Family is a place where you should give your children high and sound principles; the World is the place where your son has to work them; and the University is an exercising school where meditation mingles with exercise, and both in turn salute and call on the youth to energy.

William Wordsworth had no home education, or next to none, but he is now brought to the world's great ante-room from his meditations by brook, and pool, and lake, by lonely glen and cliff; now he will enter upon another course amidst cloisters, and echoing aisles; among crowds of fellow-students of every shade of character,

and amidst scenes where the holiness of antiquity and religion, supplant the holiness of nature.

Cambridge, more than its great rival, Oxford, has been famous for the great names and natures it has fostered; mighty Poets, and mighty Statesmen-Milton, Bacon, Newton, Dryden, Cromwell, Marvell, Taylor.

He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in October 1787, then in the eighteenth year of his age; but the University does not appear to have done much for him; whatever may be the condition of Cambridge now, certainly it was far inferior then, and our youthful student entered its walls ill prepared for the cramping fetters, the cold, and formal, and needless restraints imposed then on the under-graduates. He had not been prepared either by the previous discipline of Eton, or any other of the great public schools for the life he was to encounter; moreover, we can see that he became less and less disposed to yield himself to the study of books; Man, and Nature, and Human life, were calling him even then, and the university presented to him for the most part a wide and echoing hollowness. The institutions and the studies did not appear to be venerable to his eyes; at a subsequent period he narrated his impressions in the poem published after his death, the Prelude; we conceive him walking through those crowded halls, and courts, and aisles, and temples, a very lonely and friendless being; there was nothing either in nature to awaken within him these responsive echoes. Every spot of earth he visited before or after, yielded him some subject of thought, but Cambridge lies as it were a blank on his

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