The sensitiveness to sound so often remarked in Wordsworth’s poems is a characteristic of the poetry of Nature throughout the century before Wordsworth. The music of Nature was a source of widespread delight. The “pleasant noise of waters,” for instance, receives some notice from nearly every poet in the list, while in travels and fiction some of the most effective passages are on the sounds of rapid streams and waterfalls. In poetry the old words “warbling,” “tinkling,” and “murmuring,” are still much used, but Ramsay’s rill that “makes a singin din,” Thomson’s roused-up river that “thunders” through the rocks, Mallet’s river with its “sounding sweep,” Collins’ “brawling springs,” and Cowper’s “chiming rills” are a few of the phrases that mark a more individual and personal way of listening. One of Wordsworth’s often-quoted lines on sound has to do with the greater distinctness of the song of mountain streams by night. Mr. Heard gives this passage as an instance of Wordsworth’s peculiarly close observation. But the clearness with which falling or running water is heard at night had been noted at least six times in the literature before Wordsworth. Lady Winchilsea mentioned it in her “Revery.” Beattie speaks of waterfalls heard from afar amid the lonely night, and again of the quiet evening when naught but the torrent is heard on the hill. The lines in John Brown’s “Rhapsody” have already been quoted, as also his “Letter” in which he notes the variety of sounds from distant waterfalls as one of the attractions of a walk at night. And Gray also speaks of the murmur of many waterfalls not audible in the day time. Several other authors, as Dyer and Mallet, have practically the same idea when they mention the unusual clearness of the sound of falling water in a breathless noon, or in the depths of a silent forest.