Upon its pillow with a thousand schemes.
Few likings had he dropped, few pleasures lost;
Generous and charitable, prompt to serve;
And still his harsher passions kept their hold-
Anger and indignation. Still he loved

The sound of titled names, and talked in glee
Of long past banquetings with high-born friends :
Then, from those lulling fits of vain delight
Uproused by recollected injury, railed
At their false ways disdainfully,—and oft
In bitterness, and with a threatening eye
Of fire, incensed beneath its hoary brow.

Those transports, with staid looks of pure good-will,
And with soft smile his consort would reprove.
She, far behind him in the race of years,

Yet keeping her first mildness, was advanced
Far nearer, in the habit of her soul,

To that still region whither all are bound."

Such was the tenor of their lives; such the separate character of their manners and dispositions; and, with unusual quietness of course, both were sailing placidly to their final haven. Death had not visited their happy mansion through a space of forty years-"sparing both old and young in that abode." But calms so deep are ominous-immunities so profound are terrific. Suddenly the signal was given, and all lay desolate.

"Not twice had fallen

On those high peaks the first autumnal snow,
Before the greedy visiting was closed,

And the long-privileged house left empty; swept
As by a plague. Yet no rapacious plague

Had been among them; all was gentle death,

One after one with intervals of peace."

The aged pastor's wife, his son, one of his daughters, and “ a little smiling grandson," all had gone within a brief series of days. These composed the entire household in Grasmere (the others having dispersed or married away); and all were gone but himself, by very many years the oldest of the whole he still survived. And the whole valley, nay, all the valleys round about, speculated with a tender interest upon what course the desolate old man would take for his support.

"All gone, all vanished! he, deprived and bare,
How will he face the remnant of his life?

What will become of him? we said, and mused
In sad conjectures.-Shall we meet him now,
Haunting with rod and line the craggy brooks?
Or shall we overhear him, as we pass,

Striving to entertain the lonely hours
With music? (for he had not ceased to touch
The harp or viol, which himself had framed
For their sweet purposes, with perfect skill).
What titles will he keep? Will he remain
Musician, gardener, builder, mechanist,

A planter, and a rearer from the seed?"

Yes; he persevered in all his pursuits; intermitted none of them; weathered a winter in solitude; once more beheld the glories of a spring, and the resurrection of the flowers upon the graves of his beloved; held out even through the depths of summer into the cheerful season of haymaking (a season much later in Westmoreland than in the south); took his rank, as heretofore, amongst the haymakers; sat down at noon for a little rest to his aged limbs, and found even a deeper rest than he was expecting; for, in a moment of time, without a warning, without a struggle, and without a groan, he did indeed rest from his labours for ever. He,

"With his cheerful throng

Of open projects, and his inward hoard
Of unsunned griefs, too many and too keen,
Was overcome by unexpected sleep

In one blest moment. Like a shadow thrown,
Softly and lightly, from a passing cloud,
Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay
For noontide solace on the summer grass-
The warm lap of his mother earth; and So,
Their lenient term of separation passed,
That family,

By yet a higher privilege, once more
Were gathered to each other."

Two surviving members of the family, a son and a daughter, I knew intimately. Both have been long dead; but the children of the daughter-grandsons, therefore, to the patriarch here recorded—are living prosperously, and do honour to the interesting family they represent.

The other family were, if less generally interesting by their characters or accomplishments, much more so by the circum

stances of their position; and that member of the family with whom accident and neighbourhood had brought me especially connected was, in her intellectual capacity, probably superior to most of those whom I have had occasion to record. Had no misfortunes settled upon her life prematurely, and with the benefit of a little judicious guidance to her studies, I am of opinion that she would have been a most distinguished person. Her situation, when I came to know her, was one of touching interest. I will state the circumstances :—She, was the sole and illegitimate daughter of a country gentleman, and was a favourite with her father, as she well deserved to be, in a degree so excessive-so nearly idolatrous-that I never heard illustrations of it mentioned but that secretly I trembled for the endurance of so perilous a love under the common accidents of life, and still more under the unusual difficulties and snares of her peculiar situation. Her father was, by birth, breeding, and property, a Leicestershire farmer; not, perhaps, what you would strictly call a gentleman, for he affected no refinements of manner, but rather courted the exterior of a bluff, careless yeoman. Still he was of that class whom all people, even then, on his letters, addressed as esquire: he had an ample income, and was surrounded with all the luxuries of modern life. In early life-and that was the sole palliation of his guilt-(and yet, again, in another view, aggravated it)-he had allowed himself to violate his own conscience in a way which, from the hour of his error, never ceased to pursue him with remorse, and which was, in fact, its own avenger. Mr. K was a favourite specimen of English yeomanly beauty: a fine athletic figure; and with features handsome, well moulded, frank and generous in their expression, and in a striking degree manly. In fact, he might have sat for Robin Hood. It happened that a young lady of his own neighbourhood, somewhere near Mount Soril I think, fell desperately in love with him. Oh! blindness of the human heart! how deeply did she come to rue the day when she first turned her thoughts to him! At first, however, her case seemed a hopeless one; for she herself was remarkably plain, and Mr. K- was profoundly in love with the very handsome daughter of a neighbouring farmer. One advantage, however, there was on the side of this plain girl :

she was rich; and part of her wealth, or of her expectations, lay in landed property that would effect a very tempting arrondissement of an estate belonging to Mr. K- -. Through what course the affair travelled, I never heard more particularly than that Mr. K was besieged and worried out of his steady mind by the solicitations of aunts and other relations, who had all adopted the cause of the heiress. But what finally availed to extort a reluctant consent from him was the representation made by the young lady's family, and backed by medical men, that she was seriously in danger of dying unless Mr. K- would make her his wife. He was no coxcomb; but, when he heard all his own female relations calling him a murderer, and taxing him with having, at times, given some encouragement to the unhappy lovesick girl, in an evil hour he agreed to give up his own sweetheart and marry her. He did so. But no sooner was this fatal step taken than it was repented. His love returned in bitter excess for the girl whom he had forsaken, and with frantic remorse. This girl, at length, by the mere force of his grief, he actually persuaded to live with him as his wife; and when, in spite of all concealments, the fact began to transpire, and the angry wife, in order to break off the connexion, obtained his consent to their quitting Leicestershire altogether and transferring their whole establishment to the Lakes, Mr. K- evaded the whole object of this manœuvre by secretly contriving to bring her rival also into Westmoreland. Her, however, he placed in another vale; and, for some years, it is pretty certain that Mrs. K never suspected the fact. Some said that it was her pride which would not allow her to seem conscious of so great an affront to herself; others, better skilled in deciphering the meaning of manners, steadfastly affirmed that she was in happy ignorance of an arrangement known to all the country beside.

Years passed on; and the situation of the poor wife became more and more gloomy. During those years, she brought her husband no children; on the other hand, her hated rival had: Mr. K― saw growing up about his table two children, a son, and then a daughter, who, in their childhood, must have been beautiful creatures; for the son, when I knew him in after life, though bloated and dis

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 66 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