Wordsworth was not originally a revolutionist, like Coleridge and Southey. He was not even a native radical, except as all simplicity and austerity of character tend towards radicalism. When he passed through Paris, in November of 1791, and picked up a bit of stone from the ruins of the Bastile as a souvenir, it was only a sign of youthful sentimentality. But when he came back to Paris in October of 1792, after a winter at Orleans and a summer at Blois, in close intercourse with that ardent and noble republican, Michael Beaupuy, he had been converted into an eager partisan of the Republic. He even dreamed of throwing himself into the conflict, reflecting on “the power of one pure and energetic will to accomplish great things.” His conversion was not, it seems to me, primarily a matter of intellectual conviction. It was an affair of emotional sympathy. His knowledge of the political and social theories of the Revolution was but superficial. He was never a doctrinaire. The influence of Rousseau and Condorcet did not penetrate far beneath the skin of his mind. It was the primal joy of the Revolutionary movement that fascinated him,—the confused glimmering of new hopes and aspirations for mankind. He was like a man who has journeyed, half asleep, from the frost-bound dulness of a wintry clime, and finds himself, fully awake, in a new country, where the time for the singing of birds has come, and the multitudinous blossoming of spring bursts forth. He is possessed by the spirit of joy, and reason follows where feeling leads the way. Wordsworth himself has confessed, half unconsciously, the secret of his conversion in his lines on _The French Revolution as it appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement_. “Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which 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!” There was another “bliss,” keener even than the dreams of political enthusiasm, that thrilled him in this momentous year,—the rapture of romantic love. Into this he threw himself with ardour and tasted all its joy. We do not know exactly what it was that broke the vision and dashed the cup of gladness from his lips. Perhaps it was some difficulty with the girl’s family, who were royalists. Perhaps it was simply the poet’s poverty. Whatever the cause was, love’s young dream was shattered, and there was nothing left but the painful memory of an error, to be atoned for in later years as best he could.