The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-25 00:00:00

111*
do-• Int
LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1850.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the Poet Laureate, is
now sleeping in death at his house on Rydal Mount,
near the beautiful lake of Windermere. 'Before the
grave has closed over his venerated remains we
would breathe our humble tribute to the memory of
the illustrious dreamer. To render our commemo-
rative words appropriate, they should be as simple as
the language in which the old man now departed
from amongst us clothed the naked and virgin graces
of his inspiration. In his instance, moreover, we
must expatiate over the circumstance of his disap-
pearance with the awe ever due to the
dread solemnity of dissolution, but at the
same time without that oppressive melan-
choly which would be unsuited to the record of a
life so protracted, a life without remorse, because ir-
reproachable, a life terminating ripely in the evening
of its maturity and in the autumn of its reputation.
Henceforth the career of WORDSWORTH may be elo-
quently epitomised in the dates which limit the ex-
tent of his eighty years' existence :

Born
Died
Within that prolonged interval he has suffused the
landscapes of England with the riches and the
glory of his poetic sympathies. He has con-
jured up a multitude of bewitching fan-
cies in the midst of that rural scenery
which he has loved so tenderly, and in which he has
mused away the majority of his days in a golden
reverie. Among the fields and homesteads of this
island his voice has resounded as melodiously as the
pipe of THEOCRITUS among the verdure of the Sicilian
mountains. His last office has been a misnomer and
an estrangement, for WORDSWORTH was not the lau-
reate of a Court, but the bard of the farm and of the
hamlet, of the copse and of the village. He could
less readily write a Birth-day Ode or a
Coronation Hymn, than he could pen a sonnet on a
garden spade or a• bucket. At any period of his
existence, therefore, the demise of a man like this
must have fallen upon the public ear with a subdued
sentiment of regret, and not have excited those pro-
found emotions of sorrow which were caused by the
intelligence of a death like that of BYRON. Espe-
cially are these feelings of regret moderated with
regard to WORDSWORTH, accompanied as they
are at this moment by the knowledge that
his death was tranquil, and that his life was pro-
tracted beyond the ordinary limits allotted to
humanity.
Simultaneously with the announcement of the
heavy loss thus experienced by the literary world,
anything in the slightest degree approaching in cha-
racter to criticism on the writings of WORDSWORTH
would be worse than an impertinence. Neither is
such an attempt to estimate the worth of his effusions
in the smallest degree requisite, seeing that already
his contemporaries have risen to the unimpassioned
judgment usually reserved exclusively for posterity.
After having been subjected to torrents of ridicule,
the most destructive of all the projeetiles hurled by th.
hand of the satirist, and that ridicule, moreover, di-
rected against him by the vigorous and unerring force
of the Modern Juvenal ; after having been torn on
the wrack of adverse criticism by two of the most
distinguished reviewers of his generation, excruciated
now on the wheel of the Quarterly by GIFFORD, now
on that of the Edinburgh by JEFFREY—WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH survived to find himself elevated to the
rank of an idol among a certain class of poetical
enthusiasts, transformed from a byword into a pro-
totype, from a target for derision into an object of
homage and of impassioned eulogium. Any change
in public opinion so remarkable as this has,
perhaps, never before occurred, certainly never
within the life-time of the individual so
regarded. It calls to our recollection that incident
which has been so touchingly recorded by Mr.
MACAULAY in his masterly essay on WARREN 'IASI...
INGS, one of the noblest prcductions
,of the kind in
our language, where the great pro-consul, who had
been attainted many years before in Westminster
Hall of high crimes and misdemeanours, was
summoned in his old age to give certain
evidence at the bar of the House of Com-
mons, and when the whole of that august
assembly, the representatives of the great Eng-
lish people, rose simultaneously and uncovered in
his presence, actuated by one unanimous feeling of
respect and admiration. It has been so with WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH. Forty years ago the scorn of all but
a few fanatical admirers, he has slowly, but steadily,
risen to the height of a national favourite—a poet
respected by the mass of his contemporaries, beloved
by the circle of his immediate acquaintance, and all
but positively worshipped by those numerous en-
thusiasts who regarded his genius with a sort of
religious veneration. Yet, as we have already inti-
mated, though viewed with these earnest sentiments
of appreciation, he passes away from amongst us
without exciting more than a modulated sensation of
melancholy. The secret of this is, that in the decease
of WORDSWORTH we recognise, the natural close of
a well-spent life and not that abrupt and
agonizing doom which has too frequently
befallen those gifted with poetic genius,
where the tree just budding into beauty has been
riven asunder as if by a thunderbolt. It was thus
with that wonderful being, whose fragment of "Hy-
perion " was an augury of works not unworthy of
ZSCHYLUS. It was thus, before the full seed-time and
the fruit-season of his resplendent genius, that the
extraordinary man whose departure was felt like a
national calamity, perished in his prime at Misso-
longhi, the news of his sudden and premature disso-
lution descending upon this country, as Sir WALTER
SCOTT hinted in his obituary panegyric, as if the
lightnings had shaken
" The sun from out the socket of its sphere."

Regarding the death of WORDSWORTH, on the con-
trary, it is impossible to experience more than that
subdued sentiment of regret which is inseparable
from the knowledge that the earth has lost one of its
intellectual benefactors. Of his pastoral writings it
was said by HAZLITT himself, an acute and discrimi-
nating critic—" The vulgar do not read them ; the
learned, who see all things through book!, do not un-
derstand them ; the great despise, the fashionable may
ridicule them ; but the author has created for himself
an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely
student which can never die." How far this may
be an adequate or impartial estimate of the genius and
the works of WORDSWORTH it might be difficult
to decide at a moment when the mirror of the judg-
ment is clouded by the shadows of a mournful ca-
tastrophe. Thus far, however, we may go
in our decision upon the fame of the
departed poet,—declaring that the favourable
opinion entertained in its regard by the present ge-
neration is less like the opinion of contemporaries
than like that of a remote and dispassionate posterity.
It is thus that cradled in Cumberland, after eighty
years have elapsed, ripe in intellect and reputation
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH has sunk to rest on the mar-
gin of the beautiful Windermere.

Lord Jouri RUSSELL has given notice that on the
6th of May he will move for leave to bring in a Bill
for the abolition of the office of Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland. This wise and salutary measure is the
necessary supplemert of the " Treaty of Union"
which half a century before had been contracted be-
tween the English and Irish nations. Until it be
carried into effect, the union can never be regarded as
perfect and indissoluble. One country will still be
regarded as a province and dependency on the other
so long as it possesses that which may bs regarded as
the very badge and symbol' of a province—a go-
vernor who receives his instructions from, and is
Iboind to obey the orders of, a Minister residing

in another county. This delegated authority is at all
times deeply injurious to the nation Lfilicted by the
incubus; it carries with it the idea that the people
are unable or unworthy to provide for the adminis-
tration of their own affairs, that they must at all times
be placed under the patronage and protection of a
more powerful state. This is, indeed, an "affront"
which may well arouse their indignation, and give
occasion to many bitter heartburninge and fierce re-
monstrances, which may lead to civil dissensions and
ultimately to internecine strife. The more powerful
kingdom will regard the other as its inferior, bound to
obey its dictates in every particular, and not to
have an opinion of its own on any disputed
question; while the other will acutely feel its de-
grading position, and desire any change that may
afford a prospect, however remote, of restoring its
independence and nationality. Neither can look upon
the other in its true light; everything is regarded
through a haze of misconception that distorts the
vision, and the natural result follows—each is dissa-
tisfied and discontented. England regards Ireland
as a craving and importunate beggar, a heavy burden
on her resources, and the great difficulty of every
Government ; while in Ireland she is looked upon as a
tyrannical and cruel mistress, who will not per-
mit her sister kingdom to adopt the plans ne-
cessary for her regeneration, and who will
not willingly render the assistance for which
her own mis-legislation and mal-administration
creates the necessity. In place, then, of being an
efficient and valuable partner and coadjutor, she is a
bad and useless servant; and such will be the case
until Ireland becomes really and truly an integral
portion of the British empire, and until her children
have no well-founded complaints to prefer of the in-
equality of their condition with their English fellow-
subjects, on which to create an organized and formi-
dable agitation.
The inconvenience and danger of two separate Le-
gislatures had long attracted the observation of intel-
ligent and far-seeing men in both countries. If they
were really independent, the one of the other, there
was the prospect of a speedy collision, in
which neither would be willing to yield, and which
might lead to the most deplorable and calamitous re-
sults. The measures which one P.►rliament might
deem essential to the safety and welfare of the em-
pire might not only be negatived in the other, but
others of a directly opposite tendency enacted. A
game of cross purposes would speedily be played, in
which the object of each would be to thwart the other,
and which could only terminate in the humiliation and
submission of one of the belligerents. Every effort was
accordingly made to bring about a fusion which would
prevent the possibility of such a disagreement, and
that effurt was partially successful fifty years
since ; but, unfortunately, an element remained
which prevented the perfect union that was
so much to be desired. A separate executive was
still maintained—lreland was placed under the go-
vernment of a Lord- Lieutenant, who, with most in-
adequate means, aped the pomp and state of Royalty,
and who was, in fact, himself but the servant of the
Secretary of State for the Home Department. In •
deed, the powers of the Viceroyalty were never very
distinctly defined, and the unfortunate country t
which he was sent was but too frequently placed
under three masters—the Lord-Lieutenant, the Irish
Secretary, and the Home Secretary, all of whom
were pulling in different directions, each having his
own peculiar objects to promote.
We cannot believe that the office would have been
continued at the time of " the Union"—that those
who were so fully alive to the manifest evils of
separate Parliaments would have been insensible to
the objections against separate executives, but for cer-
tain difficulties that have since been removed, for
circumstances that have now no existence. In 1800
the intercommunication between the two countries
was proverbially tedious and uncertain. It was
carried on in small sailing vessels, which were fre-
quently detained for days, aye for weeks, by contrary
winds. Rmergencies might occur, more especially
during a period of warfare, when some person in-
vested with all but sovereign authority should be
always resident in the Irish metropolis, prepared to
act according to the exigency of the moment. The
principle of steam, enabling men to control the very
elements, had not been applied to navigation.
The idea of railways, by which time and space have
been practically annihilated, had not entered into the
most vivid imagination. The wonders of the electric
telegraph had been only faintly shadowed forth in an
old paper of " The Spectator." It was regarded
as a piece of necromancy, which could no more be
realised than the gorgeous visions of the "Arabian
Nights." A person who believed that two friends
could possibly communicate by means of dials placed
in their respective libraries, with the rapidity of
lightning, would be regarded as a dreamer and a mad-
man ; and yet we have lived to see all these things
accomplished—to behold the journey from London to
Dublin, et Dice versa, which used, under the most
favourable circumstances, to take at least three days,
and frequently more than double that time, now per-
formed with ease and safety in twelie hours, while
information can be communicated or instructions re-
ceived in little more than four hours. Under present
circumstances, what occasion can there be for an
office, once necessary, but now no better than a sine-
cure, which degrades and provincialises the nation in
which it is retained ? Are we still to keep up dis-
tinctions which prevent the complete identification of
the countries, to separate those whom GOD and nature
hath joined together ?
All that can be asserted in opposition to the
powerful arguments in favour of its aboli-
tion is, that certain shopkeepers in Dublin
might possibly be injured by the removal
of a nobleman having an official salary of 20,0001. per
annum. For their sake, then, that they may be
" protected" and subsidized from the Imperial Ex-
chequer, that they may receive benefits denied to
their provincial brethren of Cork, Limerick, or Bel-
fast, the system with all its admitted evils is to be
preserved and perpetuated. The trade of Dublin
must indeed be in a miserable condition, if the with-
drawal of such " a bonus" would complete its annihi-
lation. It must be but a sickly and puny flower if
such artificial means are necessary to keep it alive.
Will not, however, the arguments that have been
used during the free-trade discussion apply in this
instance also ? May not the want of self• reliance and
♦igorous confidence that is ever induced by, that is
in fact the necessary result of, a protective system
have had some effect in producing the present
depression in Dublin ? Have not the tradesmen de-
pended too much upon "the Castle" and too little
upon their own exertions ? We fear that there may
be but too much foundation for the supposition, or
we never should hear of a handsome city, containing
no less than 280,000 inhabitants, being indebted for
its very existence to a single individual, and the
shows and pageantry of a mock court.
We might ask, what right has Dublin to such an
advantage over all other localities in either country ?
IVhy should the hard-working operative of Man-
chester, the sturdy yeoman of Cork or Tipperary, or
the intelligent linen manufacturer of Down or
Antrim, be taxed for the exclusive benefit of
the tailors or milliners of Dublin ? . But it
is unnecessary to enter into this part
of the argument. The sum is too trivial and insigni-
ficant to be regarded as of any importance, and if it
really served Dublin, without injuring other portions
of the empire, we should be disposed to tolerate the
absurdity and to pardon the injustice. But such is
not the case. The voice of public opinion is too
powerful to be repressed. Public policy demands the
sacrifice. The condemnation of the Viceroyalty has
been pronounced—its doom is sealed, its very days
are numbered, and a brief space must witness its final
extinction.

We cannot close our observations on this subject
s%ithout recommending to the notice of all anxious to
arrive at a sound and unprejudiced judgment on the
question, a very clear and well-written pamphlet,*
" The Vices of the Viceroyalty," which bas just been
published on the subject, and in which the matter is
examined in every point of view, and its inherent
evils most ably exposed. If space permitted we
should gladly extract many passages from this able
production. We cannot, however, resist one quota-
tion, where the writer, after showing the ridiculous
position in which some of the advocates for the con-
tinuance of the office have placed 'themselves " by the
line of argument they have giddily adopted," Says—
" It looks like trifling to answer nonsense like this ;

* he Vices of the Viceroyalty." Dublin; Hodges
and Smith, Lando; J. Ridgway. Pp. 40.