hue of the wainscoting, this window, though tolerably large, did not furnish a very powerful light to one who entered from the open air."

Going out of the cottage by the door to the east you look upon a small orchard-garden, like so many others in Westmoreland, in which apple-trees, various shrubs and flowering plants, commingle with numerous flowers that are native to the district. Wordsworth has immortalized this orchard in several of his poems, especially "The Green Linnet," in which the very spirit of the place is enshrined.

The poet's room, which served as study, library, parlor, and drawing-room, is directly above the one which you enter on first going into the cottage. In it the Wordsworth household and their visitors held high discourse. There are three chairs in this room of great interest, the cushions of which were wrought by Dora Wordsworth, Sara Coleridge, a sister of poor Hartley Coleridge, and Edith Southey, the daughter of the poet. They are a memorial of "The Triad."

Adjoining Wordsworth's room is the guest chamber of which so many of the friends of the household made use. It is a tiny room with a bright outlook on the orchard-garden to the east.

In it have slept John Wordsworth, a nephew of the poet; Coleridge, Southey, John Wilson, Walter Scott, Sir George and Lady Beaumont, Thomas Clarkson, Charles Lloyd, Thomas Wilkinson, and the Coleridge children.

Speaking of the simple and humble life led by Wordsworth at Dove Cottage, Professor Knight says:

"A visitor can overleap the intervening years and go back in imagination to the cottage of Wordsworth's time; and it is not difficult to realize that rare union of simplicity and rusticity which gave its unique charm to the life led within this humble. home first by the brother and sister, afterwards by husband, wife, children, sister, and guests. Such a combination of 'plain living and high thinking' has probably never been experienced before or since amongst the poets of England; and it is not too much to say that the publication of Dorothy's Journal has been a revelation of many things hitherto quite unknown as to Wordsworth's early life. The chronicle of the poet chopping wood for household fires in the same small

hundred trivial miscellaneous items of apparent drudgery, were all due to the most honorable poverty; and side by side with this we have minute disclosures of the progress and completion. of a great poet's work which have scarce a parallel in history." The sitting-room directly over the dining-room in Dove Cottage contains different portraits of the poet; amongst these the one taken on Helvellyn, Nash's pen portrait, and Haydon's, which the poet himself regarded as his best and which is reproduced in this paper.

The library in the cottage contains original editions of all of Wordsworth's works published in his lifetime-the gift of Professor Knight, who has done so much to preserve the records and work of the Poet of the Lakes.

While discussing the character of Wordsworth with the kindly old sexton, Mr. Wilson, I inquired how it came about that the poet Wordsworth changed his politics-went from Whig to Tory-and Mr. Wilson replied, That is easily explained. It was because Lord Brougham threatened to reduce his salary as distributer of stamps for Westmoreland.

Sɔ it would appear that a poét is after all very human, and sometimes when you touch his pocket, you touch his principles. Browning's lines are then justly aimed when, in reference to Wordsworth's political turn over, the author of "Saul" sings:

"Just for a handful of silver he left us."

It would appear that Grasmere has been Tory for generations, and Mr. R. Rigg, the present member, is the first Liberal who has been elected for the district for very many years.

Asked as to the difference between the Church of England in Wordsworth's time and now in Grasmere, Mr. Wilson said it is much more Ritualistic to-day. Wordsworth certainly must have had a Ritualistic moment-nay more, a moment of real Catholic faith, when he penned his beautiful sonnet on "The Virgin." It was the poet's reward for being true to art, which ever has its root and inspiration in Catholic truth.

It is folly to charge Wordsworth with pantheism. The late Aubrey de Vere, his ami intime, has acquitted him of this charge, and perhaps no critic has written more sympathetically and wisely of Wordsworth than De Vere. I find his criticism far more valuable than his poetry, for however clear and true

more.

Wordsworth certainly lived in a literary neighborhood among the Lakes. At Keswick, which is some sixteen or twenty miles north of Grasmere, lived for many years the poets Shelley and Southey, and at Brantwood, near Coniston, the great art critic and essayist, John Ruskin.

Just as you are issuing out of Ambleside, at the head of Lake Windermere, you are shown the house in which lived for many years Harriet Martineau, and about two miles from Ambleside, beyond what is known as Low Wood, stands the pretty cottage of Dove's Rest, the residence for a brief time of Mrs. Hemans, the poetess. When De Quincey first came to the Lake region he lived at Coniston, and moved to Dove Cottage in 1808, when Wordsworth left the latter for Allan Bank, which stands in the back part of the village of Grasmere. From here the poet went in 1812 to the Rectory, where he lived for two years.

By the way, it may be interesting to note that one of the tenants of Dove Cottage before Wordsworth moved into it was

drawn in the poem entitled "Michael." Mr. Wilson pointed out to me the farm which is known to-day as Michael. This and Tintern Abbey are two of the masterpieces of Wordsworth. He who cannot find pathos in the line

"And never lifted up a single stone,"

should never look upon a page of Wordsworth.

From 1814 to 1850 Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount. The village of Rydal is about a mile and a quarter from Ambleside. Rydal Mount is a little cottage almost hidden by a profusion of roses and ivy. At present it is occupied by Fisher Wordsworth, who adopted the name of Wordsworth and is married to a granddaughter of the poet. Between Ambleside and Grasmere lives another granddaughter, Mrs. Col Mair, whom I saw in the Grasmere church and whose profile resembles that of her grandfather very much.

Simple, lovable, strong, noble, the Poet of the Lakes-the Vicegerent of Nature-lived his eighty years and left to the world a precious legacy of song. His poems are but the voice of nature-now of the mountain peak, now of force and fell, now of his loved celandine and daffodil sweetened, bedewed, baptized into the divine tenderness of truth.

The genius of his life-work can best be interpreted where his spirit seems yet to abide-amid the lakes and vales, the fields and fells of Westmoreland.

SOME AFRICAN LANGUAGES AND RELIGIONS.

BY REV. LUKE PLUNKETT, Miss. Ap. Uganda.

N the course of an article in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, January, 1897, by the eminent Orientalist, Mgr. Charles de Harlez, on "The Necessity of Studying Languages and Their Monuments," we read the following passage:

"But there is a fourth branch of the sciences whose bearing, from the religious point of view, is unhappily not suitably appreciated, nor its action in the world sufficiently recognized. I refer to the science of languages and their monuments, a science too much neglected, and yet one whose importance may not be slighted, since these monuments contain that religious history of humanity which is to-day chiefly employed in judging the dogmas and achievements of Christianity."

The learned author is evidently referring not only to studies in Egyptology, Assyriology, Chinese, Coptic, and Syriac-of which he is himself so great a master-but also to other less well-known branches of the same subject, as farther on he says:

"The ancient inhabitants of America, Oceanica, and Africa are summoned, like those of Europe and Asia, to play parts. that are never unimportant. Theories concerning the origin of man, the nature of his intelligence, his soul, and the original unity of the human species, are everywhere receiving light from philological monuments.”

Hence it may not be inopportune to place before your readers a brief summary of the languages and dialects spoken in the countries round the north-western, northern, and northeastern shores of the Lake Victoria Nyanza, and extending inland for a radius of say three hundred miles. Besides being of some interest to the philologist, it may serve as a basis or guide for future investigation in the same field by those who have time and opportunity at their disposal.

The region known as the " Uganda Protectorate" has attracted no little attention during the last twenty years. First, after its "discovery" by Europeans in the reign of King