figured a good deal by intemperance, was still a very fine young man; more athletic even than his father; and presenting his father's handsome English yeoman's face, exalted by a Roman dignity in some of the features. The daughter was of the same cast of person; tall, and Roman also in the style of her face. In fact, the brother and the sister would have offered a fine impersonation of Coriolanus and Valeria. This Roman bias of the features a little affected the feminine

loveliness of the daughter's appearance. But still, as the impression was not very decided, she would have been pronounced anywhere a very captivating young woman. These were the two crowns of Mr. K· -'s felicity, that for seventeen or eighteen years made the very glory of his life. But Nemesis was on his steps; and one of these very children she framed the scourge which made the day of his death a happy deliverance, for which he had long hungered and thirsted. But I anticipate.

About the time when I came to reside in Grasmere, some little affair of local business one night drew Wordsworth up to Mr. K's house. It was called, and with great propriety, from the multitude of holly trees that still survived from ancient days, The Hollens; which pretty local name Mrs. K, in her general spirit of vulgar sentimentality, had changed to Holly Grove. The place, spite of its slipshod novelish name, which might have led one to expect a corresponding style of tinsel finery, and a display of childish purposes, about its furniture or its arrangements, was really simple and unpretending; whilst its situation was, in itself, a sufficient ground of interest; for it stood on a little terrace running like an artificial gallery or corridor along the final, and all but perpendicular, descent of the mighty Fairfield.1 It seemed as if it must require iron bolts

1 "Mighty Fairfield":

"And Mighty Fairfield, with her chime

Of echoes, still was keeping time."-WORDSWORTH'S " WAGGONER."

I have retained the English name of Fairfield; but, when I was studying Danish, I stumbled upon the true meaning of the name, unlocked by that language, and reciprocally (as one amongst other instances which I met at the very threshold of my studies) unlocking the fact that Danish (or Icelandic rather) is the master-key to the

to pin it to the rock which rose so high, and, apparently, so close behind. Not until you reached the little esplanade upon which the modest mansion stood, were you aware of a little area interposed between the rear of the house and the rock, just sufficient for ordinary domestic offices. The house

was otherwise interesting to myself, from recalling one in which I had passed part of my infancy. As in that, you entered by a rustic hall, fitted up so as to make a beautiful little breakfasting-room: the distribution of the passages was pretty nearly the same; and there were other resemblances. Mr. K received us with civility and hospitality—checked, however, and embarrassed, by a very evident reserve. The reason of this was, partly, that he distrusted the feelings towards himself of two scholars; but more, perhaps, that he had something beyond this general jealousy for distrusting Wordsworth. He had been a very extensive planter of larches, which were then recently introduced into the Lake country, and were, in every direction, displacing the native forest scenery, and dismally disfiguring this most lovely region; and this effect was necessarily in its worst excess during the infancy of the larch plantations; both because they took the formal arrangement of nursery grounds, until extensive thinnings, as well as storms, had begun to break this hideous stiffness in the lines and angles, and also because the larch is a mean tree, both in form and colouring (having a bright gosling glare in spring, a wet blanket hue in autumn) as long as it continues a young tree. Not until

it has seen forty or fifty winters does it begin to toss its boughs about with a wild Alpine grace. Wordsworth, for many years, had systematically abused the larches and the larch planters; and there went about the country a pleasant anecdote, in connexion with this well-known habit of his, which I have often heard repeated by the woodmen-viz. that, one day, when he believed himself to be quite alonebut was, in fact, surveyed coolly, during the whole process

local names and dialect of Westmoreland. Faar is a sheep: fald a hill. But are not all the hills sheep hills? No; Fairfield only, amongst all its neighbours, has large, smooth, pastoral savannas, to which the sheep resort when all the rocky or barren neighbours are left desolate.

of his passions, by a reposing band of labourers in the shade, and at their noontide meal-Wordsworth, on finding a whole cluster of birch-trees grubbed up, and preparations making for the installation of larches in their place, was seen advancing to the spot with gathering wrath in his eyes; next he was heard pouring out an interrupted litany of comminations and maledictions; and, finally, as his eye rested upon the four or five larches which were already beginning to "dress the line" of the new battalion, he seized his own hat in a transport of fury, and launched it against the odious intruders. Mr. K had, doubtless, heard of Wordsworth's frankness upon this theme, and knew himself to be, as respected Grasmere, the sole offender. In another way,

also, he had earned a few random shots from Wordsworth's wrath-viz. as the erector of a huge unsightly barn, built solely for convenience, and so far violating all the modesty of rustic proportions that it was really an eyesore in the valley. These considerations, and others besides, made him reserved; but he felt the silent appeal to his lares from the strangers' presence, and was even kind in his courtesies. Suddenly, Mrs. K- entered the room: instantly his smile died away he did not even mention her name. Wordsworth, however, she knew slightly; and to me she introduced herself. Mr. K seemed almost impatient when I rose and presented her with my chair. Anything that detained her in the room for a needless moment seemed to him a nuisance. She, on the other hand-what was her behaviour? I had been told that she worshipped the very ground on which he trod; and so, indeed, it appeared. This adoring love might, under other circumstances, have been beautiful to contemplate; but here it impressed unmixed disgust. Imagine a woman of very homely features, and farther disfigured by a scorbutic eruption, fixing a tender gaze upon a burly man of forty, who showed, by every word, look, gesture, movement, that he disdained her. In fact, nothing could be more injudicious than her deportment towards him. Everybody must feel that a man who hates any person hates that person the more for troubling him with expressions of love; or, at least, it adds to hatred the sting of disgust. That was the fixed language of Mr. K's manner, in relation to his

wife.

He was not a man to be pleased with foolish fondling endearments from any woman before strangers; but from her! Faugh! he said internally, at every instant. His very eyes he averted from her: not once did he look at her, though forced into the odious necessity of speaking to her several times; and, at length, when she seemed disposed to construe our presence as a sort of brief privilege to her own, he adopted that same artifice for ridding himself of her detested company which has sometimes done seasonable service to a fine gentleman when called upon by ladies for the explanation of a Greek word. He hinted to her, pretty broadly, that the subject of our conversation was not altogether proper for female ears,—very much to the astonishment of Wordsworth and myself.

CHAPTER X

SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: PROFESSOR WILSON: DEATH
OF LITTLE KATE WORDSWORTH 1

IT was at Mr. Wordsworth's house that I first became acquainted with Professor (then Mr.) Wilson, of Elleray. I have elsewhere described the impression which he made upon me at my first acquaintance; and it is sufficiently known, from other accounts of Mr. Wilson (as, for example, that written by Mr. Lockhart in "Peter's Letters "), that he divided his time and the utmost sincerity of his love between literature and the stormiest pleasures of real life. Cockfighting, wrestling, pugilistic contests, boat-racing, horseracing, all enjoyed Mr. Wilson's patronage; all were occasionally honoured by his personal participation. I mention this in no unfriendly spirit toward Professor Wilson; on the contrary, these propensities grew out of his ardent temperament and his constitutional endowments— his strength, speed, and agility: and, being confined to the period of youth-for I am speaking of a period removed by five-and-twenty years-can do him no dishonour amongst the candid and the judicious. "Non lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum." The truth was that Professor Wilson had in him, at that period of life, something of the old English chivalric feeling which our old ballad poetry agrees in ascribing to Robin Hood. Several men of genius have expressed to me, at different times, the delight they had in the traditional character of Robin Hood. He has no resemblance to the old heroes of Continental romance in one important feature:

1 From Tait's Magazine for August 1840.-M.