most part skillfully contrasted with the rural life of the poet's
native home. There are some truthful and powerful sketches of French
character and life, in the early revolutionary era. But above all,
as might have been anticipated, Wordsworth's heart revels in the
elementary beauty and grandeur of his mountain theme; while his
own simple history is traced with minute fidelity, and is full of
unflagging interest.

We have already adverted to the fact that this Prelude was but
the overture to a grander song which the poet has left, in a great
measure, unsung. Reverting to this consideration an important
fact seems to force itself upon our notice. The creative power of
Wordsworth would appear to have been paralyzed after the publication
of his Excursion. All his most finished works precede that period. His
later writings generally lack the strength and freshness which we find
in those of an earlier date. Some may attribute this to his want of
the stimulus which the necessity of writing for a livelihood imparts,
and in part they may be right; but this is not the whole secret. That
his isolation from the stirring contact of competition, that his utter
disregard of contemporary events, allowed his mind, which for perfect
health's sake requires constantly-renewed impulses from without, to
subside into comparative hebetude, there can be no doubt whatever.
But the main secret of the freezing up of his fountain of poetical
inspiration, we really take to have been his change of politics.
Wordsworth's muse was essentially liberal--one may say, Jacobinical.
That he was unconscious of any sordid motive for his change, we
sincerely believe; but as certainly his conforming was the result less
of reasonable conviction than of willfulness. It was by a determined
effort of his will that he brought himself, to believe in the
Church-and-State notions which he latterly promulgated. Hence the want