when its gratification should be presented by conscience, which kept a scrupulous charge of all his time, as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic consciousness of duty as to refuse himself time for surveying the magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.

His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred everything he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent: and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence.

Unless the eternal happiness of mankind be an insignificant concern, and the passion to promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite George Whitefield, as a noble instance of this attribute of the decisive character, this intense necessity of action. The great cause which was so languid a thing in the hands of many of its advocates, assumed in his administrations an unmitigable urgency.

Many of the Christian missionaries among the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and Schwartz, have displayed memorable examples of this dedication of their whole being to their office, this eternal abjuration of all the quiescent feelings.

This would be the proper place for introducing (if I did not hesitate to introduce in any connection with merely human instances) the example of him who said, “I must be about my Father's business. My

meat and drink is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.”

321.-RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

WORDSWORTH.

THERE was a roaring in the wind all night;

The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods;
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters,
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

All things that love the sun are out of doors:

The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops ;-

—on the moors

The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

I was a traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods, and distant waters, roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:

The pleasant season did my heart employ :
My old remembrances went from me wholly ;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy!

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might

Of joy in minds that can no farther go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low,
To me that morning did it happen so ;

And fears, and fancies, thick upon me came;

Dim sadness-and blind thought, I knew not, nor could name.

I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare :
Even such a happy child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me-
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call

Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain side:
By our own spirits are we deified:

We poets in our youth begin in gladness:

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befel, that, in this lonely place,

When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven

I saw a man before me unawares :

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie,
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,

By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense :

Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.
Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep-in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming-together in life's pilgrimage;

As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,

A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.
Himself he propped, his body, limbs, and face,
Upon a long gray staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood,
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood;
That heareth not the loud winds when they call ;
And moveth altogether, if it move at all.

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned,
As if he had been reading in a book:
And now a stranger's privilege I took;
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,

"This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."

A gentle answer did the old man make,

In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew:
And him with further words I thus bespake,
"What occupation do you there pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you."
He answered, while a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet vivid eyes.

His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,

But each in solemn order followed each,
With something of a lofty utterance drest;

Choice word, and measured phrase; above the reach
Of ordinary men; a stately speech;

Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,

Religious men, who give to God and man their dues.

He told, that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:

From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor;
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance;
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

The old man still stood talking by my side;
But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;
And the whole body of the man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream;
Or like a man from some far region sent,
To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.

My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;

Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills:

And mighty poets in their misery dead.
-Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
My question eagerly did I renew,-—

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How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"

He with a smile did then his words repeat;

And said, that, gathering leeches, far and wide
He travelled; stirring thus about his feet

The waters of the pool where they abide.

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Once I could meet with them on every side;

But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may.”

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old man's shape, and speech, all troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,

Wandering about alone and silently.