day bungling carvers and gilders will not do. Our evening gilders must be more skilful than those who flashed and daubed away in the morning of life, and gilt with any tinsel the weather-cock for the morning sun.1

When I felt that it was more than probable that I should not recover, with a pulse above a hundred and twenty and at the entrance of my seventy-sixth year,' I was not alarmed. I felt ready to rise tranquil from the banquet of life, where I had been a happy guest; I confidently relied on the goodness of my Creator.2

I

KNOW men . . . and I can tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, the conquerors and the gods of other religions. The resemblance does not exist; the distance between Christianity and any other religion whatever is infinite. . . . In Lycurgus, Numa, Confucius, and Mahomet I see law-givers, but nothing which reveals the Deity. They did not themselves raise their pretensions so high. They surpassed others in their times, as I have done in mine. There is nothing about them which announces Divine beings; on the contrary, I see much likeness between them and myself.

It is not so with Christ. Everything in Him amazes me; His mind is beyond me, and His will confounds

1 From letter to Mrs. Ruxton (1825).

2 From letter to a friend (1843) after a dangerous illness.

me.

There is no possible term of comparison between Him and anything of this world. He is a Being apart. His birth, His life, His death, the profundity of His doctrine, which reaches the height of difficulty, and which is yet its most admirable solution, the singularity of this mysterious Being, His empire, His course across ages and kingdoms-all is a prodigy, a mystery too deep, too sacred, and which plunges me into reveries from which I can find no escape; a mystery which is here, under my eyes, which I cannot deny, and neither can I explain. . . . In short, and this is my last argument, there is not a God in Heaven, if any man could conceive and execute with full success the gigantic design of seizing upon the supreme worship by usurping the name of God. Jesus is the only one who has dared to do this. He is the only one who has said clearly, affirmed imperturbably, Himself of Himself, I am God, which is quite different from the affirmation I am a god. History mentions no other individual who qualified himself with the title of God, in the absolute sense. How, then, should a Jew to whose existence there is more testimony than to that of any of His contemporaries, He alone, the son of a carpenter, give Himself out as God Himself, for the Self-existent Being, for the Creator of all beings? He claims every kind of adoration, He builds His worship with His own hands, not with stones, but with men. And how was it that, by a prodigy surpassing all prodigies, He willed the love of men-that which it is most difficult in the world to obtain—and immediately succeeded? From this I conclude His Divinity. Alexander, Cæsar, Hannibal, all failed. They conquered the world, but they were not able to obtain a friend.

Now that I am at St. Helena-now that I am alone, nailed to this rock, who fights and conquers empires for me? What courtiers have I in my misfortune? Does any one think of me? Does any one in Europe move for me? Who has remained faithful? Where are my friends? . . Our existence has shone with all the brilliancy of the diadem and of sovereignty. . . . But reverses have come. By degrees the golden hues are effaced, the floods of misfortune and the outrages to which I am every day subjected carry away the last tints. Only the copper remains . . . and soon I shall be dust. Such is the destiny of great men; of Cæsar and of Alexander; we are forgotten, and the name of a conqueror, like that of an emperor, is only the subject of a college theme. Our exploits come under the ferule of a pedant, who either praises or insults us. A few moments and this will be my fate; what will happen to myself? . . . I die prematurely, and my body will be returned to the earth to become pasture for worms. This is the destiny, now very near, of the great Napoleon.1

ARTHUR, DUKE OF

WHA

HAT I am particularly anxious to remove from your mind is the notion that I am a person without any sense of religion. If I am so, I am unpardonable, as I have opportunities to acquire, and have acquired, a good deal of knowledge on the subject. 1 Spoken to one of his generals at St. Helena.

I don't make much show or boast on the subject; I have never done so. The consequence is that, in these days of boasting, I have been set down from time to time, and this even upon professional matters, upon which it might be imagined that from the commencement of my career I had been sufficiently tried. Then in private life I have been accused of every vice and enormity; and when those who live with me, and know every action of my life and every thought, testify that such charges are groundless, the charge is then brought, "Oh, he is a man without religion." As I said before, I am not ostentatious about anything. I am not a " Bible Society man" upon principle, and I make no ostentatious display either of charity or of other Christian virtues, though I believe that, besides enormous sums given to hundreds and thousands who have positive claims upon me, there is not a charity of any description within my reach to which I am not a contributor.1

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

TH

(1770-1850)

HE thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest-
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast :

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,

1 From letter to Bishop of Exeter (January 1832).

H

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy! . . .

What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from

my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.1

What manifold reason, my dear Sir George, have 1 From "Ode" ("Intimations of Immortality," etc.), 1803-6.