Of the several visits to the European continent that William Wordsworth made during his life, three in particular are significant: his trips of 1790, 1820 and 1837. What makes these excursions notable is that in each case Wordsworth conceived of the journey as belonging to the genre of the ‘tour’, a subset of the phenomenon of ‘the grand tour’, the favoured educational and cultural experience of the British gentry and aristocracy going back at least two centuries to people such as Sidney and Moryson; and, second, in each case Wordsworth memorialized his trip by making a poetic record of it. I need hardly rehearse the history of the grand tour; to do so would be like carrying fallen leaves – or would that be pine needles? – to Vallombrosa, another subject in itself, but one that I will touch on later. The English grand tour had on its agenda an exposure to foreign languages, customs, manners, politics, theology and art and architecture, both ancient and modern. The young Wordsworth's aspirations were not all that different. Travelling through France for the first time in 1790, the developing poet was caught up in the spirit of the French Revolution. But he was also caught up in something else that held strong sway over the growth of this poet's mind: the power of Nature as experienced through the visual and literary aesthetics of landscape.