the fishing for trout in the quiet pools and the cascades of the mountain brooks, the flying of kites on the hilltops, the nutting expeditions, the rowing on the lake, and in the winter-time the skating and dancing, to convince us that he was really a boy, yet he continually shows that beneath it all there was a deeper feeling a prophecy of the man who was even then developing. No ordinary boy would have felt a sense of pain" at beholding the mutilated hazel boughs which he had broken in his search for nuts. No ordinary lad

of ten would be able to hold

"Unconscious intercourse with beauty Old as creation, drinking in a pure Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths Of curling mist, or from the level plain Of waters colored by impending clouds." Even at that early age, in the midst of all his pleasures he felt

"Gleams like the flashing of a shield;-the earth

And common face of Nature spake to me
Rememberable things."

The secret of Wordsworth's power lay in the fact that, throughout a long life, Nature was to him a vital, living Presence -one capable of uplifting mankind to loftier aspirations, of teaching noble truths, and at the same time providing tranquillity and rest to the soul. boy he had felt for Nature

As a

"A feeling and a love That had no need of a remoter charm," but manhood brought a deeper joy.

แ "For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
Of all my moral being."
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

In these noble lines we reach the very summit of Wordsworth's intellectual power and poetic genius.

We must now retrace our steps to the village and find a carriage to take us on our journey. For we are not like our English friends, who are good walkers, nor do we care to emulate the pedestrian attainments of our poet, who, De Quincey thought, must have traversed a distance of one hundred and seventy-five thousand to one hundred and eighty thousand English miles. So a comfortable landau takes us on our way, skirting the upper margin of the lake, then winding along the river Brathay, pausing for a moment to view the charming little cascade of Skelwith Force, then on again until Red Bank is reached, overlooking the vale of GrasThe first glimpse of this placid little lake, "with its one green island," its shores well fringed with the budding foliage of spring, the gently undulating hills forming as it were a graceful frame to the mirror of the waters, in which the reflection of the blue sky and fleecy white clouds seemed even more beautiful than their original overhead-the first glimpse could scarcely fail to arouse the emotions of the most apathetic and stir up a poetic feeling in the most unpoetic of natures.

mere.

To a mind like Wordsworth's, such a scene was an inspiration, a revelation of Nature's charms such as could arouse an almost ecstatic enthusiasm in the heart of one who, all his life, had lived amid scenes of beauty and possessed the eyes to see

power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of
Something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all
thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am
I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty
world

Of eye and ear-both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

school-boy," on a "golden summer holiday," and even then said, with a sigh, "What happy fortune were it here to live!" He had no thought, nor even hope, that he would ever realize such good fortune, but only

"A fancy in the heart of what might be

The lot of others never could be his." Possibly he may have stood on this very knoll where we were enjoying our first view :

"The station whence we looked was soft and green,

Not giddy, yet aerial, with a depth
Of vale below, a height of hills above.

For rest of body perfect was the spot,
All that luxurious nature could desire;
But stirring to the spirit; who could gaze
And not feel motions there?"

Many years later, in the summer of 1799, Wordsworth and Coleridge were walking together over the hills and valleys of Westmoreland and Cumberland, hoping to find, each for himself, a home where they might dwell as neighbors. Since receiving his degree at Cambridge in 1791 Wordsworth had wandered about in a somewhat aimless way, living for a time in London and in France, visiting Germany, and finally attempting to find a home in the south of England. A small legacy left him in 1795 had given a feeling of independence, and his one consuming desire at this time was to establish a home where his beloved sister Dorothy might be with him and he could devote his entire time to poetry.

A little cottage in a quiet spot just outside. the village of Grasmere attracted his eye. It had been a public-house, and bore the sign "The Dove and the Olive Bough." He called it "Dove Cottage," and for eight years it became his home. We found the custodian, a little old lady, in a penny shop across the street, and she was glad to show us through the tiny, low-ceilinged rooms. The cottage looks best from the little garden in the rear. The ivy and the roses soften all the harsh angles of the eaves and convert even the chimney-pots into things of beauty. A tangled mass of foliage covers the little back portico and makes a shady nook, where a little bench is invitingly placed. A few yards up the garden walk, over stone steps put in place by Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge, is the rocky well, or spring, where the poet placed "bright gowan and marsh marigold" brought from the borders of the lake. At the farthest end is the little summer-house, the poet's favorite retreat. How well he loved this garden is shown in the poem written when he left Grasmere to bring

home his bride in 1802:

"Sweet garden orchard, eminently fair, The loveliest spot that man hath ever found." Seating ourselves in this garden, we tried to think of the three interesting personages who made the place their home. Coleridge said, "His is the happiest fam

ily I ever saw." They had one common object to work together to develop a rare poetic gift. They were poor, for Wordsworth had only the income of a very small legacy, and the public had not yet come to recognize his genius; the returns from his literary work were therefore extremely meager. They got along with frugal living and poor clothing, but as they made no pretensions they were never ashamed of their poverty. Visitors came and went, and, at the cost of many little sacrifices, were hospitably entertained.

Perhaps the world will never know how much Wordsworth really owed to the two women of his household. They lived together with no sign of jealousy or distrust.

The husband and brother was the object of their untiring and sympathetic devotion. They walked with him, read with him, cared for him. Mrs. Wordsworth seems to have been a plain countrywoman of simple manners, yet possessed of a graciousness and tact which made everything in the household go smoothly. De Quincey declared that, "without being handsome or even comely," she exercised "all the practical fascination of beauty, through the mere compensating charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect and purity of heart speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements." Wordsworth was never more sincere than when he sang,

"She was a phantom of delight," and closed the poem with that splendid tribute to a most excellent wife :

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light."

He recognized her unusual poetic instinct by giving her full credit for the best two lines in one of his most beautiful poems, "The Daffodils:"

"They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.'

To the other member of that household, his sister Dorothy, Wordsworth had given from early boyhood the full measure of his affection. She was his constant companion in his walks, at all hours and in all kinds of weather. She cheerfully performed the irksome task of writing out his verses from dictation. Her observations of Nature were as keen as his, and

the poet was indebted to Dorothy's notebook for many a good suggestion. He has been most generous in his acknowledgments of his obligation to her:

"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares, and delicate fears, And love, and thought, and joy."

In the early days when he was overwhelmed with adverse criticism and brought almost to the verge of despair, it was Dorothy's helping hand that brought him back to his own.

"She whispered still that brightness would return;

She, in the midst of all, preserved me still A poet, made me seek beneath that name, And that alone, my office upon earth."

But it is De Quincey who gives the best statement of the world's obligation to Dorothy. Said he: "Whereas the intellect of Wordsworth was, by its original tendency, too stern, too austere, too much enamored of an ascetic harsh sublimity, she it was the lady who paced by his side continually through sylvan and mountain tracks, in Highland glens, and in the dim recesses of German charcoalburners that first couched his eye to the

sense of beauty, humanized him by the gentler charities, and engrafted, with her delicate female touch, those graces upon the ruder growths of nature which have since clothed the forest of his genius with a foliage corresponding in loveliness and beauty to the strength of its boughs and the massiveness of its trunks."

Nearly all of Wordsworth's best poetry was written in this little cottage, or, to speak more accurately, it was composed while he was living here. For it was never his way to write verses while seated at a desk, pen in hand. His study was out of doors. He could compose a long poem while walking, and remember it all afterward when ready to dictate. Thousands of verses, he said, were composed on the banks of the brook running through Easedale, just north of Grasmere Lake. The tall figure of the poet was a familiar sight to farmers for miles around, as he paced the woods or mountain paths, his head bent down, and his lips moving with audible if not distinguishable sounds. One of his neighbors has left on record an impression of how he seemed when he was 66 making a poem." "He would set his head a bit forward,