and so we parted. I went on my way, happy in the recollection of this, to me, memorable interview. My mind was in a tumult of excitement, for I felt that I had been in the familiar presence of one of the noblest of our race; and this sense of Wordsworth's intellectual greatness had been with me during the whole interview. I may speak, too, of the strong perception of his moral elevation which I had at the same time. No word of unkindness had fallen from him. He seemed to be living as if in the presence of God by habitual recollection. A strange feeling, almost of awe, had impressed me while I was thus with him.

Believing that his memory will be had in honour in all coming time, I could not but be thankful that I had been admitted to intimate intercourse with him then, when he was so near the end of life. -Believe me, my dear friend, Yours faithfully,

ELLIS YARNALL.”

APPENDIX III.

REMINISCENCES OF THE WESTMORELAND PEASANTRY.

PART of the following Reminiscences of Wordsworth amongst the Peasantry of Westmoreland, by the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, was read at a meeting of "The Wordsworth Society" in London in 1882, and the whole paper was published in the Transactions of that Society in 1884. These reminiscences were gathered by Mr Rawnsley in 1881-2, and, as they refer to the later years of the poet's life, they would naturally have found a place in the third volume of this work. For reasons explained in the preface, however, they are placed in an appendix to this volume. Those who wish to study the continuity of Wordsworth's life, and to note the effect he produced on his contemporaries of every class,

in its natural order of development, should reserve the perusal of this appendix till they have read volume III.

"Having grown up in the immediate vicinity of the present Poet-Laureate's old home in Lincolnshire, I had been struck with the swiftness with which,

As year by year the labourer tills

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades,

the memories of the poet of the Somersby Wold had faded 'from off the circle of the hills.' I had been astonished to note how little real interest was taken in him or his fame, and how seldom his works were met with in the houses of the rich or poor in the very neighbourhood.

It was natural that, coming to reside in the Lake Country, I should endeavour to find out what of Wordsworth's memory among the men of the Dales still lingered on,how far he was still a moving presence among them,-how far his works had made their way into the cottages and farm-houses of the valleys.

But if a certain love of the humorous induced me to enter into or follow up conversations with the few still living among the peasants who were in the habit of seeing Wordsworth in the flesh, there was also a genuine wish to endeavour to find out how far the race of Westmoreland and Cumberland farm-folk-the Matthews' and the Michaels' of the poet as described by him-were real or fancy pictures, or how far the characters of the dalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by tourist influences during the thirty-two years that have passed since the aged poet was laid to rest.

For notwithstanding the fact that Mr Ruskin, writing in 1876, had said that the Border peasantry (painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Wordsworth)' are, as hitherto, a scarcely injured race,-that in his fields at Coniston he

had men who might have fought with Henry V. at Agincourt without being distinguished from any of his knights,—that he could take his tradesman's word for a thousand pounds, and need never latch his garden gate, nor fear molestation in wood or on moor, for his girl guests; the more one went about seeking for such good life and manners and simple piety as Wordsworth knew and described in fell-side homes, or such generous unselfishness and nobility among the Dale farmers as would seem to have been contemporaries of the poet, the more one was disappointed to find a characteristic something faded away, and a certain beauty vanished that the simple retirement of old valley-days of fifty years ago gave to the men amongst whom Wordsworth lived. The strangers with their gifts of gold, their vulgarity, and their requirements, have much to answer for in the matter. But it is true that the decent exterior, the shrewd wit, and the manly independence and natural knightliness of the men of the soil is to a large extent responsible for raising expectations of nobility of life and morals, the expectation of which would be justified by no other peasant class in England, and which, by raising an unfair standard for comparison, ought to be prepared for some disappointment.

One's walks and talks with the few who remember Wordsworth, or Wudsworth as they always call him, have done little to find out more than the impression that they as outsiders formed of him, but it allowed one to grasp by the hand a few of those natural noblemen who by their presence still give testimony to a time and a race of men and women fast fading away, and in need already of the immortality of lofty tradition that Wordsworth has accorded them.

While these few of his still living peasant contemporaries show us the sort of atmosphere of severely simple life, hand-in-hand with a 'joy in widest commonalty spread,' that made some of Wordsworth's poems possible, I think the

facts that they seem to establish of Wordsworth's seclusion, and the distance he seems to have kept from them and their cottage homes, not a little interesting. For they point to the suggestion that the poet lived so separate and apart from them, so seldom entered the 'huts where poor men lie,' or mixed with the fell-side folk at their sports and junketings, that he was enabled, in his swift selection and appreciation of the good and pure and true in their surroundings, to forget, quite honestly perhaps, the faults of the people among whom he lived.

Be that as it may, this paper aims at establishing no new doctrine or view about the man, but at simply putting on record reminiscences still in the minds of some of those who often saw him, knew his fancies and his ways (as only servants know the fancies and ways of their master), and spoke with him sixty, fifty, or forty years ago.

These reminiscences may seem worthless to many, just from the fact that they are the words of outsiders. They will seem to others of interest for that very reason. And this much must be said, they are trustworthy records from true mouths. The native love of truth, or perhaps better, the native dislike ever to hazard suggestion, or to speak without book, is guaranteed for that. To ask questions in Westmoreland is the reverse of asking them of Syrian fellaheen and Egyptian dragomans. The Cumberland mind is not inventive, nor swift to anticipate the answer you wish, and one is always brought up sharp with

'Naay, I wud na speak to that neäther:'

Naay, I'se not certain to owt o' that:'

'Might bea, but not to my knowledge howivver:'

'It's na good my saaing I kna that, when I doant, now then,'-and so on.

Twenty summers had let the daisies blossom round

She

Wordsworth's grave, when, in 1870, I heard of and saw the old lady who had once been in service at Rydal Mount, and was now a lodging-house keeper at Grasmere. shall be called as first witness, but what kind of practical and unimaginative mind she had may be gathered from the following anecdote. My sister came in from a late evening walk, and said, ‘O Mrs D——, have you seen the wonderful sunset?' The good lady turned sharply round, and drawing herself to her full height, as if mortally offended, answered, 'No, Miss R, I'm a tidy cook, I know, and "they say," a decentish body for a landlady, and sic-like, but I doant knaw nothing about sunsets or them sort of things, they've never been in my line.' Her reminiscence of Wordsworth was as worthy of tradition as it was explanatory, from her point of view, of the method in which Wordsworth composed, and was helped in his labours by his enthusiastic sister.

'Well you know,' were her words, Mr Wordsworth went humming and booing about, and she, Miss Dorothy, kept close behint him, and she picked up the bits as he let 'em fall, and tak 'em down, and put 'em together on paper for him. And you may,' continued the good dame, 'be very well sure as how she didn't understand nor make sense out of 'em, and I doubt that he [Wordsworth] didn't know much about them either himself, but, howivver, there's a great many folk as do, I dare say.'

And here it will be well to put in a caution. The vernacular of the Lake district must be understood a little, or wrong impressions would be got of the people's memory of the bard. What was Mr Wordsworth like in personal appearance?' I once asked of an old retainer, who still lives not far from Rydal Mount. He was a uglyfaäced man, and a meän liver,' was the answer. And when he continued, 'Ay, and he was a deäl upo' the road, ye kna,'