He thus alludes to these matters in the “Prelude:”-- “---- Spare the house of God. Was ever known The witless shepherd who persists to drive A flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked? A weight must surely hang on days begun And ended with such mockery. Be wise, Ye Presidents and Deans, and, till the spirit Of ancient times revive, and truth be trained At home in pious service, to your bells Give seasonable rest, for ’tis a sound Hollow as ever vexed the tranquil air; And your officious doings bring disgrace On the plain steeples of our English church, Whose worship, ’mid remotest village trees, Suffers for this.” Wordsworth felt this, at the time, very keenly, and saw what a grist it afforded for the grinding ridicule of the scoffer and the atheist. Turning from these melancholy reflections, to the dear old times, when men of learning were really pious, and devoted to their scholarly functions, when “Bacon, Erasmus, or Melancthon read Before the doors or windows of their cells, By moonshine, thro’ mere lack of taper-light,” he conjures up a vision of scholastic life--a vision of the future--which however, he says, “fell to ruin round him,” and was all in vain. Notwithstanding the confusion of his outer circumstances, and the general aimless tenor of his life, Wordsworth did not entirely neglect his own culture--and in the silence of the academic groves, by the sweetly remembered Cam, or in his own rooms in the Gothic court of St. John’s, he brooded over the problems of life, death, and immortality. The ghosts of the mighty dead haunted him likewise, as he walked through the familiar places, where they were wont to walk whilst dwelling in their earthly tenements, and roused him, at times, to commence anew the race of learning and distinction. “I could not always pass Thro’ the same gateways, sleep where they had slept, Wake where they waked, range that enclosure old, That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.” And yet, with the exception of “Lines written whilst sailing up the Cam,” Wordsworth does not seem to have composed a line at Cambridge. He was learning, however, the first lessons of worldly wisdom all this time; was initiated into the ways of life, and the characters of men; and such discipline could not have been spared the poet, without loss to him. He does not regret, he says, any experience in his college life, and thinks the gowned youth who only misses what he missed, and fell no lower than he fell, is not a very hopeless character. SUMMER HOLIDAYS.