We are all familiar with the feelings that might lead to the attempt. Many of us, gazing on the boundless blue ocean, sparkling in the sunlight, have felt that to have this sight before our eyes every day would widen the soul and cleanse it of all its little meannesses; and we have turned away unwillingly and with the conscious desire to preserve the impression so as to be able to renew its effect. Or with beautiful landscapes before our eyes, especially those which we have seen in the course of travel, with the certainty of not being able to enjoy their beauty soon again, we have tried to be as passive as possible, so as to allow the picture to impress itself firmly on our memory. And we have often instinctively recalled the beautiful scene to mind; for the soul involuntarily calls up bright memories to draw strength and courage from them. But in us such impressions have been almost effaced by stronger ones. We have not been able to preserve them efficaciously for the future, or to ruminate over them again and again. The preoccupations of society and of our own passions have made it impossible for us to find our deepest and most inspiring joy in memories of sunlight falling upon flowers, or of entwisted giant trees. But the soul of the English poet, whose mission it was to re-awaken the feeling for all these elementary moods and impressions, was of a different stamp; unagitated by any practical activity, it vegetated in these day-dreams of natural beauty. And it is undeniable that this constant occupation of himself with the simplest natural impressions, kept his soul pure and free to perceive and to feel beauty in its simple, earthly manifestations, without fancifulness and without excitement. How rare is this capacity! how often wanting in the very greatest and best minds! And how quickly was it lost again in English poetry! It displays itself most exquisitely and completely in the few lightly-sketched female figures of the short poems. The heroes and heroines of the narrative poems, some of them portrayed with the design of arousing sympathy with the rural population and the lowest classes, others with the intention of edifying, are of distinctly inferior quality. But these few delicately-drawn figures, seen with the same tranquil and yet loving eyes with which Wordsworth looked at trees and birds, are nature itself. They are the English feminine nature; and never have the essential qualities of this nature been more exactly expressed. Take as an example of what I mean, the following little poem:-- "She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's too, her dusky hair: But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay.