He visited other countries and described other scenes. Scotland,
Wales, Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, have all a place in his
works. His familiarity with other scenery helped him, doubtless, to
a better appreciation of the lake country than he could have gained
had he never left it. And, on the other hand, like Caesar in Gaul, or
Wellington in the Peninsula, it was because he had so complete a
grasp of this chosen base of operations that he was able to come, to
see, and to make his own, so swiftly and unfailingly elsewhere.
Happy are those whose deep-rooted memories cling like his about some
stable home! Whose notion of the world around them has expanded from
some prospect of happy tranquillity, instead of being drawn at
random from the confusing city's roar! Happier still if that early
picture be of one of those rare scenes which have inspired poets and
prophets with the retrospective day-dream of a patriarchal, or a
golden, age; of some plot of ground like the Ithaca of Odysseus,
[Greek: traechsi all agathae koyrotrophos], "rough, but a nurse of
_men_;" of some life like that which a poet of kindred spirit to
Wordsworth's saw half in vision, half in reality, among the
husbandmen of the Italian hills:--
Peace, peace is theirs, and life no fraud that knows,
Wealth as they will, and when they will, repose;
On many a hill the happy homesteads stand,
The living lakes through many a vale expand:
Cool glens are there, and shadowy caves divine,
Deep sleep, and far-off voices of the kine;--
From moor to moor the exulting wild deer stray;--
The strenuous youth are strong and sound as they;
One reverence still the untainted race inspires,
God their first thought, and after God their sires;--
These last discerned Astraea's flying hem,
And Virtue's latest footsteps walked with them.
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