In March 1846, Wordsworth received information from his friend, Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, that he had been elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. He acknowledged it thus:

"Rydal Mount, March 14, 1846.*

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,-Having just received from you a notification that the Royal Irish Academy has conferred upon me the distinction of electing me an Honorary Member of their body, I beg you will express to the Council and to the Academy my deep sense of the honour of being admitted into a society so eminent for Science and Literature; let me add that the interest I have always taken in the sister country, and in everything calculated to promote its welfare, greatly enhances the gratification afforded me by this act of the Academy.

The diploma to which you refer has not yet reached me, or I should, of course, have acknowledged it. As the matter stands, this answer to your notification will, I hope, arrive in time to be read by you to the Academy before you resign the Chair, and be accepted by their courtesy in place of a more formal acknowledgment. I cannot conclude without expressing my sincere regret that the Society is about to lose the benefit of your services as President, and the honour of having your name at its head. It is impossible that any personal con

sideration could have made the honour which I now acknowledge more acceptable than its having been proposed by one holding so high a position as you do in the scientific and literary world, and filling an equally high place in the private regards of your friends, among whom I have long thought it a great happiness to be numbered.-Believe me, my dear Sir William, ever most faithfully your much obliged,

In 1846, the students of the University of Glasgow tried to

*Life of Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, vol. ii. p. 512.

then

honour the aged poet by electing him as their Rector. He had a majority of twenty-one votes over the Premier, Lord John Russell; but the vote of the Sub-Rector carried his opponent into office. It was as well that he was not chosen, as the duty of writing a Rectorial Address would have been an irksome task to a man of seventy-six, and Wordsworth could scarcely have talked to the students, in the grand soliloquising style, which made Carlyle's address at Edinburgh so impressive in 1866.

In the beginning of the following year, January 1847, his eldest son, William, was married to Miss Fanny Eliza Graham, youngest daughter of Reginald Graham, Esq., of Brighton.

As the spring and summer advanced, however, a severe trial overshadowed the gladness with which the year began. Wordsworth and his wife had gone up to town in April, and were staying with their nephew at Westminster, when they heard of the serious illness of their daughter. As stated in a previous chapter, she never recovered the effect of the chill she caught while preparing her brother's house at Carlisle for his bride. The parents hurried north, and spent more than two months of painful anxiety and grief. Dora Quillinan died on the 9th of July 1847. Next day the poet wrote thus to his nephew :

"MY DEAR CHRISTOPHER,-Last night (I ought to have said a quarter before one this morning), it pleased God to take to Himself the spirit of our beloved daughter, and your truly affectionate cousin.

I need not write more. Your aunt bears up under this affliction as becomes a Christian.-Your affectionate uncle, and the more so for this affliction, WM. WORDSWORTH.

Pray for us."

To Wordsworth this blow was a terrible one. He wrote to Moxon, August 9, "Our loss is immeasurable"; and on

December 29, "Our sorrow is for life, but God's will be done!"

His grief and dejection at the loss of his daughter were more passionate and overwhelming than Quillinan's. She had been the very light of his eyes, since the dark curtain had fallen which prevented his sister Dorothy from continuing to be the ministering angel she once was.

In realising the aged poet's grief, we cannot help recalling the lines in The Triad describing this daughter, written in 1828:

What more changeful than the sea ?

But over his great tides

Fidelity presides;

And this light-hearted Maiden constant is as he.

High is her aim as heaven above,

And wide as ether her good-will;

And, like the lowly reed, her love

Can drink its nurture from the scantiest rill :

Insight as keen as frosty star

Is to her charity no bar,

Nor interrupts her frolic graces

When she is, far from these wild places,

Encircled by familiar faces.

O the charm that manners draw,

Nature, from thy genuine law!

She, in benign affections pure,

In self-forgetfulness secure,

Sheds round the transient harm or vague mischance

A light unknown to tutored elegance."

The following is a letter from Miss Harriet Martineau to Mrs. Wordsworth on Dora Quillinan's death.

"Swiss Cottage, Cheshunt, July 17.

DEAR MRS. WORDSWORTH,—I see that your painful task is over, and that you have resigned your treasure; resigned it, I am confident, not submissively but cheerfully. The first feeling, to those who heard suddenly, as I did, that such a call was made on you, was of deep pain; but all subsequent thought of

you has been comforting; thought of your years, which ensure that your separation cannot be long; thought of what she was, which ensures your peace of mind in every act of retrospection; and, above all, thought of her acquiescence, which must be a strong support to yours.

Do not for a moment, think of noticing this note; I write for my own pleasure. I rejoice to hear that dear Miss Fenwick is with you, or soon to be so. If she is by your side, pray give my kind love to her. I beg my respectful and sympathising regards to Mr. Wordsworth, and am, dear Mrs. Wordsworth, yours affectionately, H. MARTINEAU."

Basil Montagu wrote thus to the bereaved and disconsolate father:

Boulogne, August 1, 1847. MY DEAR WORDSWORTH, I feel most affectionately for the loss of your dear child, and should have written sooner, but from my habit of hesitating before I speak. Daily do I read your works with greatest respect. Heaven and earth may pass away, but these works do not pass away. I still ever think of our first meeting as one of the most fortunate events of my life. I have just received the first proof of what I, in my vanity, call my magnum opus, upon which I have been occupied daily, through fair weather and through foul, for more than thirty years, Thoughts on the Conduct of the Understanding. I will venture to send you the first sheet, as soon as I receive it. I hope to be in the North in September. I am, thank God, in good health and spirits, and as industrious as usual. Almighty bless and preserve you!-Your ever faithful

May the

BASIL MONTAGU.”

As was natural, the few survivors of Wordsworth's oldest friends, the friends of his youthful prime, became more to him in his old age. Part of a letter from one of these,-Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, his first publisher, and ever steadfast friend,— may be quoted, because of its reference to those early Bristol times.

...

"Firfield House, April 24, 1847.

MY DEAR SIR,- Perhaps, when you next come into this vicinity I may hope for the happiness of seeing you, but, at our time of life, we are birds of passage, and may next meet in a better world; but, with the hope of the Christian, that prospect is rather animating than terrible. My object in now addressing you is to say, that the printing of my Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey will be completed in about a fortnight. Unsolicited on my part, a publisher applied to me to reprint my Early Recollections, and offered to take the whole impression.

You will be sorry to learn that my three trials, arising out of the Early Recollections, occasioned a loss of nearly a thousand pounds! Judge Maule was exceedingly and unusually hostile, but it has furnished me with an opportunity of forgiveness. JOSEPH COTTLE."

In February 1847, the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge became vacant by the death of the Duke of Northumberland. The Prince Consort was elected his successor. According to universal custom an Ode had to be written, set to music, and performed on the Installation Day. The aged Poet Laureate was asked to write it. "His Royal Highness," wrote Colonel Phipps to Wordsworth, "would have felt considerable hesitation in thus breaking in upon your retirement, were it not that he might thus bear testimony to his admiration for your genius, and might be the means of preserving for the University of Cambridge another valuable work of one of her most distinguished sons."

Wordsworth replied:

"Bath, 15th March, 1847.

SIR,-The request with which through your hands his Royal Highness the Prince Albert has honoured me, could not