When the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell learnt that a friend was planning to visit the Lake District, she urged him to pack something by Wordsworth, not, as one might expect, his Guide to the Lakes, but the long, philosophical work in blank verse, The Excursion. The poem is set in the heart of the Lake District and its scenes and characters could have been of interest to any tourist going there; but Gaskell is not recommending The Excursion just for this reason. It is rather that to her mind Wordsworth is the prophet of the mountains and valleys, the best tutor and guide to the spiritual nourishment available from natural beauty, and The Excursion is his inspired word. Four figures occupy the ground of the poem, supposedly in dramatic interaction, but few readers have ever doubted that the most important of them is the Wanderer and that through him speaks Wordsworth the Sage. When the Wanderer declares that 'To every Form of being is assigned . . . / An active Principle' (Excursionix 1-3), his confession of faith recalls 'Tintern Abbey' and the early Prelude and it is no surprise to learn that the discourse of the Wanderer first published in 1814 was actually drafted in the year of 'Tintern Abbey', 1798.