gifts of the earth and sky. Both Christianity and the Revolution built their foundation on Human Nature itself.

"It brought together," De Tocqueville continues, "nations which scarcely knew one another, and united them by interests common to the race. It was disengaged from every special bond to a people or a form of government, or a society, or an epoch, or a race; it had no particular national end, no special French aim: its end was the general rights and duties of all men in political and social matters." That also was as true of Christianity as of the Revolution, if we leave out political matters with which Christianity did not directly meddle; and it is true of both, because they started alike from the one great thought, that there was only one nation, the nation of mankind, and that all its citizens were bound to sacrifice themselves for one another. In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, German, French or Englishman, but the one universal humanity which is all, and in all, and in which all men are one, equal, free,

and brothers.

The ideas are the same in both, and whether politically, socially, or spiritually applied, they are Christian ideas. The difference lies in this, that the ideas of the Revolution were applied only to Man as Man, the Christian ideas sought for a higher unity than the mere basis of a common humanity. They found it in the common Fatherhood of God and in the union of all men in the humanity of Christ; and until the ideas of the Revolution, as they have sometimes done, complete themselves in those two higher thoughts, they will fail to do their work. They

cannot conquer of themselves that selfishness in man which supports exclusiveness, ensures oppression, and hates the freedom which equalizes men. They cannot prevent revolution from ending in despotism.

Naturally, along with these great thoughts of an universal mankind, of natural equality, of the brotherhood of the race, were two other lines of thought-one which went forward with passion to overthrow all institutions which repressed the growth of Man or kept him in any slavery; another which went forward with equal passion to prophesy a glorious future for mankind—and in both these lines of thought, Christianity and the Revolution were at one. They were both the work of God in the hearts of men, and they both became leading poetical ideas in the new poetry of Man in England.

These were the principles of the Revolution, and the great religious English Poet took them up and supplemented them at once with their analogous Christian ideas. Wordsworth could not help it; he did it almost unconsciously. He found the doctrine of an universal Man and an universal brotherhood in the doctrine of an universal Father. He saw in God the source of the rights of men to equality and liberty. It was God who was the avenger of slavery, the vindicator of man against the evils of caste, of enforced ignorance, poverty, and despotism over the bodies or souls of men; and he looked forward through God, because He was eternal Justice and Love watching over Man, to a glorious time of universal joy and mutual love, when the race should be regenerated. It was he who made the poetry of Man in England not only revolutionary but theological.

It was thus the Revolution came on the hearts of young and imaginative and religious men in England. But we, who live upon the broad river of its thought, can scarcely realize what it was to men when first it broke, a living fount of streams, from its rock in the desert, to quench the thirst of those who longed, but knew not, till it came, for what they longed. We who live in times which, though not dull, are sad coloured, can scarcely imagine the glory of that awaking, the stream of new thoughts that transfigured life, the passionate emotion, the love and hatred, the horror and the rapture, the visionary glories, the unutterable hopes, the sense of deliverance, the new Heavens and the new Earth, brimful of promise, which dawned on men :

Before them shone a glorious world

Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled
To music suddenly.

In that early morning of hope, the love of liberty seized on men with a power, almost a violence, which prophesied a reaction, and forced itself forth in the young in violent poetry. I have already spoken of the uncontrolled and tempestuous verse of Coleridge on this subject. In his view also it was God who had awakened liberty. Freedom in France

From the Almighty's bosom leapt

With whirlwind arm, fierce minister of love.

Southey, and Lloyd felt the same; vague expectations, wild schemes, flitted through their minds; they projected a socialist communion on the Susquehanna to which they gave the name of the Pantisocracy, where all things were

to be in common, and the "cluster of families, bound together by congenial tastes and uniform forms rather than in self-depending and insulated households," were to solicit their food from daily toil, a thing which De Quincey says might have been fortunate for Coleridge. But none felt the enthusiasm of the time more intensely, nor expressed it more nobly than Wordsworth. He was the true human Poet of the time. He felt every pulse of the movement in his own heart, and responding to that he felt

From hour to hour the antiquated earth
Beat like the heart of man.

He describes its effect in the Excursion on a sorrowstricken, lonely man. He was roused from his grief by the crash of the Bastille, and from the wreck rose a golden palace, as it seemed, of equitable law and mild paternal sway.

The potent shock

I felt the transformation I perceived,
As marvellously seized as in that moment
When, from the blind mist issuing, 1 beheld
Glory-beyond all glory ever seen,
Confusion infinite of heaven and earth,

Dazzling the soul. Meanwhile, prophetic harps
In every grove were ringing, 'War shall cease;

Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured?

Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck
The tree of Liberty.'-My heart rebounded;

My melancholy voice the chorus joined;
-'Be joyful all ye nations; in all lands,
Ye that are capable of joy be glad!
Henceforth whate'er is wanting to yourselves
In others ye shall promptly find—and all
Enriched by mutual and reflected wealth

Shall with one heart, honour their common kind.

He was reconverted to the world in the general joy. He haunted all assemblies where busy men, inspired with universal hope, met to unite nations. In the victory of mankind over wrong, he found his faith in God again. He returned to public worship, and felt a new meaning in the Hebrew Prophets when they thundered against oppression, when they foretold a reign of peace.

Nor when Wordsworth describes its effect upon is he less enthusiastic

O pleasant exercise of hope and joy!

For mighty were the auxiliars that then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven !-Oh! times
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself

A prime Enchantress-to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)

The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtlety, and strength
Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it ;—they, too, who, of gentle mood
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,

himself