he was not defeated. "He being dead yet speaketh," and that Milton had a voice whose sound was like the sea-pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free; a voice that spoke the manly purpose of a life dedicated to noble ends, was profoundly felt by Wordsworth at another crisis of our country's fortunes. In the glorious sonnets dedicated to liberty, the spirit of Milton seems to live again in the greatest of his successors.

In his autobiographical poem-"The Prelude "-Wordsworth has told us how the French Revolution swayed his intellect and aroused within him many a strong hope and bootless aspiration. That his mind was keenly alive to political events may be seen in "The Convention of Cintra," a piece of fine writing vigorous in statement, and logical in argument; while later on in life the sonnets already mentioned show how, beneath a calm exterior, the love of country made the fire that burned within him glow with a white heat. In this respect too, the Conservative and Churchman stands on the same platform with the Independent and Iconoclast.

The great poets of England are now constantly served up in textbooks, in order that boys may win prizes, and students pass examinations. Every allusion is explained, every sentence has to be parsed, every grammatical peculiarity studied, and the result of all this discipline is probably to make our English poets as much hated by the average student as Horace was hated by Lord Byron. The process may be necessary, but the result is inevitable. The bloom of the poetry is lost, and as a compensation the competitor for prizes gains, or is thought to gain, a more accurate knowledge of the poet's language and meaning. Every poem of Milton's has been thus placed in the hands of the dissector, and many poems of Wordsworth have felt also the scalpel of the grammarians.~ In this way it has come to pass that these poets are better known to young readers than they were twenty years ago. It would be interesting to learn whether in another and higher sense they have gained in the number of intelligent readers and admirers. How many passages of their verse live in the memory and can be quoted without book? How many will a slight allusion instantly recall? How far have these poets proved themselves masters to whom the lovers of literature own fealty? Milton as a great English classic, has a place in every library, and is supposed to be read by every intelligent Englishman; but the men who feel the wonderful harmony of his verse, and listen to it with ever fresh delight the readers who would acknowledge, if deprived of it, that a great joy had vanished from their lives-are, we believe, comparatively few in number. Still fewer, it is to be feared, are conscious of the less prominent, but not less potent, force by which Wordsworth sways the hearts of his worshippers. A well-known journal has recently expressed the opinion that Wordsworth is little known in our day, and the belief in this indifference has led Mr. Arnold to come forward as the champion of a poet for whom his reverence is

profound. He is a daring champion; for putting Chaucer out of the question, he does not hesitate to rank Wordsworth above all the poets of his country, with the exception of Shakespeare and Milton, and above all the poets of the Continent since the days of Moliere with the single exception of Goethe. He considers that Wordsworth has "left a body of poetical work superior in power, interest, and the great qualities which give enduring freshness to that which any one of the others has left," and he believes that this high position will be ultimately awarded him, not in England only, but throughout Europe. To some readers and critics this splendid laudation of the homely poet of Rydal" will be astounding and incomprehensible. At the same time they will acknowledge Mr. Arnold's title to be heard on a subject like this. Not only is he himself a true poet able from culture and training to appreciate the subtlest charms and most enduring qualities of verse, but his reading is extensive, and the national partiality is likely to sway his judgment. On the other hand some influence may be allowed to the force of early impressions, and to the fact that as a young man Mr. Arnold sat at Wordsworth's feet and listened reverently to his words. No doubt too, something like prejudice, if so harsh a word need be used, must almost always blend with the love a man feels for a poet whose verses have stirred his strongest feelings, stimulated his intellect, opened his eyes to nature and given him solace and strength. Those of us who have felt Wordsworth's power in these ways, and have gained from him life and food, are not likely to place him below poets from whom we have received less of satisfaction and delight. An absolutely impartial estimate of Wordsworth's poetry from one who loves it, is perhaps impossible, since he cannot view it apart from his own life. But if this be so, it seems far more certain that the impartiality which arises from indifference is still less capable of forming a just opinion.

Of all modern poets Wordsworth demands most attention from the reader, and will best repay it. He does not write for those who regard poetry as an amusement, and he will not go one step out of his way to attract such readers. So little does he care for ornament and for what is called poetical diction, that he becomes at times negligent and simple to a fault. Wilkes used to say that in society he needed a little extra time to get over the first impression made by his ugly features. Wordsworth's poetry, too, in order that the reader may forget its meaner features, needs the extra time and thought which they who run while they read are not likely to give. Wordsworth's peculiarities, and what may not unreasonably be called his insularity, his themes of song and his method of treatment, will probably prevent what Mr. Arnold anticipates, the recognition of foreign countries. Few are the poets whose fame is world wide, and Wordsworth, although, one of the very chief glories of English poetry," does not belong to that number. He must be con

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tent, as Milton professed himself to be, with these British Isles as his world, or rather-and this assuredly is fame enough for any manwith the love and admiration of many who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake," not here alone, but throughout the colonies and dependencies of the Empire.

The deficiencies of Wordsworth are obvious. His verse, like that of Ruckert, too often degenerates into prose; after dropping his singing robes, he imagines he is still singing; he lacks humor, wit, dramatic skill, and while he knew well one class of men, the stalwart peasantry of Cumberland, he lacked the wider knowledge of men so invaluable to a poet. Temple Bar,

THE NEW RENAISSANCE; OR THE GOSPEL OF

INTENSITY.

SOME apology is due to readers for the title chosen for this paper. "Renaissance" is perhaps too inclusive a word to be used, as we intend to use it here, to signify the new birth of certain phases of art and literature. Attention is naturally directed to the great Italian revival of learning generally denoted by our title, and we hesitate to admit its significance as applied to the ephemeral changes of fashion which mark the present time.

Nevertheless, there may be re-births of every variety of magnitude, and one such has begun in England during the last thirty years. During that time there has hardly been one belief, however firmly held, which has not been severely questioned; one habit of life which has not been altered or swept away; or any department of art, science, or literature which has not undergone the most vital changes. One result of these changes is undoubtedly a sense of uncertainty and unrest-a disposition to hesitate in the formation of beliefs, and to give to them, not an absolute, but a provisional, assent; to maintain, or at all events feel, that we are doing, not the best, but the best under present circumstances. The notion of development, snatched hastily from its first province of natural science, has quickly overspread the whole field of thought and action, and opens out to us all vistas of possible glory, as beautiful, and perhaps as unsubstantial, as the lands of purple and gold which we see

"beyond the sun-set, and the baths Of all the Western stars."

We travel sixty miles an hour instead of six; we speak by electricity across the globe, and have the voices of our friends

passed to us through an interval of two or three hundred miles as we sit by our own fireside; we have magnified sound till by its means we can detect disease, and imprisoned it till we can reproduce a lost voice years after its accents have faded; every power of earth, air, and water has been pressed into our service, and analyzed by our ingenuity; nay even the last great problem has found claimants for its solution-and there be those who believe that means have been found to generate life itself.

At the very moment in which I write these lines a scientific Englishman, by a fast of forty days, is engaged in demonstrating that it is possible for a man to live without eating, and almost without drinking; and probably ere long sleep will be eliminated from the catalogue of indispensables, and it will be shown to have been only a vulgar error which has made us pass a third of our lives in duÏl oblivion.

But if the conquests and discoveries of science have been fruitful of change, a no less wonderful transformation has taken place in the region of the mind; though here, from the very nature of the case, the effects are not so clearly evident at first sight. If the whole field of the physical universe has been thrown open to science, the whole field of the mental universe has likewise been attacked. In philosophy, in morality, and in religion, the movement of the century has stirred the depths to an almost unparalleled extent; beliefs, the inheritance of ages, seem to have grown old, withered, and vanished almost in a day, and instead of the calm, and perhaps a little unthinking belief of our fathers, we now hear on every side

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"Obstinate questionings

Of self and outward things; "

and, as one of the most typical of present writers once said, there is no child now but can throw stones at the windows which Colenso has broken." What the world has been for ages before our chronology takes it up; what it will be for ages after our race has done its work and gone its way, the evolution of mind from matter, of life from lifelessness-the great doctrine of the conservation of energy, and the still greater theory of evolution-all these speculations, theories, discoveries (call them by what name we will, according as we accept or dispute the grounds upon which they rest) have terribly shaken the old formulas of life. Every day a fresh attack seems to be made upon some hitherto secure position of thought, and the air is filled with the din, as the earth is covered with the ruins, of falling temples.

It is not my purpose here to enter upon any discussion as to the endurance or the ultimate result of the state of things which has been briefly indicated above; indeed, such a discussion would be

premature and certainly futile. We are at present, to use the old simile, as soldiers in a hand-to-hand conflict, hearing the noise and seeing the dust of the battle, striking perhaps a hard blow now and then (we hope upon our rightful enemy), but getting no clue to the general issue, much less the purpose, of our combat. The question asked so frequently now, Is life worth living?" must be left for solution to the future generations-the most we can hope to do being to make it more "worth living" for them; and not the least efficient way of so doing will be to clear the path of the sham philosophies and sensational fashions which have sprung up thickly in the place of the ancient creeds.

At a time, such as we have described, when all things are being put to the test of fresh investigation, it was not to be expected that the wave of change would leave poetry and painting untouched; but rather that those factors in man's life, sensitive as they are by their nature to every passing influence, would show perhaps more quickly and plainly than could be seen elsewhere, some of the ef fects of the new theories. In this paper I propose to trace, as briefly as possible, the way in which one special phase of poetry and painting developed under the influences which surrounded it, and say a few words upon some of the results which the cultivation of this special phase has brought about. If in the course of such narration I am forced to linger somewhat long over a "twicetold tale"-that of modern pre Raphaelitism-I hope my readers will bear in mind that the subject is one upon which there has always been much misconception; and that though pre-Raphaelitism, in its pure and original form, has passed away, its dead carcass is still left with us, and is a source of corruption which cannot be too soon fully understood. The claims of the modern gospel of intensity, and the critical theories of pure sensuousness which are proclaimed so loudly just now, have their curiously unfitting root in the pre-Raphaelite movement; and it strangely happens that the action taken by three or four clever art students, towards a reformation in art as healthy as it was needful, has ended in breeding phases of art and poetry which embody the lowest theory of art usefulness, and the most morbid and sickly art results. And, as might be expected, the evil is spreading from pictures and poems into private life; it has attacked with considerable success the decoration of our houses and the dresses of our women and if it has not founded an actual creed, it is less because disciples are wanting, than that its elements are so heterogeneous as to be incapable of easy consolidation. If this hybrid pre-Raphaelitism has not yet erected itself into a rule of conduct, it has become in some sort effective as a standard of manners; and there may now be seen at many a social gathering young men and women whose lackluster eyes, disheveled hair, eccentricity of attire, and general appearance of weary passion, proclaim them to be members of the new school.