a bygone day. But he became increasingly absorbed in his friend's
ardour, and the Revolution--_mulier formosa superne_--seemed to him
big with all the hopes of man.

He returned to Paris in October 1792,--a month after the massacres
of September; and he has described his agitation and dismay at
the sight of such world-wide destinies swayed by the hands of
such men. In a passage which curiously illustrates that reasoned
self-confidence and deliberate boldness which for the most part he
showed only in the peaceful incidents of a literary career, he has
told us how he was on the point of putting himself forward as a
leader of the Girondist party, in the conviction that his
singleheartedness of aim would make him, in spite of foreign birth
and imperfect speech, a point round which the confused instincts of
the multitude might not impossibly rally.

Such a course of action,--which, whatever its other results, would
undoubtedly have conducted him to the guillotine with his political
friends in May 1793,--was rendered impossible by a somewhat
undignified hindrance. Wordsworth, while in his own eyes "a patriot
of the world," was in the eyes of others a young man of twenty-two,
travelling on a small allowance, and running his head into
unnecessary dangers. His funds were stopped, and he reluctantly
returned to England at the close of 1792.

And now to Wordsworth, as to many other English patriots, there came,
on a great scale, that form of sorrow which in private life is one
of the most agonizing of all--when two beloved beings, each of them
erring greatly, become involved in bitter hate. The new-born Republic
flung down to Europe as her battle-gage the head of a king. England,