Upon no individual mind in these realms had that aspiration for a universal brotherhood a more potent spell than upon a youthful genius then at Cambridge, with whom some notable Royston men were afterwards to come in contact. That glorious dream, in which the French Revolution had its birth, had burnt itself into the very soul of young Wordsworth who found indeed that-- 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! In the Autumn of 1789, young Wordsworth, and a fellow student left Cambridge and crossed the Channel to witness that Glorious opening, the unlooked for dawn, That promised everlasting joy to France! The gifted singer caught the blissful intoxication and has told us-- Meanwhile prophetic harps, In every grove were ringing, war shall cease. * * * * * * Henceforth whate'er is wanting in yourselves In others ye shall promptly find--and all Be rich by mutual and reflected wealth! {4} So the poet went out to stand by the cradle of liberty, only to come back disenchanted, came back to find his republican dreams gradually giving way to a settled conservatism, and the fruit of that disappointed first-love of liberty received with unmeasured opposition from the old school in literary criticism represented by Jeffrey and the _Edinburgh Review_, with the result that those in high places for long refused to listen to one who had the magical power of unlocking the sweet ministries of Nature as no other poet of the century had.