"Heaven and hell," he writes in 1808, "are scarcely more different
from each other than Sheffield and Manchester, &c., differ from the
plains and valleys of Surrey, Essex, Cumberland, or Westmoreland."
It is to be feared, indeed, that even "the plains and valleys of
Surrey and Essex" contain many cottages whose spiritual and sanitary
conditions fall far short of the poet's ideal. But it is of course
in the great and growing centres of population that the dangers
which he dreads have come upon us in their most aggravated form. And
so long as there are in England so many homes to which parental care
and the influences of Nature are alike unknown, no protest in favour
of the paramount importance of these primary agencies in the
formation of character can be regarded as altogether out of date.
With such severe and almost prosaic themes is the greater part of
the _Excursion_ occupied. Yet the poem is far from being composed
throughout in a prosaic spirit. "Of its bones is coral made;" its
arguments and theories have lain long in Wordsworth's mind, and have
accreted to themselves a rich investiture of observation and feeling.
Some of its passages rank among the poet's highest flights.
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