IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY 149 



nity that agreed well with one's conception of the 

 loftier strains of its poet. It is not too much domi- 

 nated hy the mountains, though shut in on all sides 

 by them; that stately level floor of the valley keeps 

 them back and defines them, and they rise from its 

 outer margin like rugged, green-tufted, and green- 

 draped walls. 



It is doubtless this feature, as De Quincey says, 

 this floor-like character of the valley, that makes 

 the scenery of Grasmere more impressive than the 

 scenery in North Wales, where the physiognomy of 

 the mountains is essentially the same, but where 

 the valleys are more bowl-shaped. Amid so much 

 that is steep and rugged and broken, the eye de- 

 lights in the repose and equilibrium of horizontal 

 lines, a bit of table-land, the surface of the lake, 

 or the level of the valley bottom. The principal 

 valleys of our own Catskill region all have this 

 stately floor, so characteristic of Wordsworth's 

 country. It was a pleasure which I daily indulged 

 in to stand on the bridge by Grasmere Church, with 

 that full, limpid stream before me, pausing and 

 deepening under the stone embankment near where 

 the dust of the poet lies, and let the eye sweep 

 across the plain to the foot of the near mountains, 

 or dwell upon their encircling summits above the 

 tops of the trees and the roofs of the village. The 

 water-ouzel loved to linger there, too, and would sit 

 in contemplative mood on the stones around which 

 the water loitered and murmured, its clear white 

 breast alone defining it from the object upon which 



