happy enough to take delight in these
natural and universal objects in the early days, when the most permanent
associations are formed, the sight of them in later days will bring back
by pre-ordained and divine symbolism whatever was most ennobling in your
early feelings. The vulgarising associations will drop off of
themselves, and what was pure and lofty will remain.

From this natural law follows another of Wordsworth's favourite
precepts. The mountains are not with him a symbol of anti-social
feelings. On the contrary, they are in their proper place as the
background of the simple domestic affections. He loves his native hills,
not in the Byronic fashion, as a savage wilderness, but as the
appropriate framework in which a healthy social order can permanently
maintain itself. That, for example, is, as he tells us, the thought
which inspired the 'Brothers,' a poem which excels all modern idylls in
weight of meaning and depth of feeling, by virtue of the idea thus
embodied. The retired valley of Ennerdale, with its grand background of
hills, precipitous enough to be fairly called mountains, forces the two
lads into closer affection. Shut in by these 'enormous barriers,' and
undistracted by the ebb and flow of the outside world, the mutual love
becomes concentrated. A tie like that of family blood is involuntarily
imposed upon the little community of dalesmen. The image of sheep-tracks
and shepherds clad in country grey is stamped upon the elder brother's
mind, and comes back to him in tropical calms; he hears the tones of his
waterfalls in the piping shrouds; and when he returns, recognises every
fresh scar made by winter storms on the mountain sides, and knows by
sight every unmarked grave in the little churchyard. The fraternal
affection sanctifies the scenery, and the sight of the scenery brings
back the affection with overpowering force upon his return. This is
everywhere the sentiment inspired in Wordsworth by his beloved hills. It
is not so much the love of nature pure and simple, as of nature seen
through the deepest human feelings. The light glimmering in a lonely
cottage, the one rude house in the deep valley, with its 'small lot of
life-supporting fields and guardian rocks,' are necessary to point the
moral and to draw to a definite focus the various forces of sentiment.
The two veins of feeling are inseparably blended. The peasant noble, in
the 'Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,' learns equally from men a