Where the white mists, forever,

Are spread and unfurl'd—

In the stir of the forces

Whence issued the world.

And finally in prose, no less beautiful than this poetry, a recent writer, humbled by the terrible disgrace that wrecked his life, cries out:

"Nature whose sweet rains fall on the unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rock where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."

Yet after all, this is not the true mystical or transcendental communion with nature. It is not the sense of the Infinite that inspires the weary soul, but a yearning after human sympathy, after peace and rest. One final step, in the long progress of nature worship was

taken by Wordsworth-the priest to us all of the wonder and mystery of the world. "As Plato," says Frederic Myers, "showed how under the stimulus of prophet's glow, of prayer, of philosophy and love, the inward faculties may be so exalted as to make men ἔνθεος καὶ καὶ ἔκφρων κppwv "bereft of reason, but filled with divinity," percipient of an intelligence other and larger than his own,so Wordsworth has shown by his writings and example that the contemplation of nature may become a stimulus as inspiring as these, and we may see into the life of things. He substituted for the old system of belief in nature, an admiration so constant, an understanding so subtle, a sympathy so profound, that they become a veritable worship. Hence Wordsworth is venerated because he has shown how the contemplation of nature can be made a revealing agency, like love or prayer an opening into the transcendent world."

Examples of this mystical worship are scattered over all Wordsworth's works. Thus

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Stepping Westward," seems to link man's momentary wandering with the cosmic spectacle of heaven;" and in the "Excursion," we are told how the poet could read in the silent faces of the clouds unutterable love,

"How his spirit drank

The spectacle; sensation, soul and form
All melted in him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.

In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him; it was blessedness and love."

This mystical ecstacy, as characteristic as any that ever marked the soul of a medieval saint, finds its most complete expression in the lines written on Tintern Abbey ;

Nor less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

There can be no doubt that Wordsworth's influence is largely responsible for the widelyspread sense of a mystical power in the contemplation of nature, which marks our own time. In even more ecstatic language we read the same experience in Richard Jefferies' "Story of My Heart."

"I was not more than eighteen years old " he says, "when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me. I found them in the grass and fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, at sunrise and in the night. There was a deeper meaning everywhere." And again he writes, "I looked at the hills, at the dewy grass and then up through the elm branches to the sky. In a

moment all that was behind me, the house, the people, the sounds seemed to disappear, and to leave me alone. Involuntarily I drew a long breath; then I breathed slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, went up through the illumined sky and I was lost in a moment of exaltation."

All phases of nature are capable of inducing the transcendental feeling. Sunset has a peculiar power in this respect. We are told by Bielschowsky that Goethe could not gaze enough upon the setting sun; and what Lord Tennyson has called the most beautiful line in all English literature, as representing the abiding in the transient, is that of Wordsworth, in which he speaks of the unseen spirit,

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns."

Morning, likewise, has a special power of opening to us the doors of the transcendental world. Look at the dawn," says Max Müller, "and forget for a moment your astronomy; and I ask you whether, when the dark veil of the night is slowly lifted, and the