But there was a further step, which he now made. He discovered that in order to attain the highest and truest vision of Nature, the soul of man must not be altogether passive, but must act along with and in unison with Nature, must send from itself abroad an emanation, which, meeting with natural objects, produces something better than either the soul itself or Nature by herself could generate. This creation is, as has been observed, “partly given by the object, partly by the poet’s mind,” is neither wholly mind, nor wholly object, but something, call it aspect, effluence, emanation, which partakes of both. It is the meeting or marriage of the life that is in the soul with the life that is in the Universe, which two are akin to each other, that produces the truest vision and the highest poetry. This view Wordsworth illustrates by the marvelous effect produced on a landscape by a change in the atmosphere, a clearing of the clouds, a sudden flood of moonlight let down into the darkness of mountain abysses, such as that he saw at midnight while ascending Snowdon. A like power he thinks the mind can exercise on outward things—what he calls “An ennobling interchange Of action from without and from within. The excellence, pure function, and best power, Both of the object seen and eye that sees.” When his mind thus put forth its higher power on the actual familiar world, on life’s every-day appearances, he seemed to gain clear sight of a new world, not hitherto reflected in books, but worthy to be so reflected, and made visible to other eyes. This he set himself to accomplish, and the result still lives in many a pure and deathless creation. That combined action of the object seen and of the eye that saw, above spoken of, is especially embodied in such poems as “The Yew-Trees of Borrowdale,” “Stepping Westward,” “The Leech-Gatherer,” and “To the Cuckoo.” In all these, and many more, the poet, letting his own spirit pass forth into the scene before him, and become identified with it, has caught the inner spirit of the place and of the hour, brought it out, and interpreted it as no mere outward description could have done. A few strokes, giving one or two of the most characteristic features, as seen by a keenly-observant eye, and then he glides into that which no eye can see, but only the living power of a deep and sympathetic imagination. And though few other imaginations could have penetrated so deeply into the secret of Nature, and given articulate voice to her silences, yet every true imagination feels at once that he had gone to the quick, and truly rendered the invisible but not unfelt presence that dwells there. It is in this way that he has gathered up into himself the sleep that from oldest time has brooded over those Westmoreland mountains, and uttered it in his own perfect and melodious language. This has been done by him for that region once for all, and no other poet need attempt to