If “The Prelude” has thus fewer “trances of thought and mountings of the mind” than “The Excursion,” it still bears the marks of the lofty and thoughtful genius of the author, and increases our respect for his personal character. The books devoted to his residence in Cambridge, his tour to the Alps, and to the influence of the French Revolution upon his genius and character, are additions to the philosophy of the human mind. We believe that few metaphysicians ever scanned their consciousness with more intensity of vision, than Wordsworth was wont to direct upon his; and in the present poem he has subtily noted, and firmly expressed, many new psychological laws and processes. The whole subject of the development of the mind’s creative faculties, and the vital laws of mental growth and production, has been but little touched by professed metaphysicians; and we believe “The Prelude” conveys more real available knowledge of the facts and laws of man’s internal constitution, than can be found in Hume or Kant. We have not space for many extracts from the poem. Its philosophical value could not be indicated by quotations, and we shall content ourselves with citing a few random passages, illustrative of its general style and thought. The following lines exhibit the tendency of Wordsworth’s mind, when a youth at college: I looked for universal things; perused The common countenance of earth and sky: Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace Of that first Paradise whence man was driven; And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed By the proud name she bears—the name of Heaven. I called on both to teach me what they might; _Or turning the mind in upon herself,_ _Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts_ _And spread them with a wider creeping; felt_ _Incumbencies more awful_, visitings Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul That tolerates the _indignities_ of Time, And from the centre of Eternity All finite motions, overruling, lives In glory immutable. — To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower, Even the loose stones that cover the high-way, _I gave a moral life_: I saw them feel, Or linked them to some feeling! _the great mass_ _Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all_ _That I beheld respired with inward meaning._ In the following stern description, he records his condemnation of life as he found it at the great English university of Cambridge: