In Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales (1782), the famed landscape theorist William Gilpin offers a lengthy denunciation
of the use of white in landscapes. In the midst of this peroration, Gilpin includes
a long quotation on the subject from William Lock (or Locke), a renowned eighteenth-century
patron of the arts.

The species Wordsworth has in mind is prunus padus, most widely known today as the hackberry tree.

This was one of Wordsworth’s favorite passages, as evidenced by how frequently he
quotes it elsewhere in his writings.

More commonly known as Derwent Isle, this island’s alternate name can be traced to
the era when, prior to the sixteenth-century dissolution of the monasteries, it was
owned by the monks of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire.