Note JW — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 (continued 4)
Reading edition
Mr. Rawnsley has suggested that this may refer to the introduction of canal boats into England. It is more likely, I think, that Wordsworth had in his mind's eye
That animating spectacle of sails That, through her inland regions, to and fro Pass with the respirations of the tide, Perpetual, multitudinous!
referred to in pp. 332-33, a reminiscence perhaps of what he had often seen in the Bristol Channel.—ED.