kind as impersonated in unwarped and enlightened minds.
If this be so when we are merely putting together words or
colours, how much more ought the feeling to prevail when
we are in the midst of the realities of things; of the beauty
and harmony, of the joy and happiness, of loving creatures;
of men and children, of birds and beasts, of hills and streams,
and trees and flowers; with the changes of night and day, evening
and morning, summer and winter; and all their unwearied
actions and energies, as benign in the spirit that animates them
as they are beautiful and grand in that form of clothing which
is given to them for the delight of our senses! What then
shall we say of many great mansions, with their unqualified
expulsion of human creatures from their neighbourhood,
happy or not; houses which do what is fabled of the upas
tree--breathe out death and desolation! For my part, strip
my neighbourhood of human beings, and I should think it
one of the greatest privations I could undergo. You have
all the poverty of solitude, nothing of its elevation."

This passage is from a letter of Wordsworth's to Sir George Beaumont,
who was engaged at the time in rebuilding and laying out Coleorton.
The poet himself planned and superintended some of these improvements,
and wrote for various points of interest in the grounds inscriptions
which form dignified examples of that kind of composition.

Nor was Sir George Beaumont the only friend whom the poet's
taste assisted in the choice of a site or the disposition of
pleasure-grounds. More than one seat in the Lake-country--among them
one home of preeminent beauty--have owed to Wordsworth no small part
of their ordered charm. In this way, too, the poet is with us still;