fall of water here. No great mass falls from a great height, but a large volume of water is scattered amid a number of rocks, pretty equally dividing the masses of stream and stone. There are no regular ledges or storeys as it were of the fall, but irregular steps. This form of the cascade admits of a vast number of delightful little pictures when seen near, but at a distance occasions a prettiness in the speckled black and white stone and froth. Two mountain ashes on two rocks in the centre of the stream add to the picturesque beauty of the scene.

Sept. 11.-[H. C. R. walked, and W. W. rode, leaving Keswick at three o'clock in rain, and reaching Cockermouth at night.]

If my memory were good, I could enrich my journal by one valuable page in retailing Wordsworth's conversation. He is an eloquent speaker, and he talked upon his own art and his own works, very feelingly and very profoundly; but I cannot venture to state more than a few intelligible results, for I own that much of what he said was above my comprehension.

He stated, what I had before taken for granted, that most of his lyrical ballads were founded on some incidents he had witnessed, or had heard of; and, in order to illustrate how facts were turned into poetry, he mentioned the origin of several poems.

Lucy Gray that tender and pathetic narrative of a child mysteriously lost on a common-was occasioned by the death of a child who fell into the lock of a canal. He removed from his poem all that pertained to art; and it being his object to exhibit poetically entire Solitude, he represents his child as observing the day-moon, which no town or village girl would ever notice.

The Leech-gatherer he did actually meet near Grasmere, except that he gave to his poetic character powers of mind, which his original did not possess.

The fable of The Oak and Broom proceeded from his beholding a rose in just such a situation as he has described the broom to be in. Perhaps, however, all poets have had their works excited in like manner. What I wish I could venture to state after W. is his conception of the manner in which mere fact is converted into poetry by the power of imagination.

He represented, however,-much as, unknown to him, the German philosophers have done that by the imagination the mere fact is exhibited as connected with that Infinity, without which there is no poetry,

He spoke of his tale of the dog, called Fidelity. He says he purposely made the narrative as prosaic as possible, in order that no discredit might be thrown on the truth of the incident. In the description at the beginning, and in the moral at the end, he has alone indulged in a poetic vein : and these parts, he thinks, he has peculiarly succeeded in.

He quoted some of the latter passage, and also of The Kitten and the Falling Leaves, to show how he had connected even the kitten with the great, awful, and mysterious powers of Nature. But neither now, nor in reading the preface to W.'s new edition of his poems, have I been able to comprehend his ideas concerning poetic imagination. Further than this idea of imagination, I have not been able to raise my mind to the subject, viz., that imagination is the faculty by which the poet conceives and produces-that is, images— individual forms, in which are embodied universal ideas or abstractions. This I do comprehend, and I find also clearly the most beautiful and striking illustrations of this faculty in the works of Wordsworth himself.

The incomparable twelve lines, 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways,' ending the difference to me!' are finely imagined. They exhibit the powerful effect of the loss of a

very obscure object upon one tenderly attached to it; the opposition between the apparent strength of the passion, and the insignificance of the object, is delightfully conceived, and the object itself well imagined.

Sept. 16.-The Yew Trees. They stand in a sort of grove, beyond the Butter-gill force. Above the yew trees is the opening of the Black Lead mine, which I did not want to see. The trees are five or six immense yews, famous for their age, bulk, and picturesque beauty. I could only admire the natural curiosity. W. has thrown over them the charms of a highly poetical imagination.

Sept. 20, Lorton. We proceeded on the Whinlatter road. The vale of Lorton burst upon us. . . . The view gloriously improves till it is lost in the splendid amphitheatre of mountains at Loweswater. Here we saw the famous Yew tree. It stands far less advantageously for effect than the Borrowdale Yews. But this is alone. I made twenty-nine or thirty steps in walking from one bough to the other; and the mere size is, in such matters, a material circumstance.

Sept. 23, Langdale.-During our walk under Loughrigg Fell, in this valley of Langdale, I made experiments, as I did at Crummock Water, on the echoes of the mountains. Here, as there, the echoes are remarkable rather for the length, than the distinctness of the repetition; and it requires a clear and powerful voice to raise the echo. Joanna's laugh may have been uttered in a more favourable spot, to rouse so great a number of repetitions. Certain, at least, the poet could nowhere have selected a spot, where the manner of the adjacent mountains so beautifully combine to give dignity and beauty to the description, and which render this the most delightful account of an echo ever written.

Sept. 24.-I called on Wordsworth, who offered to

accompany me up Nab Scar, the lofty rocky fell immediately over his house. The ascent was laborious, but the view from the summit was more interesting than any I had before enjoyed from a mountain on this journey. .. Wordsworth conducted me over the fell, and left me near De Quincey's house.... De Quincey set out on a short excursion with me, which I did not so much enjoy as he seemed to expect. We crossed the sweet vale of Grasmere, and ascended up the fell on the opposite corner of the valley, to Easdale Tarn. The charm of this spot is the solemnity of the seclusion in which it lies. There is a semi-circle of lofty and grey rocks, which are wild and rugged, but promote the repose suggested by the motionless water.

25th Sept.-. We crossed a sort of chasm in the fell, which led to a broadish intermediate space between Great and Little Langdale; a scene marked by one house, and one small piece of water, Blea Tarn, and which the late Bishop of Landaff has not improved by planting firs along one of its sides. Wordsworth has, however, made it the residence of his Solitary, and it is indeed the fit abode of a man at war with Society and Nature, with himself and their common Creator. These mountain-vales, if they may be called so, exhibit varieties of wildness and desolation, water without shade or clothing of any kind, and valleys without cultivation.

The openings of slate quarries in various directions did not disturb the austere grandeur of the objects.

Wordsworth's poetic work during the years 1816 and 1817 was mainly inspired by the political events of the hour, especially those being enacted at that stirring time on the continent of Europe. In 1818 he wrote little except the Ode composed upon an Evening of extraordinary Splendour and Beauty; and in the following year almost all

his work was suggested by local incidents, and by what he witnessed amongst the hills and dales of Westmoreland or Yorkshire.

And while his poetry was scanty, his correspondence during these years was not extensive. Several of its frag

ments, however, have special interest.

It bore chiefly on

the political situation of the country, and the state of parties. Writing to Mr Stuart, editor of The Courier, in April 1817, he said:

"RYDAL MOUNT, April 7, 1817.

MY DEAR SIR,-. . . SIR,— I am like you an alarmist, and for this reason: I see clearly that the principal ties which kept the different classes of society in a vital and harmonious dependence on each other, have within these thirty years either been greatly impaired, or wholly dissolved. Everything has been put up to market, and sold for the highest price it would buy. Farmers used formerly to be attached to their landlords, and labourers to their farmers who employed them. All that kind of feeling has vanished. In like manner the connexion between the trading and landed interests of country towns undergoes no modification whatsoever from personal feeling, whereas within my memory it was almost wholly governed by it. A country squire or substantial yeoman used formerly to resort to the same shops which his father had frequented before him; and nothing but a serious injury, real or supposed, would have appeared to him a justification for breaking up a connexion, which was attended with substantial amity and interchanges of hospitality from generation to generation. this moral cement is dissolved; habits and prejudices are broken and rooted up, nothing being substituted in their place but a quickened self-interest, with more extensive views, and wider dependences; but more lax in proportion as they are wider. The Ministry will do well if they keep

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