It is two hundred and seventeen years since Wordsworth visited Tintern Abbey for the second time, five years after his first visit, and then composed his celebrated Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; there have been some changes at the Abbey since. The vegetation that in Wordsworth’s time grew in and on the ancient walls has been cleared away, for it would eventually have ruined the ruins. But that, as you might have guessed, is not the greatest change.

I doubt that in 1798, the date of the poem, there would have been a notice informing him that ancient monuments can be dangerous, followed by an enumeration of the various hazards consequent upon visiting them, with little schematic pictures of these hazards to aid those lacking in reading comprehension. For example, there were “uneven, steep or narrow stairs” with a man falling backwards to the ground. Another man fell forwards down the “Unexpected drops,” and a second man backwards because of “Uneven and slippery surfaces.” Then there was a man who hit his head on the “Low headroom,” clutching it in pain afterwards, and another man clutching his head because he had failed to take account of advice to “Let your eyes adjust to the darkness.”

I regret that the notice impeded my Wordsworthian reverie. Sublimity wasn’t in it. Not “elevated thoughts; a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused,” but rather a naggingly jejune question: exactly how many visitors