be found within her walls. The floodtide of her new life had not yet
set in: she was still slumbering, as she had slumbered long, content
to add to her majesty by the mere lapse of generations, and
increment of her ancestral calm. Even had the intellectual life of
the place been more stirring, it is doubtful how far Wordsworth
would have been welcomed, or deserved, to be welcomed, by
authorities or students. He began residence at seventeen, and his
northern nature was late to flower. There seems, in fact, to have
been even less of visible promise about him than we should have
expected; but rather something untamed and insubordinate, something
heady and self-confident; an independence that seemed only rusticity,
and an indolent ignorance which assumed too readily the tones of
scorn. He was as yet a creature of the lakes and mountains, and love
for Nature was only slowly leading him to love and reverence for man.
Nay, such attraction as he had hitherto felt for the human race had
been interwoven with her influence in a way so strange that to many
minds it will seem a childish fancy not worth recounting. The
objects of his boyish idealization had been Cumbrian shepherds--a
race whose personality seems to melt into Nature's--who are united
as intimately with moor and mountain as the petrel with the sea.

A rambling schoolboy, thus
I felt his presence in his own domain
As of a lord and master--or a power,
Or genius, under Nature, under God;
Presiding; and severest solitude
Had more commanding looks when he was there.
When up the lonely brooks on rainy days
Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills
By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes