——‘For that other loss, The loss of confidence in social man, By the unexpected transports of our age Carried so high, that every thought which looked Beyond the temporal destiny of the kind— To many seemed superfluous; as no cause For such exalted confidence could e’er Exist; so, none is now for such despair. The two extremes are equally remote From truth and reason; do not, then, confound One with the other, but reject them both; And choose the middle point, whereon to build Sound expectations. This doth he advise Who shared at first the illusion. At this day, When a Tartarian darkness overspreads The groaning nations; when the impious rule, By will or by established ordinance, Their own dire agents, and constrain the good To acts which they abhor; though I bewail This triumph, yet the pity of my heart Prevents me not from owning that the law, By which mankind now suffers, is most just. For by superior energies; more strict Affiance in each other; faith more firm In their unhallowed principles, the bad Have fairly earned a victory o’er the weak, The vacillating, inconsistent good.’ In the application of these memorable lines, we should, perhaps, differ a little from Mr. Wordsworth; nor can we indulge with him in the fond conclusion afterwards hinted at, that one day _our_ triumph, the triumph of humanity and liberty, may be complete. For this purpose, we think several things necessary which are impossible. It is a consummation which cannot happen till the nature of things is changed, till the many become as united as the _one_, till romantic generosity shall be as common as gross selfishness, till reason shall have acquired the obstinate blindness of prejudice, till the love of power and of change shall no longer goad man on to restless action, till passion and will, hope and fear, love and hatred, and the objects proper to excite them, that is, alternate good and evil, shall no longer sway the bosoms and businesses of men. All things move, not in progress, but in a ceaseless round; our strength lies in our weakness; our virtues are built on our vices; our faculties are as limited as our being; nor can we lift man above his nature more than above the earth he treads. But though we cannot weave over again the airy, unsubstantial dream, which reason and experience have dispelled, ‘What though the radiance, which was once so bright, Be now for ever taken from our sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower’:—