To return to the Sonnets. What is a spinning-wheel?' is a question which may now be asked by a full-grown person who cannot recollect to have seen one; and it might be answered by a person twenty years older, that in his youth such an implement was seen in every cottage and in many houses of somewhat higher pretensions-that it was a wheel mounted two or three feet above the ground, to which the spinner's foot, by means of a sort of pedal, communicated a uniform rotatory motion, whilst her fingers were busy in manipulating the line of flax drawn from it,-that the motion was just not so rapid but that it could be distinctly discerned by the eye, and that the sound which accompanied it was something between the humming of a top and the purring of a cat. But if, having explained the mechanism of the spinningwheel and its direct use and purpose, he were asked to give some account of its moral influences, he might require the aid of the poet :

'Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend

Now that the cottage Spinning-wheel is mute;
And Care-a comforter that best could suit
Her froward mood, and softliest reprehend;
And Love—a charmer's voice, that used to lend,
More efficaciously than aught that flows
From harp or lute, kind influence to compose
The throbbing pulse-else troubled without end:
Even Joy could tell, Joy craving truce and rest
From her own overflow, what power sedate
On those revolving motions did await
Assiduously to sooth her aching breast,
And, to a point of just relief, abate

The mantling triumphs of a day too blest.'-p. 23.

Mechanical employment, even without these peculiar charms of the spinning-wheel, has no doubt a tendency to alleviate suffering and subdue excitability, and this truth has a political as well as a moral bearing; for in seasons of commercial or agricultural difficulty, the political disturbances which arise amongst the lower orders of the people may be attributed, not to distress and destitution only-for it has often been observed that they extend to many who are under no immediate pressure of want-but also to the concurrent deprivation of that great sedative to the human mind which is found in the employment of the body. Neither hunger nor full feeding act alike upon all men-the one will not invariably produce irritability, still less will the other be unfailingly attended with contentment-but steady labour or manual employment will always promote composure of mind. And this may add one more to the many considerations which lead the

politician,

politician, as well as the moralist, to insist that a high rate of wages is less to be desired for a country, than work which is regular, even though ill paid.

But whilst Mr. Wordsworth appreciates the moral influence of mechanical labour in abating excitement to a point of just relief,' we might refer to many passages in the Excursion' to show that its benefits become more than questionable in his eyes, when it is carried so far as to suppress the activity of the understanding, and render the mind callous and insensible. We have not room for quotations; nor need we multiply references; but the subject is discussed at length in the eighth book, with no pseudo-poetical partiality-no preference of previous and ancient evils to those of the manufacturing system-but philosophically and fairly; and it is resumed in the ninth book in its natural connexion with the subject of national education. If reference be made to these two books, it will be seen by those who are practically acquainted with the subject, that the experience and parliamentary inquiries of the seven-and-twenty years which have elapsed since the Excursion was published, have only shown more conclusively the justness of the poet's views and feelings as to the evils which are, perhaps to a certain extent unavoidably, but at all events most unhappily and fatally to many of the lower classes, mixed up with the unsteady and inordinate activities of our manufacturing system. In the course of those years other eminent writers joined in denouncing these evils with all the fervour of the poetical temperament (one great man, Mr. Southey, we need scarcely name), and more recently public men have been found in the House of Commons, of an ardent and indefatigable benevolence, to suggest remedies; whilst there has remained for political economists the ungracious but indispensable task of determining which of these were practicable and which were not. Some progress—much, we trust—has been made in the matter; and by a kindly alliance and concurrence of all the lights and powers which are requisite for the treatment of this difficult problem-by philanthropical, philosophical, economical, and practical efforts, and by eloquence poetical and parliamentary, and by the press and by the pulpit, it may be hoped that much more progress will be made in no long time, and that the country will owe to Lord Ashley, as a legislator, the consummation of a work, of which Mr. Wordsworth, as poet and ethical philosopher, so ardently urged the commencement.

We turn to the series of Sonnets' dedicated to Liberty,' with peculiar interest. They were so entitled in previous editions, though in the volume before us they are included with others under the title of Political Sonnets.' They are, for the most

6

part, suggested by public occurrences which took place within the eventful and instructive period of the history of liberty extending from the French Revolution to the battle of Waterloo ; with some few upon subjects belonging to remoter times. They should be read along with those passages in the third book of the Excursion, wherein the Solitary comments on the rise and progress of the French Revolution, and with the admirable ode beginning Who rises on the banks of Seine?' and not without reference to many other passages too numerous and scattered to be specifically mentioned. In these will be found Mr. Wordsworth's sentiments respecting liberty in the various senses in which the word is used, as applying to national independence, to civil liberty, and to individual freedom; and it will appear that his sentiments are everywhere pervaded by a deep sense of the truth that liberty is essentially of a moral and spiritual nature, and that however closely connected with political forms and organisations, and dictating and requiring them for her conservation, yet that these forms do not constitute, and cannot of themselves impart, the spirit of liberty-that the forms must result from the spirit, otherwise the spirit will not result from the forms-a doctrine which has a constant application to practical politics. A celebrated event in ancient history is made the occasion of delivering this doctrine in reference both to civil liberty and national independence :—

A Roman Master stands on Grecian ground;
And to the people at the Isthmian games
Assembled, He, by a herald's voice, proclaims
THE LIBERTY OF GREECE:-the words rebound
Until all voices in one voice are drowned;
Glad acclamation by which air is rent!
And birds, high flying in the element,

Drop to the earth, astonished at the sound!

Yet were the thoughtful grieved; and still that voice
Haunts, with sad echoes, musing Fancy's ear:

Ah! that a Conqueror's words should be so dear!
Ah! that a boon should shed such rapturous joys!

A gift of that which is not to be given

By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven.'-p. 146.

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Again, in a sonnet written when Bonaparte was threatening the independence of this country, the poet, being at that time on the coast near Dover, contemplates the span of waters' which divides England from France, and admitting the mighty power of the physical barrier, yet regards it as merely subordinate and instrumental, and still insists upon the higher agency as the vital pro

tection :

Virtuous and wise. Winds blow and waters roll,
Strength to the brave, and Power, and Deity;
Yet in themselves are nothing!. One decree
Spake laws to them, and said that by the soul

Only, the nations shall be great and free.'-p. 129.

The same strain of sentiment will be found to recur repeatedly in the sonnets which relate to the events of Bonaparte's wars, and the subjugation or resistance of the several states whose independence he invaded; and at the close of the series, which ends in 1811, a censure is pronounced upon a deplorable infirmity of man's nature which at that time came in aid of Bonaparte's power, sapping the hearts of many weak brethren in this country as well as in his own and others, the tendency to lose all sense of right and wrong, and all sense of horror at cruelties and crimes, in an effeminate admiration of talents, achievements, and power. This admiration, thus counteracting the heart's better nature, was in truth, wheresoever it prevailed, an index of the absence or decay of the virtues which are essential to liberty. We have said an effeminate admiration; for it prevailed, we believe, chiefly amongst women, who are more prone than men to feel, concerning things at a distance, according to their effect in story, and not according to their reality in life. Casca, in Shakspeare's play, says of the women who forgave Cæsar, that if Cæsar had stabbed their mothers they would have done no less.' We would not assert so much of the admirers of Bonaparte, whether women or effeminate men. Facts, which are brought before the bodily eyes, or come home to the individual feelings of such persons, will set them right in their sentiments concerning an ambitious conqueror;-the women of Zaragoza were under no mistake;-but that nothing else may have power to do so, there was many a pitiable proof in this country during Bonaparte's career, and to such cases the latter part of the following sonnet adverts, in the strongest language of reprehension which we recollect to have met with in Mr. Wordsworth's writings :

· Here pause: the poet
claims at least this praise,
That virtuous Liberty hath been the scope
Of his pure song, which did not shrink from hope
In the worst moment of these evil days;

From hope, the paramount duty that Heaven lays,
For its own honour, on man's suffering heart.
Never may from our souls one truth depart-
That an accursed thing it is to gaze
On prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye;
Nor-touched with due abhorrence of their guilt
For whose dire ends tears flow, and blood is spilt,

And

And justice labours in extremity

Forget thy weakness, upon which is built,

O wretched man, the throne of tyranny!'—p. 178.

The corollary from this sonnet is, that when the admiration of anything opposed to virtue is stronger than virtue itself in a people, that people is unfit for liberty, and the vital spirit of liberty is not in them. Through how much of political theory and practice ought this doctrine to be carried! Is there in this country any constituency to which what are called popular talents will recommend a representative notoriously profligate and reprobate? That constituency is unfit for its franchise; and whatever specious pretences may be made of supporting a public principle, and distinguishing between public and private conduct -as if the support of virtue was not a public principle-such an exercise of the franchise is tainting the very sources of liberty in the land. For to suppose that liberty can be promoted whilst virtue is overlooked, is nothing else than to suppose that the consequence can be produced without having regard to the cause.

That liberty must rest upon a moral rather than a political basis, and that the attempt is vain to push it forward by merely political impulses, is a truth which has always been before the eyes of our great poets, though often lost to those of our politicians. Coleridge saw it in his youth, instructed by the events that were occurring in France, and expressed it with characteristic force :

'The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion.'*

Milton saw it, ardently political as he was; or perhaps he saw it only when the ardour of his political mind had been informed by experience and tempered by adversity. He asks in the 'Paradise Regained' (iv. 145) what wise man would seek to free a people by themselves enslaved,'

'Or could of inward slaves make outward free?'

And in the Paradise Lost' (xii. 79) Michael explains to Adam that perfect liberty could only exist in paradise, being inseparable from virtue, which again is identical with right reason. These great men knew the nature of liberty; and those who may study, along with their writings, Mr. Wordsworth's political sonnets and the large portion of his other works which bear upon the state and prospects of society, can hardly fail to increase and refresh their knowledge of these subjects, and to appreciate more justly the connexion between true liberty and the mere political

*France, an Ode.

outworks