We dined to-day at Rydal Mount.  Mr. Wordsworth, during dinner, grave and silent, till, on some remark having been made on the present condition of the Church, he most unreservedly gave his own views; and gave expression, as I have only once heard him give before, to his own earnest, devout, humble feelings as a Christian.  In the evening, being led by some previous conversation to speak of St. Paul, he said, ’Oh, what a character that is! how well we know him!  How human, yet how noble!  How little outward sufferings moved him!  It is not in speaking of these that he calls himself wretched; it is when he speaks of the inward conflict.  Paul and David,’ he said, ’may be called the two Shakspearian characters in the Bible; both types, as it were, of human nature in its strength and its weakness.  Moses is grand, but then it is chiefly from position, from the office he had entrusted to him.  We do not know Moses as a man, as a brother man.’

April 7, 1846.—­I went to the Mount to-day, to pay my respects to Mr. Wordsworth on his birthday.  I found him and dear Mrs. Wordsworth very happy, in the arrival of their four grandsons.  The two elder are to go to Rossall next week.  Some talk concerning schools led Mr. Wordsworth into a discourse, which, in relation to himself, I thought very interesting, on the dangers of emulation, as used in the way of help to school progress.  Mr. Wordsworth thinks that envy is too likely to go along with this, and therefore would hold it to be unsafe.  ’In my own case,’ he said, ’I never felt emulation with another man but once, and that was accompanied by envy.  It is a horrid feeling.’  This ‘once’ was in the study of Italian, which, he continued, ’I entered on at college along with ——­’ (I forget the name he mentioned).  ’I never engaged in the proper studies of the university, so that in these I had no temptation to envy any one; but I remember with pain that I had envious feelings when my fellow-student in Italian got before me.  I was his superior in many departments of mind, but he was the better Italian scholar, and I envied him.  The annoyance this gave me made me feel that emulation was dangerous for me, and it made me very thankful that as a boy I never experienced it.  I felt very early the force of the words, “Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect,” and as a teacher, or friend, or counsellor of youth, I would hold forth no other motive to exertion than this.  There is, I think, none other held forth in the gospels.  No permission is given to emulation there....  There must always be a danger of incurring the passion of vanity by emulation.  If we try to outstrip a fellow-creature, and succeed, we may naturally enough be proud.  The true lesson of humility is to strive after conformity to that excellence which we never can surpass, never even by a great distance attain to.’  There was, in the whole manner as well as matter of Mr. Wordsworth’s discourse on this subject, a deep veneration for the will of God concerning us, which I shall long remember with interest and delight—­I hope with profit.  ‘Oh! one other time,’ he added, smiling, ’one other time in my life I felt envy.  It was when my brother was nearly certain of success in a foot race with me.  I tripped up his heels.  This must have been envy.’