And it was precisely in this manner, according to De Quincy, and indeed according to the known laws by which Nature educates the faculties of the poet, that Wordsworth was educated in his boyhood. All this hunting, fishing, and rambling, were but the means by which Nature allured him to the woods and waters, that she might silently impress him with her manifold forms and influences. There are evidences, however, of something like _communion_ with Nature in the early poems of Wordsworth, even before he left Hawkshead; and his solitary wanderings, his roamings round the lake of Esthwaite--five miles before breakfast--were not without a purpose, and could not have been undertaken unless an unquenchable, though perhaps not a fully developed love, had possessed his heart, for natural scenery, and the mystic lore which it teaches. His own confession, that though Nature was at first a dumb perplexing riddle to him, and merely affected him by her beauty and grandeur,--I say his own confession, that in spite of this, he subsequently felt the coming of the “_auxiliar light_” from his own soul, which penetrated her forms, and made them instinct with sublime intelligence--will illustrate the idea with sufficient force and clearness. Enough, however, has been said upon this subject, for it is impossible to trace in any direct manner, the subtle and delicate influences of Nature upon the human mind, or to determine even, in the instance of Wordsworth, the precise time when he first sought “the woods and mountains, with a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative pleasure.” We will leave all this, therefore, and direct the reader to the “Prelude,” as the best exposition of the poet’s mental development at this early period. A few words respecting the government of the Hawkshead grammar school, as an influence affecting the character of the poet, and we will then follow him to Cambridge.