12 EDUCATION BY SCENERY. pendence, forming a little Mountain Republic, they had never seen cities, nor become familiar with the contamination of manufactures. Their dress at that time very plain, and party-coloured, and rarely boasting any ornament, the women clad much more after a Continental or German taste, than any dress we now see in England; their tables covered with bannocks of oaten cake and foaming milk. Such we fancy to ourselves to have been the character of the village life and scenery of that retired spot where Wordsworth passed some of the first and most important portions of his life. In Education we must underrate nothing, and certainly not the influence of Scenery. It is true that neither scenery nor books, nor any course of training can put within the mind either faculties or sensations, any more than the light can create the eye, or fragrance the sense of smell, or music the perception of sound. But as without the ministers to the senses, they might as well be locked up and dead, so the faculties of the soul are awakened by the influences which flow around it. Circumstances cannot create a being, but they can colour it. Hawkshead forms an appropriate vignette to the frontispiece of the great volume of our poet's life, it was the place most calculated to affect such a boy as William Wordsworth must have been. The Excursion began here in this pretty little obscure market-town; that fluttering Heron from the bosom of the water, the majestic sail of that solitary Eagle rarely seen-those shadows chasing each other over the Mountains-that barren and exposed Heath, Hawkshead moor-those rugged Steeps and Fells, that "kept to June December's snow"-those mysterious and significant Clouds, that would not "hear the loud winds when they call"-those lonely places among the Hills-those solitary Glens and Dingles, and gleaming Tarns all these favoured that wondering sensibility awakened in that village. But we must not hurry too rapidly over these interesting years. Looking now at the early period of Wordsworth's history, it is worthy of notice that he never had a period of life when he was not impressed by a visible and brooding presence of thought, his mind never lay unconscious, even in comparative childhood it was alive to vivid and precocious reflection, his school days not less than the later period of his life bear testimony to his sensibility to wonder, and to thought. We should hazard the remark that he was a boy of fine strong animal spirits, ready for all exploits :- for the climbing the crag or the tree, for the distant excursion or the homely game, capable of a fund of pleasure in all weather, undeterred by cold or rain from following the bent of his spirits, and turning all the accidents of the seasons into a glory and a joy, he says indeed Even then I felt Gleams like the flashing of a shield; the earth His mind was prepared to feel and to indulge in the charm of its own sensations, to exult in the deliciousness Prelude, p. 22. 14 BOYHOOD AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. of solitude, and his position and his age all conspired to make him feel yet more its "self sufficing power." Hawkshead as we have said is still a beautiful little village, then it was still more secluded; it was a kind of upland hamlet shut in from all contact with the noisy world, between two lakes, Windermere and Esthwait. The greater part of a century has rolled along since our poet was prosecuting his education there; such a course of training as he then pursued could now be followed and cultivated in no single portion of Great Britain. He was trained to a sturdy independence in his childhood; no letters then greeted him, as they now constantly greet the boys of our schools; cities were far removed, it was a sort of Highland solitude, not unlike the Fichtelberge where Richter's first days were passed. It was a realm unknown, untrodden, and unheard of by almost all the gentle or simple of the British islands; the trim tokens of cultivation and urbanity which now meet the eye over the whole lake district were then and there wholly unknown, and those scenes now only suggestive of beauty and majesty were not unfrequently, and especially in winter, the ministers of savage grandeur. That was not the age of magazines and newspapers, and the light literature which now sports so gracefully round the years of childhood and youth; no light canoes and pleasant rafts were there, on which the mind could put off quickly from the havens of thought, and stunt itself under the pretext of improvement. Sports and tasks were the occupations of the boys, and of the former summer and winter brought pleasingly fresh alterna LOVE OF SOLITUDE. 15 tions, the records of which have been sketched with mingled power and beauty in the Prelude. Whoso converses too lengthily with solitude exercises his own mind, but imparts to his character a timidity and modesty, and reserve, greatly unfitting him for any active place among his fellow-men: and his mental and moral training in this lonely region influenced no doubt his whole after-life, and gave to a character quite disposed for such seclusion, its indisposition to all communion and fellowship with men. All things favoured this hermetic state, he did not board or lodge in the school or school-house, but like all the rest of the boys with an ancient dame, Anne Tyson. Night and day ministered to his solitary emotions. His pillow, even so young, was a place haunted by imagery to waking eyes; he speaks of the gladness with which he sought his bed "That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind Roar, and the rain beat hard; where I so oft Had lain on summer nights to watch The moon in splendour couched among the leaves Had watched her with fixed eyes, while to and fro She rocked with every impulse of the breeze." Thus the presence of nature curtained round and impressed his spirit. Holidays spent in boating, or in boyish rambles, all ministered to the aesthetic passion of his soul. * Prelude, p. 71. Nothing at that time So welcome, no temptation half so dear As that which urged me to a daring feat: Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags, And tottering towers-I loved to stand and read Their looks.* And then the winter's amusement of Skating; the compass of poetry contains no finer description of that most zestful exercise than is given to us in his poem, from which we have quoted so much. This appears to have been the most favoured amusement. "For me it was a time of rapture." At sun-set, when the cottage windows were blazing through the twilight, as the village clock tolled six, All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games And woodland pleasures So thro' the darkness and the cold we flew, Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills Of melancholy not unnoticed." But it is more to our present purpose, as showing the character of the boy, and his peculiar life, that while the stars appeared, and the orange twilight sky in the west faded-he says * Quoted from M.S. of Recluse, by Dr. Wordsworth, in the "Life," p. 41. |