with which our childish years are surrounded, and the close
connexion of this emotion with external nature, which it glorifies
and transforms, he infers that the soul has enjoyed elsewhere an
existence superior to that of earth, but an existence of which
external nature retains for a time the power of reminding her.

The first of these lines of thought may be illustrated by a passage
in the _Prelude_, in which the boy's mind is represented as passing
through precisely the train of emotion which we may imagine to be at
the root of the theology of many barbarous peoples. He is rowing at
night alone on Esthwaite Lake, his eyes fixed upon a ridge of crags,
above which nothing is visible:--

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And as I rose upon the stroke my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;--
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again;
And, growing still in stature, the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own,
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow-tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood. But after I had seen