August 4th they reached the Chartreuse, just at the time when the inmates of the monastery were ruthlessly ejected by the revolutionary forces. The sight appealed strongly to that conservative and religious element in Wordsworth's character, which was no less marked than his love of liberty, equality, and a simple life. The historical spirit, as it is now called, or if you like the English habit of mind which loves to preserve the good while it removes the evil, is clearly expressed in the poet's lines on this act of thoughtless excess. "But oh! if Past and Future be the wings On whose support harmoniously conjoined Moves the great spirit of human knowledge, spare These courts of mystery, where a step advanced Between the portals of the shadowy rocks Leaves far behind life's treacherous vanities, For penitential tears and trembling hopes."

It is in such sympathy with the past, especially with the religious past, that Wordsworth breaks away from the mental habits of the eighteenth century and comes in contact with the Romanticism of Walter Scott and the Anglican revival of Newman and Keble.

The tour lasted till the middle of October, fourteen weeks in all. From the Chartreuse the route included Aix, Lausanne, Chamounix, the lakes Maggiore and Como, Splugen, Lucerne, the lakes of Zurich and Constance, Lauterbrunnen, Basle, Mayence, Coblentz and Cologne. The journey from Basle to Cologne was on a boat bought for the trip: otherwise the travellers went on foot and with a healthy insular disregard of foreign conventionalities. Wordsworth. writes home to his sister:

"Our appearance is singular, and we have often observed that in passing through a village we have excited a general smile. Our coats which we had made light on purpose for the journey are of the same piece; and our manner of carrying our bundles, which is upon our heads, with each an oak stick in our hands, contributes not a little to that general curiosity which we seem to excite."

at

thless

appeal

elemen

The tour had its comic side, but to Wordsworth it was rich in good. In the vastness of Alpine scenery his mind saw the manifestation of an unending life :

"The immeasurable height

Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,

The stationary blasts of waterfalls,

And in the narrow rent at every turn

Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky.......,
The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light...
The types and symbols of Eternity,

Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

in the political enthusiasm of the time he drank in
"Lessons of genuine brotherhood, the plain
And universal reason of mankind,

The truths of young and old."

A year or two later and those political and humanitarian interests absolutely possessed him : at present they had a but divided sway. He was a young man with eyes newly opened to the wonders of the world, and even the great drama of Revolution could only secure half his interest.

"A stripling, scarcely of the household then
Of social life, I looked upon these things
As from a distance; heard, and saw, and felt,
Was touched, but with no intimate concern;
I seemed to move along them, as a bird
Moves through the air, or as a fish pursues
Its sport, or feeds in its proper element;
I wanted not that joy, I did not need
Such help; the ever-living universe,

Turn where I might, was opening out its glories,

And the independent spirit of pure youth

Called forth, at every season, new delights,

Spread round my steps like sunshine o'er green fields."

The travellers returned to England by Calais in October, and in November Wordsworth came up to

VOL. XVI.

M M M

Cambridge for his last term. In those days (as we are informed by the courteous Registrary Dr Luard), twelve terms were nominally required for the B.A. degree. One however was considered to have been kept before a man came up. It was then necessary to reside for ten terms, after which in January of the fourth year, in the nominal twelfth term, the Tripos took place and the degree was conferred. The supplicat for Wordsworth's degree, preserved with those of the rest of his year in the Registry, gives the date Jan. 21, 1791.

Having taken his degree Wordsworth left Cambridge at once. After a visit to Forncett he lingered for some months in London in great doubt as to his future, and then spent the summer with his friend Jones in Wales. In the October term of this year 1791 he seems again to have resided for a few weeks in Cambridge, but the attraction of events in France becoming irresistible, in November he left England and became a most ardent spectator of the next phases of the Revolution.

more

The task of an academic biographer naturally closes when his hero has duly received the B.A. degree and dropped into the vast ocean of 'men gone down.' But even the academic biographer feels in Wordsworth's case that his leaving Cambridge is not the end, but the beginning of a career. It is true that he had still to encounter some rude shocks with the world before his spiritual training was complete and his message of joy and consolation ready to be delivered. But when that message came, it included all the deepest experiences of the poet's inward life till then. What, we may ask, did Cambridge contribute? If by Cambridge we mean the official body and its effete system, we may answer at once--Nothing. But can we say the same of the varied influences which surrounded Wordsworth during his residence amongst us? Surely not. We cannot doubt that in our little world he learnt some lessons of life-long value

wea

twe

degre

on the play of human passions. We know how
much our quiet landscape trained his eye and deepened
his love of nature-how greatly his sympathy with the
past was strengthened among our ancient buildings-
how the traditions of Cambridge gave him a sense of
noble kinship with the great poets and thinkers of old-
"Even the great Newton's own ethereal self

Seemed humbled in those precincts, thence to be
The more endeared."

The Wordsworth who left St John's a century ago
was a far graver, nobler, stronger man than the Hawks-
head schoolboy who had walked our streets three years
before in the double importance of freshmanship and
new clothes. Time would have done its work
anywhere but to us who love Cambridge it may be
permitted to believe that nowhere would it have done
more for Wordsworth than it did here.
And if we

hear those Cambridge days made the text for lamentation, as we sometimes may, let us picture the old poet as he revisited the college-rooms of his youth. "Here," he said, "I was as joyous as a lark."

G. C. M. S.

JOHNIAN WORTHIES AT THE GUELPH

EXHIBITION.

HE "Exhibition of the Royal House of Guelph" now occupying the New Gallery, Regent Street, in succession to the "Tudor" and "Stuart" Exhibitions of previous years, is intended to include portraits and memorials of the chief personages who flourished under the Hanoverian Sovereigns up to the accession of her present Majesty. In addition to the portrait of Wordsworth by Pickersgill, the familiar ornament of our College Hall and the subject of the poet's well-known sonnet Go, faithful Portrait, which hangs in a conspicuous position in the South Gallery, there are many others that have a special interest to Johnians. The following is a list of these, with the numbers assigned to them in the catalogue.

91. William Wilberforce (1759-1833).

Painted by J. Rising for Lord Muncaster: lent by the Earl of Crawford. This is the original of the engraving presented to the Small Combination-Room by Mr Scott (Eagle xvi. 79). 597. The same.

A miniature: lent by Mrs Le Fanu.

116. Charles Watson Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, K.G. (1730-1782).

Lord Rockingham was Prime Minister in 1765, and again on the fall of Lord North's administration in 1782; he died in office in the same year. Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds : lent by G. G. C. Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Esq.

1017. The same.

An enamel miniature, signed "W. B. 1786:" lent by Jeffrey Whitehead, Esq.