conception of God,--this dark pathway also was not without its
outlet into the day. For the God in Nature is not only a God of
Beauty, but a God of Law; his unity can be apprehended in power as
well as in glory; and Wordsworth's mind, "sinking inward upon itself
from thought to thought," found rest for the time in that austere
religion,--Hebrew at once and scientific, common to a Newton and a
Job,--which is fostered by the prolonged contemplation of the mere
Order of the sum of things.

Not in vain
I had been taught to reverence a Power
That is the visible quality and shape
And image of right reason.

Not, indeed, in vain! For he felt now that there is no side of truth,
however remote from human interests, no aspect of the universe,
however awful and impersonal, which may not have power at some
season to guide and support the spirit of man. When Goodness is
obscured, when Beauty wearies, there are some souls which still can
cling and grapple to the conception of eternal Law.

Of such stem consolations the poet speaks as having restored him in
his hour of need. But he gratefully acknowledges also another solace
of a gentler kind. It was about this time (1795) that Wordsworth was
blessed with the permanent companionship of his sister, to whom he
was tenderly attached, but whom, since childhood, he had seen only
at long intervals. Miss Wordsworth, after her father's death, had
lived mainly with her maternal grandfather, Mr. Cookson, at Penrith,
occasionally at Halifax with other relations, or at Forncott with
her uncle Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor. She was now able to join