sometimes attempted to enforce them. I further believe,
that had not he, and others who shared his opinions and felt as he did,
stood up in opposition to the Reformers of that period, it is
questionable whether the Church would ever have recovered its lost
ground, and become the blessing it now is, and will, I trust, become in
a still greater degree, both to those of its communion, and those who
unfortunately are separated from it:

'_ 1 saw the Figure of a lovely Maid_.' [Sonnet I. Part III.]

When I came to this part of the Series I had the dream described in this
sonnet. The figure was that of my daughter, and the whole past exactly
as here represented. The sonnet was composed on the middle road leading
from Grasmere to Ambleside: it was begun as I left the last house in the
vale, and finished, word for word, as it now stands, before I came in
view of Rydal. I wish I could say the same of the five or six hundred I
have written: most of them were frequently retouched in the course of
composition, and not a few laboriously.

I have only further to observe that the intended church which prompted
these Sonnets was erected on Coleorton Moor, towards the centre of a
very populous parish, between three and four miles from
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, on the road to Loughborough, and has proved, I
believe, a great benefit to the neighbourhood.

[POSTSCRIPT.

As an addition to these general remarks on the 'Ecclesiastical Sonnets,'
it seems only right to give here from the _Memoirs_ (vol. ii. p. 113)
the following on Sonnet XL. (Pt. II.):

'With what entire affection did they prize
Their _new-born_ Church!'

The invidious inferences that would be drawn from this epithet by the
enemies of the English Church and Reformation are too obvious to be
dilated on. The author was aware of this, and in reply to a friend who
called his attention to the misconstruction and perversion to which the
passage was liable, he replied as follows:

'Nov. 12. 1846.
MY DEAR C----,

'The passage which you have been so kind as to comment upon in one of
the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," was altered several years ago by my pen,
in a copy of my poems which I possess, but the correction was not
printed till a place was given it in the last edition, printed last
year, in one volume. It there stands,

"Their church reformed."

Though for my own part, as I mentioned some time since in a letter I had
occasion to w