rtive girl is
unconsciously moulded into stateliness and grace by the floating clouds,
the bending willow, and even by silent sympathy with the motions of the
storm. Nobody has ever shown, with such exquisite power as Wordsworth,
how much of the charm of natural objects in later life is due to early
associations, thus formed in a mind not yet capable of contemplating its
own processes. As old Matthew says in the lines which, however familiar,
can never be read without emotion--

My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred;
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

And the strangely beautiful address to the cuckoo might be made into a
text for a prolonged commentary by an aesthetic philosopher upon the
power of early association. It curiously illustrates, for example, the
reason of Wordsworth's delight in recalling sounds. The croak of the
distant raven, the bleat of the mountain lamb, the splash of the leaping
fish in the lonely tarn, are specially delightful to him, because the
hearing is the most spiritual of our senses; and these sounds, like the
cuckoo's cry, seem to convert the earth into an 'unsubstantial fairy
place.' The phrase 'association' indeed implies a certain arbitrariness
in the images suggested, which is not quite in accordance with
Wordsworth's feeling. Though the echo depends partly upon the hearer,
the mountain voices are specially adapted for certain moods. They have,
we may say, a spontaneous affinity for the nobler affections. If some
early passage in our childhood is associated with a particular spot, a
house or a street will bring back the petty and accidental details: a
mountain or a lake will revive the deeper and more permanent elements of
feeling. If you have made love in a palace, according to Mr. Disraeli's
prescription, the sight of it will recall the splendour of the object's
dress or jewellery; if, as Wordsworth would prefer, with a background of
mountains, it will appear in later days as if they had absorbed, and
were always ready again to radiate forth, the tender and hallowing
influences which then for the first time entered your life. The
elementary and deepest passions are most easily associated with the
sublime and beautiful in nature.

The primal duties shine aloft like stars;
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.

And, therefore, if you have been