agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times, the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer, and so determinately to stammer, that a stranger who should have seen her and quitted her in that state of feeling, would have certainly set her down for one plagued with that infirmity of speech, as distressingly as Charles Lamb himself. This was Miss Wordsworth, the only sister of the poet-his "Dorothy;" who naturally owed so much to the lifelong intercourse with her great brother in his most solitary and sequestered years; but, on the other hand, to whom he has acknowledged obligations of the profoundest nature; and, in particular, this mighty one, through which we also, the admirers and the worshippers of this great poet, are become equally her debtors-that, whereas the intellect of Wordsworth was, by its original tendency, too stern, too austere, too much enamoured of an ascetic harsh sublimity, she it was-the lady who paced by his side continually through sylvan and mountain tracks, in Highland glens, and in the dim recesses of German charcoal-burners-that first couched his eye to the sense of beauty, humanised him by the gentler charities, and engrafted, with her delicate female touch, those graces upon the ruder growths of his nature, which have since clothed the forest of his genius with a foliage corresponding in loveliness and beauty to the strength of its boughs and the massiness of its trunks. The greatest deduction from Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her in right of her character, of her history, and of the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, was the glancing quickness of her motions, and other circumstances in her deportment (such as her stooping attitude when walking), which gave an ungraceful, and even an unsexual character to her appearance when out-ofdoors. She did not cultivate the graces which preside over the person and its carriage. But, on the other hand, she was a person of very remarkable endowments intellectually; and, in addition to the other great services which she rendered to her brother, this I may mention, as greater than all the rest, and it was one which equally operated to the benefit of every casual companion in a walk-viz. the exceeding sympathy, always ready and always profound, by which she made all that one could tell her, all that one could describe, all that one could quote from a foreign author, reverberate, as it were, à plusieurs reprises, to one's own feelings, by the manifest impression it made upon hers. The pulses of light are not more quick or more inevitable in their flow and undulation, than were the answering and echoing movements of her sympathising attention. Her knowledge of literature was irregular, and thoroughly unsystematic. was content to be ignorant of many things; but what she knew and had really mastered, lay where it could not be disturbed-in the temple of her own most fervid heart.'—Vol. ii. pp. 238–240.

She

These are handsome, liberal-minded portraits, which sound both true and hearty. Perhaps it is not in the nature of things that the object of his supreme youthful devotion, the poet himself, should come off as well,-that he should not have to pay for having raised a class of feelings which our middle age is apt to scrutinize. The mature mind is prone to resent its youthful idolatries; and there follows a reaction. Nor could any human being have come up to Mr. De Quincey's ideal. As it is, we find him in his personal sketch instantly falling foul of Wordsworth's legs; they were useful legs but certainly not ornamental; he ought to have had an extra pair for dress occasions: the ladies

found fault with them; a sculptor would have disapproved of their contour. Now all this about the legs is probably true, but one does not quite see why it should be made so prominent. But the worst part was his bust; he was narrow about the shoulders, and stooped, which gave an effect of 'meanness,' when placed in juxtaposition with a figure of statuesque build. This, by the way, we should plead is scarcely a fair test. One tall man in a company has always the unhappy power of making everybody around him look ill-shaped and dwarfish; he alters the standard of our eye, and forces odious comparisons. It was hardly fair, we think, in the following passage, to quote the frank sister's saying, and to make her participate in the offensive charge of ( meanness :

'Once on a summer evening, walking in the Vale of Langdale with Wordsworth, his sister, and Mr. J——, a native Westmoreland clergyman, I remember that Miss Wordsworth was positively mortified by the peculiar illustration which settled upon this defective conformation. Mr. J- -, a fine towering figure, six feet high, massy and columnar in his proportions, happened to be walking, a little in advance, with Wordsworth; Miss Wordsworth and myself being in the rear; and from the nature of the conversation which then prevailed in our front rank, something or other about money, devises, buying and selling, we of the rear-guard thought it requisite to preserve this arrangement for a space of three miles or more; during which time, at intervals, Miss Wordsworth would exclaim, in a tone of vexation, "Is it possible?—can that be William? How very mean he looks!" And she did not conceal a mortification that seemed really painful, until I, for my part, could not forbear laughing outright at the serious interest which she carried into this trifle. She was, however, right, as regarded the mere visual judgment. Wordsworth's figure, with all its defects, was brought into powerful relief by one which had been cast in a more square and massy mould; and in such a case it impressed a spectator with a sense of absolute meanness, more especially when viewed from behind, and not counteracted by his countenance; and yet Wordsworth was of a good height (five feet ten), and not a slender man; on the contrary, by the side of Southey, his limbs looked thick, almost in a disproportionate degree. But the total effect of Wordsworth's person was always worst in a state of motion. Meantime, his face-that was one which would have made amends for greater defects of figure. Many such, and finer, I have seen amongst the portraits of Titian, and, in a later period, amongst those of Vandyke, from the great era of Charles I., as also from the court of Elizabeth and of Charles II., but none which has more impressed me in my own time.'-Vol. ii. pp. 243, 244.

It is fortunate for Wordsworth's physiognomy that Mr. De Quincey, a book fancier, should have possessed a unique copy of Milton, with a rare portrait; the pleasure of discovering a striking likeness between these two poets, has preserved the face from such dishonours as the figure has sustained. Something of the same splenetic tone, which characterises remarks eulogistic in the main, is to be observed in other notices of this great poet. He suspects him of not having been an amiable boy. He will

not allow that he can ever have been a lover, in any passionate sense of the word: 'to lie at a woman's feet, to make her his idol, to worship her many caprices, and to adore the most unreasonable of her frowns '-these things were impossible to Wordsworth, and being so, never, in any emphatic sense, he somewhat arbitrarily asserts, could he have been a lover. Also, he most unnecessarily records that the poet was once inebriated at Cambridge;' though the word, from subsequent explanation, proves too strong a one for the occasion; and he charges him besides with having been a dandy, though that must have been a long time ago. The extraordinary prosperity of Wordsworth's career seems also to have been some trial to our author. does not say that the poet did anything unworthy to gain this prosperity; nothing of the kind; but fortune favoured him-he never was in straits or difficulties, and, exactly as he needed some addition to his means, it fell unsought for to his hands. So that we are assured:

6

He

'So true it is, that still, as Wordsworth needed a place or a fortune, the holder of that place or fortune was immediately served with a summons to surrender it so certainly was this impressed upon my belief, as one of the blind necessities, making up the prosperity and fixed destiny of Wordsworth, that, for myself, had I happened to know of any peculiar adaptation in an estate or office of mine to an existing need of Wordsworth's, forthwith, and with the speed of a man running for his life, I would have laid it down at his feet. "Take it," I should have said; "take it, or in three weeks I shall be a dead man."'-Vol. ii. pp. 303, 304.

This prosperity, however, came by degrees; it was, we must suppose, in its humble beginnings when this acquaintance was first formed; nor did these modifications intrude themselves into the enthusiasm of Wordsworth's admirer, even upon a more composed observation, till time had given him opportunities for criticism, and familiarity had produced some of its inevitable fruits. It is not to be expected that great men should sustain, in familiar intercourse, the hopes and expectations their works raise; and it is not amiss that this truth should be known, for all truth is useful; but still there is something in the tone of these memorials that jars on us. It is pleasant then to return to a picture of unalloyed first impressions; to find how perfectly the poet's home must have harmonised with expectations formed upon the lofty philosophic simplicity of his professed views of life:

'About four o'clock it might be when we arrived. At that hour, in November, the daylight soon declined; and, in an hour and a half, we were all collected about the tea-table. This, with the Wordsworths, under the simple rustic system of habits which they cherished then, and for twenty years after, was the most delightful meal in the day; just as dinner is in great cities, and for the same reason-because it was prolonged into a meal of leisure and conversation. That night I found myself, about eleven at

night, in a pretty bed-room, about fourteen feet by twelve. Much I feared that this might turn out the best room in the house; and it illustrates the hospitality of my new friends, to mention that it was. Early in the morning I was awakened by a little voice, issuing from a little cottage bed in an opposite corner, soliloquising in a low tone. I soon recognised the words, "suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried;" and the voice I easily conjectured to be that of the eldest amongst Wordsworth's children, a son, and at that time about three years old. He was a remarkably fine boy in strength and size, promising (which has in fact been realized) a more powerful person, physically, than that of his father. Miss Wordsworth I found making breakfast in the little sitting-room. No urn was there; no glittering breakfast service; a kettle boiled upon the fire, and everything was in harmony with these unpretending arrangements. I rarely had seen so humble a ménage: and contrasting the dignity of the man with this honourable poverty, and this courageous avowal of it, his utter absence of all effort to disguise the simple truth of the case, I felt my admiration increased. This, thought I to myself, is indeed, in his own words, "Plain living, and high thinking."

This is, indeed, to reserve the humility and the parsimonies of life for its bodily enjoyments, and to apply its lavishness and its luxury to its enjoyments of the intellect.'-Vol. ii. pp. 316, 317.

But we fear to have exceeded our limits, and must draw to a close. If some spots of envy at others' greatness may seem here and there to disfigure these sketches of more fortunate and distinguished contemporaries, not a small extenuation lies in the fact of that prematurity of intellect which our author's personal recollections make so conspicuous. Convictions of power and superiority are imbibed by a child thus early gifted, at an age when impressions are deepest, and cannot fail to influence the future character; when lofty expectations of achieving a name and doing great things come as realities rather than hopes. Bitter must be the awakening to the fact, that this early promise is not being fulfilled, that others are passing him in the race, that time is slipping by, and, instead of conscious progress, the mind is visited by phantoms of lost power, sudden intimations, and shadowy restorations of forgotten feelings,'-to quote our author's words,-all telling of a past glorious time and hopes never to be realized. It is as the history of a mind that this work is valuable, nor do all its faults and failings detract from its value, in this point of view, nor deprive it of a most instructive moral.

192

ART. V.-First Report of the Cathedral Commissioners: Replies from the Heads of Houses and Professors at Oxford and Cambridge. 1854.

ATTENTION is now fairly roused to the subject of the education of the clergy of our Church. Since the commencement of this both Universities have been called upon to express their year, judgment upon plans for improving the theological training of their graduates. The production of these plans is an acknowledgment that the authorities are not satisfied with the existing state of Oxford and Cambridge in this particular; their rejection indicates only that the Convocation at each University were dissatisfied with the particular plans proposed. Since these measures were rejected, the Bishop of Oxford has opened the College at Cuddesden under circumstances which seem to augur a large measure of success. The Cathedral Commissioners have published a Report, from which it appears that they have turned their attention to the advantages of multiplying and reinforcing Colleges such as at present exist at Wells and Chichester. The arguments against such a scheme are boldly and clearly laid down in this same Report, in the remarks of the Heads of Houses and Divinity Professors of both Universities; and the country at large, or rather that part of it which is not led away by the names, but looks to the arguments arranged on either side, is in a better position to discuss and decide upon the question-whether the Universities are adapted to complete the training of all their graduates, or whether this must be wholly or in part handed over to other and differently constituted bodies?

Our readers are aware of the deep sympathy which, from time to time, we have expressed in the success of the Diocesan Theological Colleges. At the risk, however, of repeating some little of that which has already appeared in our pages, we buckle ourselves again to the discussion.

We have said that the Heads of Houses and Divinity Professors of both Universities have generally declared against the institution of Colleges attached to any of our cathedrals. Happily this is not without exception. Three names of note, at least, are appended to some thoughtful remarks on the necessity of such institutions. These names are Dr. Pusey, Dr. Richards, and