_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.




CHAPTER V.


MARRIAGE--SOCIETY--HIGHLAND TOUR.

With Wordsworth's settlement at Townend, Grasmere, in the closing
days of the last century, the external events of his life may be
said to come to an end. Even his marriage to Miss Mary Hutchinson,
of Penrith, on October 4, 1802, was not so much an importation into
his existence of new emotion, as a development and intensification of