ing down into that hideous nightmare, and
saddest of all tyrannies, the tyranny of the multitude! Into the great
bank of cloud which had gathered across the horizon of Europe, towards
the close of the 18th century, some of the boldest spirits of France
madly rushed with the energy of despair, seeking to carve their way
through to the coming light, and fought in the names of "liberty,
equality and fraternity," with apparent giants and demons in the mist
who turned out to be their brother men!

It would be a total misapprehension of the great throbbing thought of
better days to come which stirred the sluggish life of the expiring
century, to assume, as we often do, that that cry of "liberty,
equality, and fraternity," was merely the cry of the French, driven to
desperation by the gulf between the nobility and the people. In truth,
almost the whole Western world was eagerly looking on at the unfolding
of a great drama, and the infection of it penetrated almost into every
corner of England. No glimpses even of our local life at this period
would be satisfactory which did not give a passing notice to an event
which literally turned the heads of many of the most gifted young men
in England.

Upon no individual mind in these realms had that aspiration for a
universal brotherhood a more potent spell than upon a youthful genius
then at Cambridge, with whom some notable Royston men were afterwards
to come in contact. That glorious dream, in which the French
Revolution had its birth, had burnt itself into the very soul of young
Wordsworth who found indeed that--

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times
In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways
Of custom, law and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

In the Autumn of 1789, young Wordsworth, and a fellow student left
Cambridge and crossed the Channel to witness that

Glorious opening, the unlooked for dawn,
That promised everlasting joy to France!

The gifted singer caught the blissful intoxication and has told us--

Meanwhile prophetic harps,
In every grove were ringing, war shall cease.
* * * * * *
Henceforth whate'er is wanting in yourselves
In others ye shall promptly find--and all
Be rich by mutual and reflected wealth!

{4} So the poet went out to stand by the cradle of liberty, only to
come back disenchanted, came back to find h