tions of evidently spontaneous thought with apparently spontaneous expression. His many and laborious revisions were sometimes of unquestionable advantage to the finish and the solidity of his work: sometimes the improvement was of a very questionable kind, involving at least as much loss as gain : now and then, as in the familiar instance of Laodamia, the change was unquestionably and inexpressibly for the worse. But in all the best representative poems of Wordsworth, whatever other quality may be wanting to them, there is, it appears to me, at least this invaluable one of seeming spontaneity. Neither on his verse nor on the verse of Keats, whom we now know to have been an equally painstaking labourer in the vineyard of versification, did the process of revision and correction, deletion and substitution, leave any evident marks of the passage of the pumicestone. Grinders if they were, they had the skill to erase from the surface of their work all traces of the grinder's toil. There is no more sign of labour in the sensitive and subtle touch of the younger man than in the resolute and steadfast handiwork of the elder: a point perhaps even more remarkable in the genius of Keats than in the genius of Wordsworth. That exquisite and epicurean subtlety in expression of sensations impressed upon an exceptionally sensitive temper of mind and body, which was so specially characteristic of Keats as a student of nature, might have been supposed impossible of attainment without some sacrifice of simplicity and straightforwardness yet, if the secrets of his workshop had never been made public, we could no more have felt certain that his work had not been thrown off at a jet, like Shakespeare's and Hugo's, than we should have dreamed of looking for the traces of the file on Wordsworth's. And it must be owned that neither in the best of his good work nor in the worst of his bad should we have recognized the sign of this lifelong habit on the elder poet's part. From the transcendent Ode to Duty down to the unspeakable ballad of Andrew Jones, the great or small changes made in the text of his poems would hardly in any case have been surmised by the finest ear or the keenest eye to be found among all students of style.

As a spiritual poet, and as the poet of nature, Wordsworth won at last, and wore for a generation, the palm of pre-eminence to which his patient and severe ambition had from the first made tacit or explicit claim. And yet, setting aside the poets of pure theology or formal religion, we may find elsewhere higher flights of strenuous contemplation, purer notes of spiritual passion, than in any but one or two quite exceptional poems of Wordsworth's. Even at his highest, he can hardly be said to have ever shown for so long together such an even strength of wing, such a sweeping and soaring harmony of upward and forward flight, as Donne, despite one or two slips and flaws, has displayed in the ardent and majestic rapture of his magnificent Anniversaries. Nor did his systematic and studious love of

nature, even in those days of more passionate delight in it on which at the age of twenty-eight he could already look back as belonging to a stage of life and feeling irrevocably past and ended, give ever such wings to his words or such fire to their music as any note or any touch of Shelley's is sufficient to show that he could command -that he could not but assume--if he had to deal but for a moment with the glories of nature or the emotions evoked by transitory or enduring sense of them. There is much study, there is much knowledge, there is much sober and sedate enjoyment of nature, much deep and thoughtful thankfulness for such enjoyment, made manifest in the poetry of Wordsworth: there is a singular intensity, a matchless refinement, of relish for the pure delight of communion with natural beauty, in the poetry of Keats: but to neither was it given, as it was given to Shelley, to rise beyond these regions of contemplation and sensation into that other where the emotion of Keats and the emotion of Wordsworth become one, and are superseded by a greater; to breathe, in Shakespeare's audaciously subtle and successful phrase, the very 'spirit of sense' itself, to transcend at once the sensuous and the meditative elements of poetry, and to fuse their highest, their keenest, their most inward and intimate effects, in such verse as utters what none before could utter, and renders into likeness of form and sound such truths of inspired perception, such raptures of divine surprise, as no poet of nature may think to render again. At the sound of the Ode to the West Wind, the stars of Wordsworth's heaven grow fainter in our eyes, and the nightingale of Keats's garden falls silent in our ears. The poet who wrote that, and the poet who wrote Christabel, --but these alone of their generation are indeed to be counted among the very chiefest glories of English poetry: and it is surely no inadequate reward for the noble labour of a long and strenuous life, to stand where Wordsworth stands-but a little lower than these.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

APPARITIONS.

I.

This is a question which, after five thousand years, is still undecided; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most important that can come before the human understanding.-DR. JOHNSON.

By a curious combination of circumstances the question of which Dr. Johnson speaks-namely, what Apparitions really are—which has in a kind of fashion smouldered on since the days of the cave-men, or at least of Job and Homer, is now entering on an acute phase. It is coming at the same time to seem more important, and to seem more soluble. In this respect it resembles many other time-honoured questions, which men have been for many generations content to debate backwards and forwards without result, partly from a pre-scientific indifference to accurate tests, and partly from despair as to the possibility of applying them. The attitude of our generation towards such questions is very different. There is an inclination now to get to the bottom of subjects, or at any rate definitely to recognise them as bottomless. If any subject has actuality enough to retain any place at all in general conversation, it is felt that somebody or other may be expected to make it his business to analyse and expound it. The change fairly indicates the extent to which the modern scientific spirit has permeated the world of intelligence. Working unseen among multitudes who belong to no learned bodies and have no scientific pretensions, it helps to bear along on its imperceptible current the craft of the discoverer, which used to have to be ever wrestling with the opposing tides of ignorance and bigotry. The set of this current gradually broadens. At first it speeds the barks only of the older and more established sciences; but little by little the explorer finds himself supported into more devious channels, through which hitherto the impetus of popular curiosity had never swept. Within the last generation, for instance, anthropology, from being rejected year after year by the British Association as a vain cobweb spun from travellers' tales, has taken its place as one of the most constant and popular elements in their proceedings. And later still, the ingenious speculations of Mr. F. Galton in the delicate domain of

'eugenics,' and in the idiosyncrasies of mental imagery-received at first with something as near derision as the eminence of their author permitted—are now recognised as a necessary development of the method into which Darwin has cast the thought of the age. It is natural that the tone and the claims of science should change with this gradual popularisation of the scientific instinct.

She can now demand, without fear, to subject, as it were, to her police regulations the Broad Sanctuary which was once governed by tradition and sentiment alone. Everything which claims to be known is expected to show its credentials; and views about the seen and unseen worlds are alike conceived as amenable to objective tests. This process has been applied, as we all know, to every element in ancient creeds and institutions. It would be absurd to say that any kind of general agreement has been in this way attained. But if we had to submit two resolutions, as a kind of compromise, to be voted on by the readers of the innumerable tractates, "symposiums,' &c., which have dealt with these high matters, we should select the following as prudent generalities, likely to gain more assent and provoke less strenuous opposition than any others which we could think of :

1. The thesis that the universe is governed by unchanging laws, as opposed to arbitrary interferences, has gained in probability.

2. The crudely materialistic account of things, which refuses to allow us even to seek the key of any of the phenomena of life and mind outside the admitted scope of physiological and psychological laws, has failed to commend itself as a complete or ultimate solution of the problems without and within us.

Now if we wish to see what real guidance lies in these two somewhat vague resolutions, taken together, our practical corollary, as it would seem, must be something of this kind:-that while accepting as perfectly valid every law which recognised science can establish, we may fairly suppose that further laws, of a different kind it may be, but perhaps none the less susceptible of rigorous investigation, are actually in operation in the domain of human life; and certainly no reason exists for contentedly ignoring any hint of such laws which experience may offer.

We select, then, a test-instance. We propose to deal with a class of phenomena at once ancient, wide-spread, and notorious -the standing jest and the standing mystery of age after age. Apparitions, of course, in one form or another, are an element in nearly every religion known among men; and the discussion of their reality has been a perpetual feature in religious controversy. But the apparitions which have been most associated with religious ideas have been those of the dead; and we shall here do our best to avoid controversial ground, and also keep our subject within manageable limits, by altogether excluding this class. Let us take only the alleged apparitions of living persons, the commonest of which are death

wraiths, or apparitions of persons near the moment of death. How does opinion stand at present with regard to death-wraiths?

We think we may say that the subject holds a position absolutely unique. The main question, it must be remembered, is simply as to the reality of certain contemporary events. Differences of taste, of temperament, of skill in historical interpretation, of religious or philosophical proclivities, have nothing to do with it. Yet on this bare question as to whether or not a particular sort of phenomenon, alleged to be observed a good many times every year, is a reality or a figment, intelligent opinion is found to be utterly, it might almost seem hopelessly, divided. In what other department of real or pretended knowledge can we find a parallel to such facts as the following? Within the space of half a year two papers appear in two of the leading monthly Reviews. In the first, a rising physician, acting as spokesman to a party of vigorous and enthusiastic scientific workers, dismisses the phenomenon in question as a baseless absurdity. In the second, one of the ablest bishops on the bench, whose scientific aptitudes were at any rate sufficient to obtain for him the highest mathematical honours at Cambridge, represents the same phenomenon as attested in a way which makes doubt of them almost impossible to a fair mind. This instance is a typical one; and without hazarding a guess as to the relative strength of the two parties, we feel assured that, if every casual assembly of educated Englishmen could be polled, each view would almost invariably claim a certain number of adherents. One may not infrequently find the very antipodes of opinion located at the two ends of a friendly dinner-table, and two groups, till then harmonious, each pursuing the theme under a fire of contemptuous glances from the other. In a professedly scientific age, this division of belief on a point of contemporary testimony is surely an anomaly amounting almost to a scandal; and the more so that the alleged events, though not to be commanded at will, are not, like the seaserpent, remote and inaccessible, nor, like him, are they described by any particular class of the community professionally addicted to yarns or to marvels. They occur, if they occur at all, in our very midst; and are testified to by no single class, but by individuals drawn from every class, and by representatives of every profession and pursuit.

A question of fact which is thus in suspense clearly cannot long escape the widening current that sets towards minute and exhaustive inquiry. For though there has been but little attempt at accurate treatment, it certainly cannot be said that the general interest in the subject has in any way flagged. With all their difference of view, the two parties at any rate agree in their inability to leave Apparitions alone. There is, no doubt, a growing distaste for the fictitious tales of the supernatural' which have had in their day a considerable vogue; and it is still safe and easy to treat any