men
call earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations,
obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or embodies,
enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directly
or indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of the
immortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward and
retribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, and
he may hang up his harp.

Among the great living poets, Wordsworth is the one whose poetry is to
us the most inexplicable--with all our reverence for his transcendent
genius, we do not fear to say the most open to the most serious
charges--on the score of its religion. From the first line of the
"Lyrical Ballads" to the last of "The Excursion"--it is avowedly one
system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life,
and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human
heart--the human mind--the human soul--to use his own fine words--is
"the haunt and main region of his song." There are few, perhaps none of
our affections--using that term in its largest sense--which have not
been either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In
his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears
to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentable
defect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of the
representation? We think there is--and that it lies in his Religion.

In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion," is there
any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to
Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The
hopes that lie beyond the grave--and the many holy and awful feelings in
which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever
part of the character of any of the persons--male or female--old or
young--brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most
interesting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitely
delineated--and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, had
the thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's
heart during the hours of inspiration--and he often has written like a
man inspired--they must have found expression in his strains; and the
personages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, would
have been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and their
tri