She had not, of course, his grasp of mind or his
poetic power; but her sensitiveness to nature was quite as keen as
his, and her disposition resembled his "with sunshine added to
daylight."
Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green field,
Could they have known her, would have loved; methought
Her very presence such a sweetness breathed,
That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills,
And everything she looked on, should have had
An intimation how she bore herself
Towards them, and to all creatures.
Her journal of a tour in Scotland, and her description of a week on
Ullswater, affixed to Wordsworth's _Guide to the Lakes_,--diaries
not written for publication but merely to communicate her own
delight to intimate friends at a distance,--are surely indescribably
attractive in their naive and tender feeling, combined with a
delicacy of insight into natural beauty which was almost a new thing
in the history of the world. If we compare, for instance, any of her
descriptions of the Lakes with Southey's, we see the difference
between mere literary skill, which can now be rivalled in many
quarters, and that sympathetic intuition which comes of love alone.
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