And the scene with which the poem at once opens and
concludes--the return to the Lake country as to a permanent and
satisfying home--places the poet at last amid his true surroundings,
and leaves us to contemplate him as completed by a harmony without
him, which he of all men most needed to evoke the harmony within.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ENGLISH LAKES.
The lakes and mountains of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire,
are singularly fitted to supply such elements of moral sustenance as
Nature's aspects can afford to man. There are, indeed, many mountain
regions of greater awfulness; but prospects of ice and terror should
be a rare stimulant rather than an habitual food; and the physical
difficulties inseparable from immense elevations depress the
inhabitant and preoccupy the traveller. There are many lakes under a
more lustrous sky; but the healthy activities of life demand a scene
brilliant without languor, and a beauty which can refresh and satisfy
rather than lull or overpower. Without advancing any untenable claim
to British pre-eminence in the matter of scenery, we may, perhaps,
follow on both these points the judgment which Wordsworth has
expressed in his _Guide to the Lakes_, a work which condenses the
results of many years of intimate observation.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61