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of Nature in the sky and on the earth," and saw the "Visions of the hills," and spoke with the "Souls of lonely places," and, in dim perception-but without an intellectual form being given to the feeling-felt that the whole world was alive and speaking to him as his companion, greater than himself, but yet at one with him. Each of these presences, visions, souls, ministered to him, haunted him, partook of his danger and desire, and had a distinct desire and danger of their own ; till, at last, as examples multiplied of this intercommunion (and what the forms of nature said were met at once by a response in his own heart, that fitted the impressions made), the whole earth became like a great Being and,

With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,
Worked like a sea.

The whole of this is an explanation given in after life of that which he insensibly felt as a child. There was no reasoning possible then. It was a wild tempestuous time, full of giddy bliss, and the physical joy of being: and the images he received from nature partook of this wild and even vulgar character, images undignified by any association, made quiet by no thoughtfulness.

But (and here is another element in the education Nature gives the child) in the midst of this wild extravagance of boyish life with nature, there were moments of quietness in which a calmer beauty, of which he was then unconscious, entered into his soul and took up there its dwelling.

Looking back on them, he sees them as a part of that great work by which the universe and the mind of Man

are wedded together. They are the result of that preestablished harmony which God has set between His thought in us and His thought in Nature. He calls them, in lines as beautiful as they are profound,

Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense
Which seem, in their simplicity, to own
An intellectual charm: that calm delight
Which, if I err not, surely must belong
To those first-born affinities that fit
Our new existence to existing things;
And, in our dawn of being, constitute
The bond of union between life and joy.

By both were sown the first seeds of a deep love of nature
which now began to take the place of a dim dread of her.
The quieter impressions remained as they were; the com-
mon and vulgar joys through which the others were
received slowly died out of the memory; but the impres-
sions remained and their beauty. His mind became filled
with solemn and lovely images; he linked those images to
the places from which he had received them, and loved
In this way, year by year
the places for their sake.
Nature grew more dear, and with his love to her his
soul grew into completer being.

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It was thus the Poet's education began. How it went on, I shall tell in my next lecture. But does it not do one good to read of it? How pure and fresh it is; how healthy and natural, how true to Nature and how near to God. For so ought always to begin, if possible, the building of the soul. Natural Religion should go before spiritual; vague feelings of joy and calm in the presence of One whom we know not yet, but who knows us-in these best begins the religion which afterwards in the

sadness and trouble of life teaches us to know that Presence in Nature as the Father in our hearts; in these best arises that spiritual life which, at first content with nature-worship,-learns, when it has become sadly conscious of sin and sorrow, to love God as the Redeemer, and to trust Him as the Comforter.

LECTURE VII.

WORDSWORTH.

THE simple ways in which the childhood of Wordsworth walked, and how he was taught by the rivers, woods and hills, were spoken of in my last lecture. The educacation thus begun by Nature was carried on steadily, and I shall explain its further course to-day. It divides itself into two parts, the first period when the influences of Nature were unconsciously received; the second, when the new element of the relation of his own soul to Nature slowly introduced itself. For, becoming conscious of his own being, he became also conscious of its distinctness from the external world, and of the power and life which he was able to project from it over Nature-conscious, that is, of that action and reaction between the mind and the world without, the possibility of which was contained in the prearranged harmony which God had established between them. This point I shall fully speak of, and also how far this consciousness of the soul of its relation to Nature modified the continuous education which Nature gave him.

And throughout, and after nearly every point, I shall mark how the various lessons he learnt influenced or were likely to influence the poetic character of Wordsworth, the

growth of his religious life, and those theological ideas which he held with regard to the relation of God and Man to the Natural world.

Wordsworth begins the second book of the "Prelude " by a description of the tumultuous joy and eagerness of boyhood in its sports among a rich and varied scenery. Looking back in tranquil manhood to this unconscious time, he half sighs to think that these things are no more. It tames our "pride of intellect and self-esteem of virtue," to think how little we can give

to duty and to truth

The eagerness of infantine desire.

So that an ideal of eagerness in pursuit of things, and a respect for the enthusiasm which makes us unconscious of self, are part of the indirect teaching which we receive from Nature in boyhood. They were two lessons which formed part of his poetic training, for a poet is one who is bound to lose himself in Beauty and Truth, and to see things more eagerly than other men. And they have also their moral influence, for it inspirits a man who has strength enough for self-restoration, to know in after-life, in times of depression and pain, that he has once possessed joy and force; for then he believes in their existence in his nature, and works towards their recovery. And this is one of the continually recurring moral ideas of Wordsworth. You will find it running through a hundred poems.

But this kind of teaching that Nature now gave him was not consciously received by the boy; nor was it direct, but incidental. It could not be consciously sought for;

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