While an undergraduate in Cambridge Wordsworth made several vacation visits to France.

The first peaceful phase of the Revolution was at its height; France and the assembly were dominated by the little group of revolutionary orators who took their name from the south-western province from which most of them came, and with this group--the Girondists--Wordsworth threw in his lot.

Had he remained he would probably have gone with them to the guillotine.

As it was, the commands of his guardian brought him back to England, and he was forced to contemplate from a distance the struggle in which he burned to take an active part.

One is accustomed to think of Wordsworth as a mild old man, but such a picture if it is thrown back as a presentment of the Wordsworth of the nineties is a far way from the truth.