ht his sister to his side and saved him. She
discerned his real need and divined the remedy. By her cheerful society,
fine tact, and vivid love for nature she turned him, depressed and
bewildered, alike from the abstract speculations and the contemporary
politics in which he had got immersed, and directed his thoughts towards
truth of poetry, and the face of nature, and the healing that for him lay
in these.

'Then it was
That the beloved sister in whose sight
Those days were passed--
Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self; for though bedimmed and changed
Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
Than as a clouded or a waning moon:
She whispered still that brightness would return,
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth.

By intercourse with her and wanderings together in delightful places of
his native country, he was gradually led back

'To those sweet counsels between head and heart
Whence genuine knowledge grew.'

The brother and sister, having thus cast in their lots together, settled
at Racedown Lodge in Dorsetshire in the autumn of 1795. They had there a
pleasant house, with a good garden, and around them charming walks and a
delightful country looking out on the distant sea. The place was very
retired, with little or no society, and the post only once a week. But
of employment there was no lack. The brother now settled steadily to
poetic work; the sister engaged in household duties and reading, and then
when work was over, there were endless walks and wanderings. Long years
afterwards Miss Wordsworth spoke of Racedown as the place she looked back
to with most affection. 'It was,' she said, 'the first home I had.'

The poems which Wordsworth there composed were not among his best,--'The
Borderers,' 'Guilt or Sorrow,' and others. He was yet only groping to
find his true subjects and his own proper manner. But there was one
piece there composed which will stand comparison with any tale he ever
wrote. It was 'The Ruined Cottage,' which, under the title of the 'Story
of Margaret,' he afterwards incorporated in the first Book of 'The
Excursion.' It was when they had been nearly two years at Racedown that
they received a guest who was destined to exercise more influence on the
self-contained Wordsworth than any other man ever did. This was S. T.