Compare with this the end of the _Song at Brougham Castle_, where,
at the words "alas! The fervent harper did not know--" the strain
changes from the very spirit of chivalry to the gentleness of
Nature's calm. Nothing can be more characteristic of Wordsworth than
contrasts like this. They teach us to remember that his accustomed
mildness is the fruit of no indolent or sentimental peace; and that,
on the other hand, when his counsels are sternest, and "his voice is
still for war," this is no voice of hardness or of vainglory, but
the reluctant resolution of a heart which fain would yield itself to
other energies, and have no message but of love.

There is one more point in which the character of Nelson has fallen
in with one of the lessons which Wordsworth is never tired of
enforcing, the lesson that virtue grows by the strenuousness of its
exercise, that it gains strength as it wrestles with pain and
difficulty, and converts the shocks of circumstance into an energy
of its proper glow. The Happy Warrior is one,

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;
By objects which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;--

and so further, in words which recall the womanly tenderness, the