d the
pastoral steeps about Mosspaul, pleased us exceedingly. The Esk, below
Langholm, is a delicious river, and we saw it to great advantage. We did
not omit noticing Johnnie Armstrong's Keep; but his hanging-place, to
our great regret, we missed. We were, indeed, most truly sorry that we
could not have you along with us into Westmoreland. The country was in
its full glory; the verdure of the valleys, in which we are so much
superior to you in Scotland, but little tarnished by the weather; and
the trees putting on their most beautiful looks. My sister was quite
enchanted; and we often said to each other, "What a pity Mr. Scott is
not with us!..." I had the pleasure of seeing Coleridge and Southey at
Keswick last Sunday. Southey, whom I never saw much of before, I liked
much: he is very pleasant in his manner, and a man of great reading in
old books, poetry, chronicles, memoirs, &c., particularly Spanish and
Portuguese.... My sister and I often talk of the happy days that we
spent in your company. Such things do not occur often in life. If we
live, we shall meet again; that is my consolation when I think of these
things. Scotland and England sound like division, do what we can; but we
really are but neighbours, and if you were no further off, and in
Yorkshire, we should think so. Farewell! God prosper you, and all that
belongs to you! Your sincere friend, for such I will call myself, though
slow to use a word of such solemn meaning to any one,

'W. WORDSWORTH.'[49]

[49] _Life of Scott_, by Lockhart, vol. ii. 165-7 (1856). The following
from the same source, earlier, may fitly find a place here: 'It was in
the September of this year [1803] that Scott first saw Wordsworth. Their
common acquaintance, Stoddart, had so often talked of them to each
other, that they met as if they had not been strangers; and they parted
friends. Mr. and Miss Wordsworth had just completed that tour in the
Highlands of which so many incidents have since been immortalised, both
in the poet's sense and in the hardly less poetical prose of his
sister's Diary. On the morning of the 17th of September, having left
their carriage at Rosslyn, they walked down the valley to Lasswade, and
arrived there before Mr. and Mrs. Scott had risen. "We were received,"
Mr. Wordsworth has told me, "with that frank cordiality which, under
whatever circumstances I afterwards met him, always marked his manners;
and, indeed, I found him then in every respect--except pe