IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY. 163 



that agreed well with one's conception of the loftier 

 strains of its poet. It is not too much dominated by 

 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 plane-like character of the valley, that makes 

 the scenery of the 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 delights 

 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 char- 

 acteristic of Wordsworth's country. It was a pleas- 

 ure 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 plane 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 mur- 

 mured, its clear white breast alone defining it from 

 the object upon which it rested. Then it would trip 



