ul will. He was no mere
sentimentalist and versifier, but a student at first hand of Nature and
all her mysteries,--a man whose profound meditations had pierced to the
centre of things, and who held great thoughts in keeping for a waiting
and expectant world. His outward life was full of proofs of the wide and
deep benevolence of his nature; and it was only shallow minds who dwelt
upon some petty defects of his character. The deep wisdom gained by
contemplation comes forth whenever he talks of childhood. This subject
always possesses inspiration for him, as when he says:--

"Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,--
He sees it in his joy.
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

This conception of the nearness of the child to the unseen made all
children sacred in his eyes, and he always felt that he learned more
from them than he could teach them. He expresses this thought often, as
thus:--

"Oh dearest, dearest boy; my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn."

And again:--

"Dear child; dear girl; thou walkest with me here;
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine;
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not."

His own children he loved almost to idolatry, and after the lapse of
forty years, would speak with the deepest emotion of the little ones who
had died. Indeed, he was a man of profound feeling, passionate and
intense in his loves, though outwardly calm and self-contained. He
himself says:--

"Had I been a writer of love-poetry, it would have been natural for
me to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been
approved by my principles, a