INDUSTRIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OP COMMEI: 



106 



fru. ;:," besides the mjriitioally beautiful " Ere of 



Atfiu!*," iiiul Hi-vt;r;il othor rn-h addition* to our literature. 



KoaU wan of a ooiiMimptivo tendency, and wont to Italy to 



ward off tho complaint. A hopeless lovo, however, com 



with the con.-ii; ;>r-y upon him, and ho died at Borne 



in iSiJO. In sensuous in of the buautiful, Keats U 



.I. l.'i.-hin'-< of j.hraiieology give* to his pages tho 



:y-huod glory of stained-glass. Beauty IB everything to 



iia he was ; he haa little to teach but the 



i existing. 



holloy, born at Field Place, Sussex, in 1792, 

 was KeaU'rt twin brother in soino characteristics. He was still 

 more of a rebel to conventionalities nevertheless, and committed 

 fur more errors, though these were counterbalanced by many 

 splendiil mural Dualities. His poetry haa much of that im- 

 P.UJ.I...' !..:iuty which olondland has; his spirit seems to 

 hover about the lonely peaks of human thought like the 

 fantastic mints. His qualities are all ethereal. His verse has 

 a pure cold Alpine beauty ; but it is only rarely that it stirs the 

 warmi-r human instincts. Shelley was drowned in the Gulf of 

 Spozia, in 1822, with Keats's Poems in his pocket. His 

 principal works are : " Queen Mab," " Alastor," " The Revolt 

 of Islam," "Tho Prometheus Unbound," "The Cenci" (a 

 <ir:un;v), and " Adonais." Shelley was, Hko Keats, generally 

 supposed to bo a disciple of Hunt's. He was a disciple of 

 nobody, however. 



Tho other band of poets was tho famous Lake School, so- 

 called because the writers who formed it dwelt more or less 

 among tho English Lakes. Coleridge, Sonthey, and Words- 

 worth woro tho great Lako Poets. In their youth they 

 favoured revolutionary and socialistic notions. They hatched 

 a grand scheme for sotting up a miraculously innocent colony 

 "on the banks of the Susquehanna." It sounded very well; 

 but as they had scarcely a five pound note among them at that 

 time, they had to abandon the emigration scheme. They 

 married instead, and two of them at least settled down into 

 staid Conservatism. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in 1772, 

 was an incessant thinker and a desultory writer. The chief 

 poems he has left are the weird ghost ballad called " The 

 Ancient Mariner," and " Christabel," a poem which everybody 

 is compelled to admire, and nobody clearly understands. He 

 was full of metaphysical and poetical power. His mole intellect, 

 wedded to tho female intellect of Keats, would have produced 

 a Shakespeare. Coleridge died in 1834. 



Robert Sonthey, born in 1774, is not mnch valued now, 

 though he was poet laureate, and a great man in his day. He 

 wrote an enormous quantity of romantic verse, as well as prose. 

 His best poems, scarcely ever read in our day, however, 

 are " Thalaba," " Madoc," " The Curse of Kehama," and 

 "Roderick." Southey worked himself into a state of mind 

 bordering on idiotcy, and died in 1843. 



AVilliam Wordsworth, born in 1770, changed the whole 

 current of English poetry. He it was who first truly loved and 

 studied external nature in its simplicity and its mystery. He 

 is the high-priest of nature. It had been the aim of Coleridge 

 and Southey, as well as of Wordsworth, to cultivate the study 

 of nature at first hand ; but Wordsworth had the truest 

 instincts and sympathies to guide him in that loving reverential 

 study. He spiritualises tho hills, finds, " in the meanest thing 

 that grows, thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," and 

 draws purification and sanctification for the human soul from 

 communion with the spirit of tho green world around us. He 

 has his philosophy of life too, as well as of nature, and a noble 

 philosophy it is, as any one will remember who has read his 

 " Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Child- 

 hood." Wordsworth's most important works are, " Tho Excur- 

 sion " (a long semi-philosophic poem), " The White Doe of Ryle- 

 stone," " Yarrow Revisited," " Ecclesiastical Sketches," and 

 " Sonnets on tho River Duddon." No poet ever held a 

 higher ideal before him than Wordsworth. We get no passion 

 from him. As some one has said, " There is no trumpet stop in 

 his poetry." Yet at any rate ho raises our imagination and 

 interest to a very high and pure range of thought, and teaches 

 us, with a very direct teaching, how we may ennoble ourselves. 

 Wordsworth, who, like Southey, had become poet laureate, 

 died in 1850. The poets who have been mentioned in this 

 chapter had few contemporaries who wrote first-rate prose ' 

 except their critics. Tho poetical spirit was completely 



I dominant IB the early part of thi* century. That pnstiml 

 ripint, an we hare teen, was characterised by political fervour. 

 and uUo by a revived interest in romance. Many of the poet* 

 who then dreamt and sang of liberty lived to ses their politic*! 

 hopes diapelled. The romance which thy opened np to us. 

 however, hss not yet been exhausted by oar writers. Psrhap* 

 what moat distinguishes modern poetry, as a development from 

 the poetry of Keats, Byron, and Wordsworth. U a tendency to 

 increased atudy of character in its more dramatic phases. 



INDUSTRIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY 



OF CO.M.MKl;. 



CHAPTER XXVUI.-HANSEATIC LEAGUE INFLUENCE 

 AND DECLINE. 



1 . Old Prussia, or Eastern Division. Trade with this province 

 of the Hanso originated in 1309, after the Grand Master of the 

 Teutonic Knights had subdued the Lettish tribes possessing the 

 country, and had forced them to adopt Christianity. Some .Ger 

 man colonists who accompanied him quickly perceived the re- 

 sources of the country, and devoted themselves to trade. The 

 natives, excluded from manufactures and commerce, were com- 

 pelled to engage in agriculture and cattle-rearing. The traffic 

 in corn and timber was considerable ; that in beer, mead, amber, 

 cloth, and iron stood next. Marienbnrg was chosen as tho seat 

 of government, and its old castle is still an object of interest to 

 the traveller. Thorn, Elbing, and KOnigsberg were the depots of 

 commerce. A battle took place in 1410, as a result of which 

 the territory was converted into a Polish fief. Connection with 

 tho Hanso, however, waa still maintained, and the prosperity 

 derived from trade waa but triflingly affected. 



2. Esthonia and Livonia. A similar blending of theology and 

 commerce brought the heathen races of these parts under the 

 power of a fraternity of Bremen traders, calling themselves 

 Knights of the Sword. After this rude conversion the people 

 wore set to work, and the Knights of the Sword were eventually 

 absorbed by the Teutonic Knights. 



In Russia the Hanse found a field of enterprise almost unculti- 

 vated. Timber, grain, flax, hemp, ropes, skins, furs, Russian 

 leather, wax and tallow, and raw forest products, could be bar- 

 tercd to any indefinite extent for salt herrings and serge for tho 

 labourers, and jewels, wines, and brocades for tho wealthy. The 

 first factory in Russia was at Riga, the trade of which was 

 especially encouraged by Archbishop Albert. Novgorod at a 

 later date was chosen a member of the league by the Diet, with 

 a provision thenceforward throughout the league that only a 

 native of Lubeck should be the secretary of a factory, although 

 any free burgher might bo an alderman. A decree at the sarae 

 time interdicted all trade with the Russians on credit, under a 

 penalty of fifty marks for every such transaction. Novgorod 

 was resorted to as a residence by many German traders, ard 

 soon grew into a great and wealthy town. Continual conflicts 

 with the Grand Dukes of Muscovy checked its hitter growth, 

 and drove many of the Germans to the rival emporium of 

 Dorpat, in Livonia. 



So obvious were the advantages of Novgorod for trade, that 

 Peter tho Great in after times thought of making it his capital ; 

 in the present day Nischni-Novgorod is the scene of the largest 

 cosmopolitan fair tho world haa ever seen. The ramifications 

 of this division of the Hanse trade extended np the Neva, 

 through Lako Ladoga, the river Volchoff, and Lake Ilmon. 

 The transport of goods waa almost exclusively conducted by 

 Lubeck. 



3. Sweden. Tho kingdom of Sweden took no active part in 

 commerce during the Middle Ages, and the inhabitants, com- 

 pared with other European states, had made but little progress. 

 Nevertheless, its kings, by wisely offering freedom of trade, 

 induced traders from every part of the world to bring goods for 

 barter against the raw produce of the country. Lubeck, Ham- 

 burg, and other towns were exempted about the year 1250 from 

 wharfage and customs' dues, and in the fourteenth century, by the 

 favour of Eric Valdcmar and Magnus of Sweden, the Hanseatio 

 traders resident in the country were put on a footing of equality 

 with the king's own subjects. There was a reciprocal benefit in 

 these extensive privilegea, for the Swedish sovereigns thus cb. 

 toined tho powerful aid of the Hanse against tho Danes, who 



