He looked on the operations of nature "in disconnection dull and
spiritless;" he could no longer apprehend her unity nor feel her
charm. He retained indeed his craving for natural beauty, but in an
uneasy and fastidious mood,--

Giving way
To a comparison of scene with scene,
Bent overmuch on superficial things,
Pampering myself with meagre novelties
Of colour and proportion; to the moods
Of time and season, to the moral power,
The affections, and the spirit of the place,
Insensible.

Such cold fits are common to all religions: they haunt the artist,
the philanthropist, the philosopher, the saint. Often they are due
to some strain of egoism or ambition which has intermixed itself
with the impersonal desire; sometimes, as in Wordsworth's case, to
the persistent tension of a mind which has been bent too ardently
towards an ideal scarce possible to man. And in this case, when the
objects of a man's habitual admiration are true and noble, they will
ever be found to suggest some antidote to the fatigues of their
pursuit. We shall see as we proceed how a deepening insight into the
lives of the peasantry around him,--the happiness and virtue of
simple Cumbrian homes,--restored to the poet a serener confidence in
human nature, amid all the shame and downfall of such hopes in France.
And that still profounder loss of delight in Nature herself,--that
viewing of all things "in disconnection dull and spiritless," which,
as it has been well said, is the truest definition of Atheism,
inasmuch as a unity in the universe is the first element in our