To this point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive, when he wrote 'Tintern Abbey,' and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them--He is a genius and superior to us, in so far as he can, more than we, make discoveries and shed a light in them--Here I must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though I think it has depended more upon the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness of Mind--From the Paradise Lost and the other Works of Milton, I hope it is not too presuming, even between ourselves, to say, that his Philosophy, human and divine, may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years. In his time, Englishmen were just emancipated from a great superstition, and Men had got hold of certain points and resting-places in reasoning which were too newly born to be doubted, and too much opposed by the Mass of Europe not to be thought ethereal and authentically divine--Who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice, and Chastity in Comus, just at the time of the dismissal of a hundred disgraces? who would not rest satisfied with his hintings at good and evil in the Paradise Lost, when just free from the Inquisition and burning in Smithfield? The Reformation produced such immediate and great benefits, that Protestantism was considered under the immediate eye of heaven, and its own remaining Dogmas and superstitions then, as it were, regenerated, constituted those resting-places and seeming sure points of Reasoning--from that I have mentioned, Milton, whatever he may have thought in the sequel, appears to have been content with these by his writings--He did not think into the human heart as Wordsworth has done--Yet Milton as a Philosopher had sure as great powers as Wordsworth--What is then to be inferred? O many things--It proves there is really a grand march of intellect,--It proves that a mighty providence subdues the mightiest Minds to the service of the time being, whether it be in human Knowledge or Religion. I have often pitied a tutor who has to hear "Nom. Musa" so often dinn'd into his ears--I hope you may not have the same pain in this scribbling--I may have read these things before, but I never had even a thus dim perception of them; and moreover I like to say my lesson to one who will endure my tediousness for my own sake--After all there is certainly something real in the world--Moore's present to Hazlitt is real--I like that Moore, and am glad I saw him at the Theatre just before I left Town. Tom has spit a _leetle_ blood this afternoon, and that is rather a damper--but I know--the truth is there is something real in the World. Your third Chamber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one--stored with the wine of love--and the Bread of Friendship--When you see George if he should not have received a letter from me tell him he will find one at home most