tendency of Mr. Wordsworth’s mind is the reverse of dramatic. It resists all change of character, all variety of scenery, all the bustle, machinery, and pantomime of the stage, or of real life,—whatever might relieve, or relax, or change the direction of its own activity, jealous of all competition. The power of his mind preys upon itself. It is as if there were nothing but himself and the universe. He lives in the busy solitude of his own heart; in the deep silence of thought. His imagination lends life and feeling only to ‘the bare trees and mountains bare’; peoples the viewless tracts of air, and converses with the silent clouds! We could have wished that our author had given to his work the form of a didactic poem altogether, with only occasional digressions or allusions to particular instances. But he has chosen to encumber himself with a load of narrative and description, which sometimes hinders the progress and effect of the general reasoning, and which, instead of being inwoven with the text, would have come in better in plain prose as notes at the end of the volume. Mr. Wordsworth, indeed, says finely, and perhaps as truly as finely: ‘Exchange the shepherd’s frock of native grey For robes with regal purple tinged; convert The crook into a sceptre; give the pomp Of circumstance; and here the tragic Muse Shall find apt subjects for her highest art. Amid the groves, beneath the shadowy hills, The generations are prepared; the pangs, The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife Of poor humanity’s afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.’ But he immediately declines availing himself of these resources of the rustic moralist: for the priest, who officiates as ‘the sad historian of the pensive plain’ says in reply: ‘Our system is not fashioned to preclude That sympathy which you for others ask: And I could tell, not travelling for my theme Beyond the limits of these humble graves, Of strange disasters; but I pass them by, Loth to disturb what Heaven hath hushed to peace.’ There is, in fact, in Mr. Wordsworth’s mind an evident repugnance to admit anything that tells for itself, without the interpretation of the poet,—a fastidious antipathy to immediate effect,—a systematic unwillingness to share the palm with his subject. Where, however, he has a subject presented to him, ‘such as the meeting soul may pierce,’ and to which he does not grudge to lend the aid of his fine genius, his powers of description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of his classical predecessor, Akenside. Among several others which we might select we give the following passage, describing the religion of ancient Greece: