e!

So I reasoned softly to myself in a train of gentle thought, till the
plough-horses came clattering in, and the labourers plodded gratefully
home; and the sun went down over the flats in a great glory of orange
light.

XXIV

Wordsworth

I believe that I was once taken to Rydal Mount as a small boy, led
there meekly, no doubt, in a sort of dream; but I retain not the
remotest recollection of the place, except of a small flight of stone
steps, which struck me as possessing some attractive quality or other.
And I have since read, I suppose, a good many descriptions of the
place; but on visiting it, as I recently did, I discovered that I had
not the least idea of what it was like. And I would here shortly speak
of the extraordinary kindness which I received from the present
tenants, who are indeed of the hallowed dynasty; it may suffice to say
that I could only admire the delicate courtesy which enabled people,
who must have done the same thing a hundred times before, to show me
the house with as much zest and interest, as if I was the first pilgrim
that had ever visited the place.

In the first place, the great simplicity of the whole struck me. It is
like a little grange or farm. The rooms are small and low, and of a
pleasant domesticity; it is a place apt for a patriarchal life, where
simple people might live at close quarters with each other. The house
is hardly visible from the gate. You turn out of a steep lane,
embowered by trees, into a little gravel sweep, approaching the house
from the side. But its position is selected with admirable art; the
ground falls steeply in front of it, and you look out over a wide
valley, at the end of which Windermere lies, a tract of sapphire blue,
among wooded hills and dark ranges. Behind, the ground rises still
more steeply, to the rocky, grassy heights of Nab Scar; and the road
leads on to a high green valley among the hills, a place of unutterable
peace.

In this warm, sheltered nook, hidden in woods, with its southerly
aspect, the vegetation grows with an almost tropical luxuriance, so
that the general impression of the place is by no means typically
English. Laurels and rhododendrons grow in dense shrubberies; the
trees are full of leaf; flowers blossom profusely. There is a little
orchard beneath the house, and everywhere there is the fragrant and
pungent smell of sun-warmed garden-walks and box-hedges. There are
little terraces everywhere, banked