Such a confession, or rather boast, in the mouth of almost any other man would sound hypocritical or self-complacent; but with Wordsworth, we feel it is the bare truth told us for our help and guidance, as being the necessary and preliminary step. It is a high standard which is held up before us, even in this first stage, for it includes, not merely the avoidance of all obvious sins against man and society, but a tuning-up, a transmuting of the whole nature to high and noble endeavour. Wordsworth found his reward, in a settled state of calm serenity, "consummate happiness," "wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative," and, as he tells us in the fourth book of the _Prelude_, on one evening during that summer vacation, Gently did my soul Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood Naked, as in the presence of her God. When the mind and soul have been prepared, the next step is concentration, aspiration. Then it is borne in upon the poet that in the infinite and in the eternal alone can we find rest, can we find ourselves; and towards this infinitude we must strive with unflagging ardour; Our destiny, our being's heart and home, Is with infinitude, and only there. _Prelude_, Book vi. 604. The result of this aspiration towards the infinite is a quickening of consciousness, upon which follows the attainment of the third or unitive stage, the moment when man can "breathe in worlds to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil," and perceive "the forms whose kingdom is where time and place are not." Such minds-- need not extraordinary calls To rouse them; in a world of life they live, By sensible impressions not enthralled, ... the highest bliss That flesh can know _is theirs_--the consciousness Of Whom they are. _Prelude_, Book xiv. 105, 113, Wordsworth possessed in a peculiar degree a mystic sense of infinity, of the boundless, of the opening-out of the world of our normal finite experience into the transcendental; and he had a rare power of putting this into words. It was a feeling which, as he tells us in the _Prelude_ (Book xiii.), he had from earliest childhood, when the disappearing line of the public highway-- Was like an invitation into space Boundless, or guide into eternity, a feeling which, applied to man, gives that inspiriting certitude of boundless growth, when the soul has-- ... an obscure sense Of possible sublimity, whereto With growing faculties she doth aspire.