About this time Wordsworth was urged by some of his relatives to take holy orders.  Writing from Cambridge, September 23rd, to Mathews, he says:  ’I quitted Wales on a summons from Mr. Robinson, a gentleman you most likely have heard me speak of, respecting my going into orders and taking a curacy at Harwich; which curacy he considered as introductory to the living.  I thought it was best to pay my respects to him in person, to inform him that I am not of age for ordination.’[28]

[26] Letter to William Mathews, Memoirs, i. 70.

[27] Ibid. Memoirs, i. 71.

[28] Memoirs, i. 71.

8. The French Revolution:  1792.

’The horrors excited by the relation of the events consequent upon the commencement of hostilities is general.  Not but that there are some men who felt a gloomy satisfaction from a measure which seemed to put the patriot army out of a possibility of success.  An ignominious flight, the massacre of their general, a dance performed with savage joy round his burning body, the murder of six prisoners, are events which would have arrested the attention of the reader of the annals of Morocco.’

He then expresses his fear that the patriot army would be routed by the invaders.  But ‘suppose,’ he adds, ’that the German army is at the gates of Paris, what will be the consequence?  It will be impossible for it to make any material alterations in the constitution; impossible to reinstate the clergy in its ancient guilty splendour; impossible to restore an existence to the noblesse similar to that it before enjoyed; impossible to add much to the authority of the king.  Yet there are in France some (millions?)—­I speak without exaggeration—­who expect that this will take place.’[29]

9. Failure of Louvets Denunciation of Robespierre.

At Paris his feelings were still more disturbed by the abortive issue of Louvet’s denunciation of Robespierre:  he began to forebode the commencement of the Reign of Terror; he was paralysed with sorrow and dismay, and stung with disappointment, that no paramount spirit had emerged to abash the impious crests of the leaders of ’the atheist crew,’ and ‘to quell outrage and bloody power,’ and to ’clear a passage for just government, and leave a solid birthright to the state.’[30]

[29] Extract of letter to Mathews, May 17, 1792, Memoirs, i. 75.

[30] Memoirs, i. 76.

10. Of inflammatory Political Opinions.

’I disapprove of monarchical and aristocratical governments, however modified.  Hereditary distinctions, and privileged orders of every species, I think, must necessarily counteract the progress of human improvement.  Hence it follows, that I am not among the admirers of the British constitution.  I conceive that a more excellent system of civil policy might be established among us; yet in my ardour to attain the goal, I do not forget the nature of the ground where the race