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those works by personal and local information; and this task having been performed, there remains little more to be done than that a few observations should be added of a general kind, and the narrative then be concluded.

The daily life of the Poet at Rydal was of an uniform and regular kind. In 1847, the period of my last visit, the course was as follows:- The hour at which the family assembled in the morning was eight. The day began with prayers, as it ended. The form of prayer used was that compiled from the English and American liturgies, by Dr. Hook. An intercessory prayer was used for Miss Wordsworth, who was disabled by sickness from being present. After breakfast the lessons of the day (morning and evening) were read, and also the Psalms. Dinner was at two. The final meal was at seven or eight.

The intervals between these meals were filled by walking, writing, reading, and conversation.

It would be superfluous to say to any who are acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's poems that his dominant feeling was love. What he gave to others, and what he most desired for himself, was love. 'Give me your love, I crave no other fee.' This feeling was indeed inexpressibly tender toward those of his own family and friends. It took possession of his soul, so as to be almost overpowering.

His kindness to his servants was very remarkable. The last time he was in Westminster Abbey was when he visited it to show it to one of them who had accompanied him in his journey from Rydal. In a letter he thus speaks of one of his female servants who had been very ill and died. 'Our anxieties are over, and our sorrow is not without heartfelt, I may say, heavenly, consolation. Dear, and good, and faithful, and dutiful Jane breathed her last about twelve o'clock last night. The doctor had seen her at

noon; he found her much weaker. She said to him, “I cannot stand now," but he gave us no reason to believe her end was so very near. You shall hear all particulars when we are permitted to meet, which God grant may be soon. Nothing could be more gentle than her departure.

Yesterday, Mary read to her in my presence some chapters from the New Testament, and her faculties were as clear as any one's in perfect health, and so they have ever been to the last.'

It hardly need be added, that with so much love for others in lower stations he was of a humble spirit.

This was particularly the case in latter life. His trials especially the great trial of all were rich in good fruits. The loss of his beloved daughter, and, before her loss, the apprehension of it, and the unselfishness, unworldliness, and heavenly-mindedness of her disposition, especially in her sufferings, confirmed his own persuasion of the vanity of human intellect, regarded simply as such, and of all its powers and achievements, irrespective of a higher and better world.

'Heaven out of view, our wishes what are they?

Our fond regrets, tenacious in their grasp?

The sage's theory? the poet's lay?

Mere fibula without a robe to clasp,

Obsolete lamps whose light no time recals,

Urns without ashes, tearless lacrymals!' *

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Writing to a friend, he says: "I feel myself in so many respects unworthy of your love, and too likely to become more so. (This was in 1844). Worldly-minded I am not; on the contrary, my wish to benefit those within my humble sphere, strengthens seemingly in exact proportion to my inability to realize those wishes. What I lament most is, that the spirituality of my nature does not expand

* [Vol. iii. p. 237.]

and rise the nearer I approach the grave, as yours does, and as it fares with my beloved partner. The pleasure which I derive from God's works in his visible creation is not with me, I think, impaired, but reading does not interest me as it used to do, and I feel that I am becoming daily a less instructive companion to others. Excuse this egotism. I feel it necessary to your understanding what I am, and how little you would gain by habitual intercourse with me, however greatly I might benefit from intercourse with you.'

The intimate friend to whom these lines were written bears strong testimony to his humility. Indeed, he could not have been what he was without it.

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As he said in a letter to a friend, It is the habit of my mind inseparably to connect loftiness of imagination with that humility of mind which is best taught in Scripture.'

One of the consequences of this spirit of love and humility was, that, although he looked with apprehension and alarm at the destinies of England, yet he cherished a spirit of faith and hope for the ultimate and complete triumph of sound principles. Writing to a friend at a time of public excitement, he thus speaks: After all (as an excellent Bishop of the Scotch Church said to a friendly correspondent of mine), "Be of good heart; the affairs of the world will be conducted as heretofore, - by the foolishness of man and the wisdom of God."

1 Above, p. 257.

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[Before passing to the concluding chapter, I would detain the reader for a little while upon an impressive passage in Wordsworth's life, which has been described in a work published since the completion of these 'Memoirs' - the 'Memoir of Hartley Coleridge, by his Brother,' the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. The death of Hartley Coleridge took place on the 6th of January, 1849 it must be borne in mind that it was to him- the child VOL. II. 33

of his friend. that Wordsworth, forty-seven years before, addressed those remarkable lines entitled, 'To H. C., six years old,' in which an almost prophetic interest was afterwards disclosed. What occurred on the day after Hartley Coleridge's death is thus narrated by his brother:

'While I restrict myself to general terms in speaking of the many affectionate regrets which were occasioned by my brother's death, and which I doubt not this record of his life will awaken, a word must be set apart for the aged friend, who having watched with that insight, of which foresight is but the developed form, his hopeful, fearful childhood, had seen him as he lay a dying man, and now heard that he was no more. He was deeply affected. Perhaps he remembered that the fear which he had so beautifully expressed had proved more prophetic than the hope by which he had put it from him, that "the morrow" had come to him, and many a morrow with a full freight of "injuries - from which he had not been saved by an early, a sudden, or an easy death. He dropt some hint of these thoughts, but his words were few, and concluded by this touching request, or, I should say, direction: - "Let him lie by us - he would have wished it."

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The day following he walked over with me to Grasmere the churchyard, a plain enclosure of the olden time, surrounding the old village church, in which lay the remains of his wife's sister, his nephew, and his beloved daughter. Here, having desired the sexton to measure out the ground for his own and for Mrs. Wordsworth's grave, he bade him measure out the space of a third grave for my brother, immediately beyond.

"When I lifted up my eyes from my daughter's grave," he exclaimed, "he was standing there!" pointing to the spot where my brother had stood on the sorrowful occasion to which he alluded. Then turning to the sexton he said, “Keep the ground for us, we are old people, and it cannot be for long."

'In the grave thus marked out, my brother's remains were laid on the following Thursday, and in little more than a twelvemonth his venerable and venerated friend was brought to occupy his own. They lie in the south-east angle of the churchyard, not far from a group of trees, with the little beck, that feeds the lake with its clear waters, murmuring by their side. Around them are the quiet mountains.' 'Poems of Hartley Coleridge, with a Memoir of his Life by his Brother.' Vol. 1. p. 184-186.-H. R.]

CHAPTER LXIV.

CONCLUSION.

ON Sunday, the 10th of March, 1850, Mr. Wordsworth attended divine service at Rydal Chapel for the last time. Between four and five o'clock in the afternoon of that day he set out to walk to Grasmere, accompanied by Mr. Quillinan and Miss Hutchinson. The weather was ungenial, with a keen wind from the north-east; and Mr. Wordsworth was lightly clad, as usual. He walked over White Moss, and paid a visit to Mrs. Fisher, who had been in his service when he lived at Town-End. He then called at Mrs. Cookson's. Being there asked how Mrs. Wordsworth was, he replied, Pretty well: but indeed, she must be very unwell indeed for any one to discover it: she never complains.' He had been reading the third volume of Southey's Life and Correspondence, and conversed a good deal on that subject. His friends thought him looking feeble: he had a stick in his hand, on which he leaned when sitting in the house.

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The next day Mr. Wordsworth, accompanied by Mrs. Wordsworth and his two nieces, called at Mr. Quillinan's house, to bid him good bye before his departure to pay a visit to a friend near Carlisle he then walked on to Foxhow, to see Mrs. Arnold; and thence to Ambleside, where he called at Mrs. Nicholson's, and returned home to Rydal.

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