* * * * * It would be interesting to continue this investigation, and to trace the different phases of the great movement towards Nature, as it manifests itself in the poets who were Wordsworth’s contemporaries, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott, and Keble; and in the poets of the present generation, and in other writers still living, who in prose works have treated of æsthetics. But to do so would require at least another volume. With Wordsworth, however, as the great leader of that movement, one may, with propriety, pause for the present. For however various and interesting have been the aspects of Nature that have been presented by his contemporaries, or by more recent poets, none of them has rendered those aspects he has essayed more truly, broadly, and penetratingly. And Wordsworth alone, adding the philosopher to the poet, has speculated widely and deeply on the relation in which Nature stands, to the soul of man, and on the truths suggested by this relation. In that relation, and along the lines of thought that radiate from it, is to be found the true interpretation of Nature—that interpretation which man still craves, after Science has said its last word. This interpretation, however, is a truth which can only be apprehended by the moral imagination, that is, the imagination filled with moral light, and which will commend itself only to the most thoughtful men in their most feeling moods. It is not likely ever to be vindicated by logical processes, or tabulated in scientific registers. Not the less for that is it a vital truth, attesting itself, as all vital truths do, by the harmony it brings into all our thoughts—by the response it finds in the inner man. FOOTNOTES [1] _Quarterly Review_, October, 1870, pp. 143, 144. [2] Wordsworth, Preface to Second Edition of _Lyrical Ballads_. [3] Myosotis Alpestris. [4] S. T. Coleridge, _Lit. Biog._ vol. ii. p. 23. [5] Since writing the above passage, I have been pleased to find in Mr. Hamerton’s _Sylvan Year_, the following passage, which expresses more fully the same thought. He speaks (page 68) of “the delight of the citizen in green leaves, and the intensity of sensation about Nature which we find in poets who were bred in towns; whilst those who have lived much in the country, though they know and observe more, seem to feel more equably, and to go to Nature with less of sensuous thirst and excitement.” [6] _Life of Sir Isaac Newton_, by Sir David Brewster, vol. ii. pp. 407, 408. [7] Mozley’s _University Sermons_, p. 141. [8] See Müller’s _Lectures on Language_, 2d series, pp. 435, 436. [9] Miss Wordsworth, p. 228. [10] Essay on Keble. [11] _Trench on Parables_, p. 13. [12] Born 1621, died 1695. [13] Dawson, _Nature and the Bible_, pp. 23, 24. [14] Odyssey, B. vii. 112; Worsley, B. vii. 17th stanza.