Her information various; her eye watchful in minutest observation of Nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and draws in at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults."
From this description of Coleridge it might appear that Miss Wordsworth was one of those happy possessors of a face and features which though in repose might appear homely, became illumined by the sweet smiles of love—flashed into beauty by the gleam of the soul-lit eye.
The pleasure which the friendship of Coleridge afforded them induced Wordsworth and his sister to change their residence in order to be near him. Accordingly, in the summer of 1797, they settled at Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey. Alfoxden is described by Hazlitt as a "romantic old family mansion of the St. Aubins," and he gives the additional information that it was then in the possession of a friend of the poet, who gave him the free use of it. De Quincey states that he understood that the Wordsworths had the use of the house on condition of keeping it in repair.
Although Miss Wordsworth afterwards spoke of Racedown as the dearest place of her recollections upon the whole surface of the island, as the first home she had, she was soon enamoured of her new abode, and the scenery of Somersetshire. Of the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey she says, in a letter to a friend, dated 4th July: "There is everything there—sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted; brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland; villages as romantic; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves, found out a sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep hills, covered by full-grown timber-trees. The woods are as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; it has the character of the less grand parts of the neighbourhood of the lakes."
Being settled at Alfoxden, she writes again, on 14th August: "Here we are, in a large mansion, in a large park, with seventy head of deer around us. But I must begin with the day of leaving Racedown to pay Coleridge a visit. You know how much we were delighted with the neighbourhood of Stowey. The evening that I wrote to you, William and I had rambled as far as this house, and pryed into the recesses of our little brook, but without any more fixed thoughts upon it than some dreams of happiness in a little cottage, and passing wishes that such a place might be found out. We spent a fortnight at Coleridge's: in the course of that time we heard that this house was to let, applied for it, and took it. Our principal inducement was Coleridge's society. It was a month yesterday since we came to Alfoxden.
"The house is a large mansion, with furniture enough for a dozen families like ours. There is a very excellent garden, well stocked with vegetables and fruit. The garden is at the end of the house, and our favourite parlour, as at Racedown, looks that way. In front is a little court, with grass-plot, gravel-walk, and shrubs; the moss roses were in full beauty a month ago. The front of the house is to the south; but is screened from the sun by a high hill which rises immediately from it. This hill is beautiful, scattered irregularly and abundantly with trees, and topped with fern, which spreads a considerable way down it. The deer dwell here, and sheep, so that we have a living prospect. From the end of the house we have a view of the sea, over a woody, meadow country; and exactly opposite the window, where I now sit, is an immense wood, whose round top from this point has exactly the appearance of a mighty dome. In some parts of this wood there is an under-grove of hollies, which are now very beautiful. In a glen at the bottom of the wood is the waterfall of which I spoke, a quarter of a mile from the house. We are three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered over with trees. The hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak woods, which are cut for charcoal.... Walks extend for miles over the hill-tops; the great beauty of which is their wild simplicity: they are perfectly smooth, without rocks.
"The Tor of Glastonbury is before our eyes during more than half of our walk to Stowey; and in the park, wherever we go, keeping about fifteen yards above the house, it makes a part of our prospect."
The year succeeding the time when Miss Wordsworth and her brother became resident at Alfoxden was one of glowing enjoyment and fruitful industry. We are not without a few pleasing pictures of this charmed primitive period of their lives—its profitable intercourse, its delightful rambles.
We can imagine the happy meetings and rapturous feelings of the two young poets in the company of the bright young woman, who was gifted with a no less poetic soul, wandering amid the delightful scenery of Somersetshire, revelling in the beauties of woodland and ocean, and the pleasant evenings, when each read to the other his growing poems; and they together discussed their ambitious schemes for the golden future, receiving the suggestions and approval of the ever-sympathetic sister and friend. Wordsworth has described this as a "very pleasant and productive time" of his life.
It was during one of the short tours of Wordsworth and Coleridge, with the bright and faithful Dorothy by their side, inspiring and stimulating (the expenses of which tour they desired to defray by writing a poem), that the story of "The Ancient Mariner" was conceived. Wordsworth has said of it in a passage oft-repeated:—
"In the autumn of 1797, Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view of visiting Linton and the valley of stones near it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the new Monthly Magazine. In the course of this walk was planned the poem of 'The Ancient Mariner,' founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend, Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I suggested. For example, some crime to be committed, which was to bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in 'Shelvocke's Voyages,' a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude—the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings 12 or 13 feet. Suppose, said I, you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime. The incident was thought fitting for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead man; but I do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem."
It was about this time that the Wordsworths made the acquaintance of Hazlitt. He was then staying with Coleridge, who took him over to Alfoxden. Of this visit Hazlitt says:—
"Wordsworth himself was from home; but his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free access to her brother's poems, the lyrical ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in the form of sybilline leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room, with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family portraits, of the age of George I. and II., and from the woody declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day,
"Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the park, and, seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash tree, that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud, with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of 'Betty Foy.' I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in 'The Thorn,' 'The Mad Mother,' and 'The Complaint of the Poor Indian Woman,' I felt that deeper power and pathos, which have been since acknowledged,
as the characteristics of this author, and the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry, came over me. It had to me something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of spring,
"Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice sounded high,
as we passed through the echoing groves, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming in the solemn moonlight.... We went over to Alfoxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of 'Peter Bell' in the open air. There is a chant in the recitation, both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copsewood, whereas Wordsworth always composed walking up and down a straight gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruptions.... Returning the same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible."
This year was also celebrated by an introduction to Charles Lamb (the quaint and gentle-hearted "Elia") and his excellent sister Mary. Lamb was an old schoolfellow, and a close friend of Coleridge. They had been boys together at the Christ's Hospital, where the sympathy between them had been formed which became a life-long bond. A short emancipation from the toils of the East India House found Lamb and his sister spending a little time with Coleridge at Nether Stowey. From the time of the commencement of the acquaintance of Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth in this manner, their friendship was constant and their correspondence frequent. While, in temperament, they were totally unlike each other, there was that in the tenor of their lives, in the tender and helpful devotion of each of them to her brother—a devotion in both cases so warmly reciprocated—together with much in common in their tastes and pursuits, which served to cement a friendship begun under such pleasurable circumstances.
The poem "To my Sister," written in front of Alfoxden, is suggestive of the happy rural life at this time enjoyed by the poet and his sister. What lover of Wordsworth does not remember how on "the first mild day of March," when, to the receptive spirit of the poet, each minute of the advancing, balmy day appeared to be lovelier than the preceding one, while, sauntering on the lawn, he wrote, desiring her to hasten with her household morning duties, and share his enjoyment of the genial sunshine?
It was also during their residence at Alfoxden that Miss Wordsworth and her brother made their tour on the banks of the Wye, so signally memorialised in his famous lines on Tintern Abbey, of which he says, no poem of his was composed under circumstances more pleasant for him to remember. Its elevating reflections and rhythmic strains take captive the affections of the lover of Nature, and linger in his memory like the music of youth. In this place our interest in it arises from the allusions it contains to his beloved companion. He refers to the sweet sensations which, in hours of weariness in towns and cities, he has owed to the beauteous forms of Nature to which his mind has turned. He calls to memory the time when he had, indeed, loved Nature more passionately, and compares it with his present more mature and thoughtful affection, concluding with a fervid address to her who was by his side, and whose presence imparted an added charm—that of double vision—to every object and feeling; a sense of blessing shared:—
Although Coleridge was at this time married, his wife does not seem to have entered very warmly into his pursuits—not, indeed, with the same interest that Miss Wordsworth did. It cannot be out of place, since it is a matter of almost common knowledge, to remark that we have in Coleridge one more instance of the many men of genius who have not been very suitably mated. Mrs. Coleridge did not feel the sympathy in her husband's aims to enable her to take pleasure in their intellectual conversations or perpetual rambles. In both of these Miss Wordsworth delighted. De Quincey, in his uncontrollable propensity to chatter, has taken occasion from this fact to suggest that Mrs. Coleridge resented the familiar friendship of the poetic trio. Although not mentioning Miss Wordsworth by name, he refers to a young lady who became a neighbour and a daily companion of Coleridge's walks, and who was "intellectually much superior to Mrs. Coleridge," in a way that shows that none other than Miss Wordsworth could be alluded to. He adds: "Mrs. Coleridge, not having the same relish for long walks or rural scenery, and their residence being at this time in a very sequestered village, was condemned to a daily renewal of this trial. Accidents of another kind embittered it still further. Often it would happen that the walking party returned drenched with rain; in which case the young lady, with a laughing gaiety, and evidently unconscious of any liberty that she was taking, or any wound that she was inflicting, would run up to Mrs. Coleridge's wardrobe, array herself, without leave asked, in Mrs. Coleridge's dresses, and make herself merry with her own unceremoniousness and Mrs. Coleridge's gravity. In all this she took no liberty that she would not most readily have granted in return; she confided too unthinkingly in what she regarded as the natural privileges of friendship, and as little thought that she had been receiving or exacting a favour as, under an exchange of their relative positions, she would have claimed to confer one." Although De Quincey states that the feelings of Mrs. Coleridge were moderated by the consideration of the kind-heartedness of the young lady, that she was always attended by her brother, and that mere intellectual sympathies in reference to literature and natural scenery associated them, it is to be regretted that the perfectly innocent friendship should have been the cause of this small gossip, a thing in which De Quincey rather delighted, and which sometimes mars the pleasurableness of his otherwise felicitous recollections. He was not at this time acquainted either with Coleridge or the Wordsworths, and the information could only have been derived from them during subsequent years of confidential friendship, and not intended for repetition. However it may have appeared to her then, Mrs. Coleridge had in the future much cause to be thankful for the disinterested friendship of Miss Wordsworth.
How conducive to the best interests of her brother at this time was the companionship of Miss Wordsworth, and how complete was his restoration to a healthy and vigorous life after the political distractions of his Continental experience we gather from an allusion in the Biographia Literaria of Coleridge. Referring to his life at Nether Stowey, he says: "I was so fortunate as to acquire, shortly after my settlement there, an invaluable blessing in the society of one to whom I could look up with equal reverence, whether I regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversation extended to almost all subjects, except physics and politics; with the latter he never troubled himself."
The residence of Miss Wordsworth and her poet brother at Alfoxden, was terminated by circumstances which serve to illustrate at once something of the political attitude of the times, and also of the mental condition of their rustic neighbours in Somersetshire. Coleridge tells an amusing story how he and Wordsworth were followed and watched in their rambles by a person who was suspected to be a spy on their proceedings employed by the Government of the day. Whether this be well founded or not, the mere fact of two men living in their midst, without any apparent object, appears to have rather discomposed their neighbours. Why should they be continually spending their time in taking long and apparently purposeless rambles, engaged in earnest conversation? It was inconceivable that any one should walk a few miles in the light of the moon merely to look at the sea! They must be engaged in smuggling, or have other nefarious designs. In connection with this subject, there is one good story told. Some country gentlemen of the neighbourhood happened to be in the company of a party who were discussing the question whether Wordsworth and Coleridge might be traitors, and in correspondence with the French Administration, when one of them answered: "Oh! as to that Coleridge, he is a rattlebrain that will say more in a week than he will stand to in a twelvemonth. But Wordsworth, he is the traitor. Why, bless you! he is so close that you'll never hear him open his lips on the subject from year's end to year's end." The public belief in the absurd theory of Wordsworth's traitorous designs was, however, sufficient to induce the owner of the mansion in which he lived to put an end to the occupation.
The reputation of his friends and visitors suffered with his. In allusion to this, Mr. Howitt says: "The grave and moral Wordsworth, the respectable Wedgewoods, the correct Robert Southey, and Coleridge, dreaming of glorious intellectualities beyond the moon, were set down for a very disreputable gang. Innocent Mrs. Coleridge and poor Dolly Wordsworth were seen strolling about with them, and were pronounced no better than they should be. Such was the character that they unconsciously acquired that Wordsworth was at length actually driven out of the country."
It may not be out of place to repeat here Mr. Cottle's version of the affair. He says: "Mr. Wordsworth had taken the Alfoxden house, near Stowey, for one year (during the minority of the heir), and the reason why he was refused a continuance by the ignorant man who had the letting of it arose, as Mr. Coleridge informed me, from a whimsical cause, or rather a series of causes. The wiseacres of the village had, it seemed, made Mr. Wordsworth the subject of their serious conversation. One said that he had seen him wandering about by night and look rather strange at the moon! And then he roamed over the hills like a partridge! Another said he had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue that nobody could understand! Another said: 'It is useless to talk, Thomas. I think he is what people call a wise man (a conjurer).' Another said: 'You are every one of you wrong. I know what he is. We have all met him tramping away toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take all that trouble to look at a parcel of water? I think he carries on a snug business in the smuggling line, and in these journeys is on the look-out for some wet cargo!' Another very significantly said: 'I know that he has got a private still in his cellar; for I once passed his house at a little better than a hundred yards' distance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an ashen faggot at Christmas!' Another said, 'However that was, he was surely a desperd (desperate) French Jacobin; for he is so silent and dark that nobody ever heard him say one word about politics!' And thus these ignoramuses drove from their village a greater ornament than will ever again be found amongst them."
After leaving Alfoxden, in the autumn of 1798, Miss Wordsworth accompanied her brother during a residence of six months in Germany, their chief object being the attainment of a knowledge of the language. Although, from the absence of society at Goslar, where they were, they do not seem to have been fortunately circumstanced in this respect, Wordsworth was, according to his sister, very industrious, and here composed several poems.
Their life in Germany was not altogether without adventure. Mr. Howitt gives an account of an incident related to him by the poet of his arriving late one evening, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth and Coleridge, at a hamlet in Hesse Cassel, where they were unable to gain admittance to the inn, and feared having to pass the night in the open street. A continued knocking at the inhospitable doors only brought out the landlord armed with a huge cudgel, with which he began to beat them. Regardless of their personal danger, and thinking of their female companion, to whom the prospect of an inclement night in the open air was by no means cheering, Wordsworth and his friend managed, after warding off the blows of the cudgel, to force their way into the house, and by reasoning with the surly landlord, and appealing to his better feelings, induced him to afford them a scanty lodging for the night. It appears that strangers travelling in these remote parts at this time received scant courtesy, even from those professing to provide them with entertainment, and that personal violence and plunder were not unfrequently resorted to.
On returning to England in the spring of 1799, Wordsworth, after spending some months with friends at Sockburn-on-Tees, wisely determined to have a fixed place of abode for himself, and, of course, his sister; eventually selecting that spot which is more than all others associated with his name and memory. A walking tour in company with his friend Coleridge in Westmoreland and Cumberland, resulted in his fixing upon Grasmere as the future home of himself and his faithful sister. To this place they accordingly repaired, walking a considerable part of the way—that from Wensleydale to Kendal—"accomplishing as much as twenty miles in a day over uneven roads, frozen into rocks, in the teeth of a keen wind and a driving snow," amid the crisp and biting blasts of a winter day, arriving at Grasmere—so long the scene of their future labours and rambles—on the shortest day of the last year in the last century.
The lake and mountain district of England, which has now become so famous, was happily chosen by these children of Nature as their residence. Born as they both were on its outskirts, they had long been familiar with its beauties, and the only matter for surprise is that they had not earlier turned their faces to their native hills instead of spending some intervening years elsewhere.
No region could have been more in harmony with their sympathies and pursuits. The hardy inhabitants of these dales, and the simplicity of their lives and manners, formed fitting objects of study and reflection for the single-minded poet of Nature, who came to live and die amongst them. It is quite unnecessary, in these days of travel and of guide-books, which have done so much to make the district familiar ground, to give any description of it. It may not, however, be out of place to quote an extract or two from Wordsworth's own Description of the lakes. Referring to the aspect of the district at different seasons of the year, he says:—"It has been said that in human life there are moments worth ages. In a more subdued tone of sympathy may we affirm that in the climate of England there are, for the lover of Nature, days which are worth whole months—I might say even years. One of these favoured days sometimes occurs in spring-time, when that soft air is breathing over the blossoms and new-born verdure which inspired Buchanan with his beautiful 'Ode to the First of May'; the air which, in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of the golden age—to that which gives motion to the funereal cypresses on the banks of Lethe; to the air which is to salute beatified spirits when expiatory fires shall have consumed the earth, with all her habitations. But it is in autumn that days of such affecting influence most frequently intervene. The atmosphere becomes refined, and the sky rendered more crystalline, as the vivifying heat of the year abates; the lights and shadows are more delicate; the colouring is richer and more finely harmonised; and, in this season of stillness, the ear being unoccupied, or only gently excited, the sense of vision becomes more susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. A resident in a country like this we are treating of will agree with me that the presence of a lake is indispensable to exhibit in perfection the beauty of one of these days; and he must have experienced, while looking on the unruffled waters, that the imagination by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. The reason of this is that the heavens are not only brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the earth is mainly looked at, and thought of, through the medium of a purer element. The happiest time is when the equinoctial gales are departed; but their fury may probably be called to mind by the sight of a few shattered boughs, whose leaves do not differ in colour from the faded foliage of the stately oaks from which these relics of the storm depend; all else speaks of tranquillity; not a breath of air, no restlessness of insects, and not a moving object perceptible, except the clouds gliding in the depth of the lake, or the traveller passing along, an inverted image, whose motion seems governed by the quiet of a time to which its archetype, the living person, is perhaps insensible; or it may happen that the figure of one of the larger birds—a raven or a heron—is crossing silently among the reflected clouds, while the voice of the real bird, from the element aloft, gently awakens in the spectator the recollection of appetites and instincts, pursuits and occupations, that deform and agitate the world, yet have no power to prevent Nature from putting on an aspect capable of satisfying the most intense cravings for the tranquil, the lovely, and the perfect, to which man, the noblest of her creatures, is subject."
His description of the Cumbrian cottages—
is exceedingly happy.
"The dwelling-houses and contiguous outhouses are, in many instances, of the colour of the native rock, out of which they have been built; but frequently the dwelling or fire-house, as it is ordinarily called, has been distinguished from the barn or byre by rough-cast and whitewash, which, as the inhabitants are not hasty in renewing it, in a few years acquires, by the influence of weather, a tint at once sober and variegated. As these houses have been, from father to son, inhabited by persons engaged in the same occupations, yet necessarily with changes in their circumstances, they have received without incongruity additions and accommodations adapted to the needs of each successive occupant, who, being for the most part proprietor, was at liberty to follow his own fancy; so that these humble dwellings remind the contemplative spectator of a production of Nature, and may (using a strong expression) rather be said to have grown than to have been erected—to have risen, by an instinct of their own, out of the native rock—so little is there of formality, such is their wildness and beauty. Among the numerous recesses and projections in the walls, and in the different stages of their roofs, are seen bold and harmonious effects of contrasted sunshine and shadow. It is a favourable circumstance that the strong winds which sweep down the valleys induced the inhabitants, at a time when the materials for building were easily procured, to furnish many of these dwellings with substantial porches; and such as have not this defence are seldom unprovided with a projection of two large slates over their thresholds. Nor will the singular beauty of the chimneys escape the eye of the attentive traveller. Sometimes a low chimney, almost upon a level with the roof, is overlaid with a slate, supported upon four slender pillars, to prevent the wind from driving the smoke down the chimney. Others are of a quadrangular shape, rising one or two feet above the roof; which low square is often surmounted by a tall cylinder, giving to the cottage chimney the most beautiful shape in which it is ever seen. Nor will it be too fanciful or refined to remark that there is a pleasing harmony between a tall chimney of this circular form, and the living column of smoke, ascending from it through the still air. These dwellings, mostly built, as has been said, of rough unhewn stone, are roofed with slates, which were rudely taken from the quarry before the present art of splitting them was understood; and are, therefore, rough and uneven in their surface, so that both the coverings and sides of the houses have furnished places of rest for the seeds of lichens, mosses, ferns, and flowers. Hence buildings, which in their very form call to mind the processes of Nature, do thus, clothed in part with a vegetable garb, appear to be received into the bosom of the living principle of things, as it acts and exists among the woods and fields; and, by their colour and their shape, affectingly direct the thoughts to that tranquil course of Nature and simplicity, along which the humble-minded inhabitants have, through so many generations been led. Add the little garden with its shed for beehives, its small bed of pot-herbs, and its borders and patches of flowers for Sunday posies, with sometimes a choice few too much prized to be plucked; an orchard of proportioned size; a cheese-press, often supported by some tree near the door; a cluster of embowering sycamores for summer shade; with a tall fir through which the winds sing when other trees are leafless; the little rill, or household spout, murmuring in all seasons; combine these incidents and images together, and you have the representative idea of a mountain cottage in this country so beautifully formed in itself, and so richly adorned by the hand of Nature.
"Till within the last sixty years[1] there was no communication between any of these vales by carriage-roads; all bulky articles were transported on pack-horses. Owing, however, to the population not being concentrated in villages, but scattered, the valleys themselves were intersected, as now, by innumerable lanes and pathways leading from house to house and from field to field. These lanes, where they are fenced by stone walls, are mostly bordered with ashes, hazels, wild roses, and beds of tall fern, at their base; while the walls themselves, if old, are overspread with mosses, small ferns, wild strawberries, the geranium, and lichens; and if the wall happen to rest against a bank of earth, it is sometimes almost wholly concealed by a rich facing of stone-fern. It is a great advantage to a traveller or resident, that these numerous lanes and paths, if he be a zealous admirer of Nature, will lead him on into all the recesses of the country, so that the hidden treasures of its landscapes may, by an ever-ready guide, be laid open to his eyes."
A much more recent writer, Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, in her charming work, full of graceful description and exquisite poetry, thus writes of the scenery of one of the lakes after a storm:—
"The woods glittered and sparkled in the sun, each dripping branch a spray of golden light, and the light was married to the loud music of the birds flowing out in rivulets of song. Countless flies shot through the air, and vibrated on the water; and the fish leaped up to catch them, dimpling the shining surface with concentric ripples, and throwing up small jets of light in the smooth black bays. Every crag and stone, and line of wall, and tuft of gorse, was visible on the nearer hills, where the colouring was intense and untranslatable; and on the more distant mountains, we could see, as through a telescope, the scars on the steeps, the slaty shingles, and the straight cleavings down the sides, the old grey watercourses, threaded now like a silver line—those silver lines, after the storm, over all the craggy faces everywhere; we could see each green knoll set like an island among the grey boulders, each belt of mountain wood, each purple rift, each shadowed pass, slope and gully, and ghyll and scaur—we could count them all glistening in the sun, or clear and tender in the shade; while the sky was of a deep, pure blue above, and the cumulus clouds were gathered into masses white and dazzling as marble, and almost as solid-looking.
"And over all, and on all, and lying in the heart of everything, warming, creating, fashioning the dead matter into all lovely forms, and driving the sweet juices like blood through the veins of the whole of earth, shone the glad sun, free, boundless, loving—life of the world's life, glory of its glory, shaper and creator of its brightest beauty. Silver on the lake, gold in the wood, purple over the hills, white and lazuli in the heavens—what infinite splendour hanging through this narrow valley! What a wealth of love and beauty pouring out for the heart of all Nature, and for the diviner soul of man!"
Of the mountain tarns, which in their solitary grandeur gleam like diamonds, she writes:—
"It is very lovely to watch the ripple of a tarn: a wonderful lesson in wave curvature, if small in scale, yet as true as the wildest ocean storm could give. Ever changing in line, and yet so uniform in law, the artist and the hydrographer might learn some valuable truths from half a day's study of one of these small mountain sheets of water. Now the broad, smooth, silky curves flow steadily across; now a fine network spreads over these, and again another network, smaller and finer still, breaks up the rest into a thousand fragments; then the tarn bursts out into tiny silver spangles, like a girl's causeless laughter; and then comes a grey sweep across the water, as if it shivered in the wind; and then again all subsides, and the long, silky flow sets in again, with quiet shadows and play of green and grey in the transparent shallows. It is like a large diamond set in emerald; for the light of the water is radiance simply, not colour; and the grass, with the sun striking through, is as bright as an emerald."
If one more extract from Mrs. Linton may be culled, it is to the following reflections that a day spent on Helvellyn gives rise:—
"Ah! what a world lies below! But grand as it is on the earth, it is mated by the grandeur of the sky. For the cloud scenery is of such surpassing nobleness while it lasts, and before it is drawn up into one volume of intensest blue, that no kind or manner of discord mars the day's power and loveliness. Of all forms and of all colours are those gracious summer clouds, ranging from roseate flakes of dazzling white masses and torn black remnants, like the last fragments of a widow's weeds thrust aside for her maturer bridal; from solid substances, firm and marble-like, to light baby curls set like pleasant smiles about the graver faces: words and pictures, in all their changes, unspeakably precious to soul and sense. And when, finally, they all gather themselves away, and leave the sky a vault of undimmed blue, and leave the earth a gorgeous picture of human industry and dwelling—when field and plain, and mountain and lake, and tarn and river are fashioned into the beauty of a primeval earth by the purity of the air and the governing strength of the sun and the fragrant sweetness of the summer, and when the very gates of heaven seem opening for our entering where the southern sun stands at gaze in his golden majesty—is it wonder if there are tears more glad than many smiles, and a thrill of love more prayerful than many a litany chanted in the church service? In the very passion of delight that pours like wine through the veins is a solemn outfall—in the very deliciousness of joy an intensity that is almost pain. It is all so solemn and so grand, so noble and so loving, surely we cannot be less than what we live in!
"Let any one haunted by small cares, by fears worse than cares, and by passions worse than either, go up on a mountain height on such a summer's day as this, and there confront his soul with the living soul of Nature. Will the stately solitude not calm him? Can the nobleness of beauty not raise him to like nobleness? Is there no Divine voice for him in the absolute stillness? No loving hand guiding through the pathless wilds? No tenderness for man in the lavishness of Nature? Have the clouds no lesson of strength in their softness? the sun no cheering in its glory? Has the earth no hymn in all its living murmur? the air no shaping in its clearness? the wind no healing in its power? Can he stand in the midst of that great majesty the sole small thing, and shall his spirit, which should be the noblest thing of all, let itself be crippled by self and fear, till it lies crawling on the earth when its place is lifting to the heavens? Oh! better than written sermon or spoken exhortation is one hour on the lonely mountain tops, when the world seems so far off, and God and His angels so near. Into the Temple of Nature flows the light of the Shekinah, pure and strong and holy, and they are wisest who pass into it oftenest, and rest within its glory longest. There was never a church more consecrated to all good ends than the stone waste on Helvellyn top, where you sit beneath the sun and watch the bright world lying in radiant peace below, and the quiet and sacred heavens above."
Probably there is no spot of English ground to which more pilgrimages have, during the last half-century, been made than the vale of Grasmere, which has for all time been rendered classic by the residence therein of Wordsworth and those sons of genius who loved to gather around him; and almost every prominent object and scene in which has been immortalised by his pen.
To lovers of his poetry the spirit of Wordsworth yet casts a spell over the landscape; and mountain and vale and lake are almost as articulate to the hearing ear as are the storied stones of Rome. But Life's grandest music is audible only to the ready ear. It is to the "inward eye" of love, gathering its treasured harvest, that the brightest halo is revealed. Earth may be