he may, while he is seeking to satiate his imagination and his soul's longings, easily pass into a dreaming ideal Pantheist. Or, if his mind be not of a metaphysical cast, he may, perhaps, accept a kind of mental Epicureanism—an ideal scheme which ends in teaching him to look for the supreme good in that worldly happiness he can draw from a free, unbridled exercise of his intellect and imagination. Of such a scheme, he has not to look far for Professors among some of the great writers of this day.

I must now bring this Note to a conclusion; for I have examined our Author's claims as an interpreter of Nature; an asserter of facts; a critic; a quoter of authorities; an à priori reasoner; a moralist; and a natural theologian; and on all these points he has been found wanting-partly from imperfect knowledge, partly from a deluding hypothesis, and most of all from a want of comprehending (as one of the best effects of a good training) what I have ventured to call the sanctity and severity of physical truth. As a book of science his Work is shallow, false in principle, and worthless; as a book of moral speculation it is intensely mischievous; and it is avowedly addressed, not to men of science, but to persons who have little power of analysing its sophistry, and little knowledge to instruct them how false the work is to the true teaching of Nature. As to its moral application, it not merely puts aside any belief in revealed truth: but it verges on material Pantheism. Such is my deliberate opinion of this popular work.

My sentiments on many grave questions, discussed in this Volume, appear, unfortunately, in a very disjointed and controversial form. There was no help for this; but I wish it had been otherwise. A writer who is opposed to us in principle naturally entrenches himself in the strongest positions he can find; and we are, on that account, exposed to some disadvantage while attacking him. Our arguments neither appear in their strongest array, nor in what we might think their natural order. It would, indeed, have

SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX.

been a far pleasanter and more fruitful task to have been sowing, and watering, and reaping, than to have been set down to the more servile work of plucking out weeds and rooting up thorns: but, unhappily, the pleasanter task has not fallen to my lot. I have, however, no misgivings as to the truth of my general argument; and it was my intention to offer, in this place, a summary, or skeleton, of the methods and principles by which the great leading truths of nature should be drawn out-not controversially, but dogmatically and positively and then to point out, analogically, how they became connected with both moral and religious truth. A want both of time and space compels me to abandon this attempt; and here to end this long Note.

NOTE X.

Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.-
"The Prelude" of W. Worsdworth, &c.

I INTENDED in this Note to have given an analysis of some of the papers in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and a synopsis of the contents of the several Volumes. In papers that were above my reach the Authors would have assisted me, and I am confident that the synopsis would have been of great value: but I found, after a short trial, that, even in the most condensed form, an abstract and analysis of many ponderous Volumes could not be drawn out in less than two or three hundred pages. This part of my task is therefore reluctantly abandoned. But the publisher and the reader may, perhaps, rejoice at this. For the Volume is now swelled out of all common measure: and the Discourse, though none of the smallest, is so crushed between a monstrous Preface, and a ponder-. ous, double-headed Appendix, that it begins to look like a grain of wheat between two mill-stones.

Trinity College, July 29, 1850.

P. S. I am tempted to make one digression more, in consequence of the publication of a great work not unconnected with the history of Cambridge, during the passage of these concluding sheets through the Press (The Prelude, by W. Wordsworth).

Some of the best poets of the last century exhibited in perfection the felicitous good sense of Horace-the poetry of society, taste, and manners; seasoned by tart satire, and (too often) tainted by sensuality. The followers in this school had a language that was polished and glittering, but conventional; and not stamped from the mint of nature. The soul of Wordsworth could not endure it, and from childhood he longed for something better. He was the child of Nature, and he grew up the poet of Nature: and he soon learnt to shew what inexhaustible stores of strength he could draw out of the old Teutonic elements of our tongue; and how it was possible to be great, eloquent, and imaginative, without borrowing a spangle from the fashionable conventionalisms of his day. But no man ever worked out a revolution without sometimes running into extremes: and while he cast away, in intellectual scorn, all meretricious decorations, he sometimes clothed his noble meaning in a bare, uncouth, prosaic garb, which most men thought but ill fitted for the adornment of his sentiments. But who, on the other hand, has spread before the wondering senses more glorious imagery, more true touches of Nature's painting, or loftier strains of poetical inspiration? He taught us a holier faith in Nature, and how to seek a better communion with her. He worked out, and not without many a hardfought battle, and a long struggle against an adverse stream, a great revolution in the taste and poetical feeling of his countrymen; and he has opened a vast storehouse of enduring happiness to those who will take him for their guide, and will listen to his song.

But a man may

dream away his life, while he pillows his

soul in this kind of luxurious intellectual communion with the gorgeous forms of outer Nature, and be wanting even in catholicity of taste. For Wordsworth's poetry is not catholic, like that of Shakspeare. Nay, a student may feed on it and revel in it till he becomes an idolater of nature, to the verge of Pantheism; so as to forget his fellow-men and his communion with them; and duties higher still, and aspirations more lofty than can rise in the human breast by mere imaginative intercourse with the world of Nature; whatever soul may be breathed into it by the heavings of a poet's heart, or whatever warmth may be given to it by the genial glow of his inspired love. Rousseau could sometimes call out the living soul of nature with all the power of Wordsworth; but he was sensual and impure: and he could cover his impurity by words as glowing and as stirring, as those whereby he decorated the sentiments he had felt during his honest intercourse with Nature, and made other men feel with him. But Wordsworth was one of the purest of mankind.

She was

We now know the growth of his early mind-told by himself poetically, but honestly, no one can doubt. He speaks not well of Cambridge; but it is Cambridge was more than sixty years since; and as she appeared to his youthful fancy and his ill-instructed reason. not then, nor is she now, any place of ideal perfection. I have myself felt some of the evils of which he sings: but this is no place for the discussion of them. He knew nothing then of human nature but what he had learnt in boyish solitude, while communing with himself among his native mountains. He was a raw youth with ample genius and a burning fancy; and with schemes of perfectibility floating in his mind, which he learnt afterwards to look back upon as idle dreams, and sometimes would gently laugh at during his maturer life. In principle he was almost a Jacobin (a word not then invented); and, though moral from habit and temper, he was impatient both of political and intellectual

control; and neither in those days (nor ever afterwards in advancing life) did he even attempt to drink freely at those fountains of material learning, which never ran dry after Bacon's days, and have gushed out with a continued living stream ever since Newton spent his philosophic life within our walls.

"I, bred up 'mid Nature's luxuries,

Was a spoilt child, and rambling like the wind,
As I had done in daily intercourse

With those crystalline rivers, solemn heights,
And mountains, ranging like a fowl of the air,
I was ill-tutored for captivity."

(The Prelude, Book 111.)

Such is his account of himself: and how could such a Youth be a wise judge of any great academic institution? And how could he tell us, except out of the visions of an untutored fancy, what it ought to be? It is arrant folly to quote his words as damnatory of the Cambridge system. then; and still more to quote them as damnatory of the system now. That gross evils existed, I doubt not; for gross evils ran through all society. Young Wordsworth felt them, and described them well. But, within the last thirty years, he has many times lived among us as one of our household and no man ever poured out more heartfelt wishes for the stability of our ancient Colleges, or a firmer belief that in the form of discipline with which they have come down to us, they are working well for the character of Englishmen, and for the common good.

The reader will, I trust, pardon this (perhaps not illtimed) digression: but one word more before I leave it. Wordsworth was not only pure from habit and self-control; but he was also pure from a principle above what he drew from his communion with Nature. He was a religious man: and many a time, when it has been my great happiness to roam with him over his native mountains, have I heard him pour out his thanks, that while he had been permitted to slake his innermost thirst at Nature's spring,