suffered himself to be placed.

The heat is gone, and but that we have too much rain again the country
would be enchanting.

With a thousand thanks,
I remain ever yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.[117]

71. _Nonsense: Rotten Boroughs: Sonnets: Pegasus: Kenelm Digby:
Tennysons_.

LETTERS TO PROFESSOR HAMILTON.

Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, November 26. 1830.

MY DEAR MR. HAMILTON,

I reached this place nine days ago, where I should have found your
letter of the 23d ult., but that it had been forwarded to Coleorton
Hall, Leicestershire, where we stopped a week on our road. I am truly
glad to find that your good spirits put you upon writing what you call
nonsense, and so much of it; but I assure you it all passed with me for
very agreeable sense, or something better, and continues to do so even
in this learned spot; which you will not be surprised to hear, when I
tell you that at a dinner-party the other day, I heard a Head of a
House, a clergyman also, gravely declare, that the rotten boroughs, as
they are called, should instantly be abolished without compensation to
their owners; that slavery should be destroyed with like disregard of
the _claims_ (for rights he would allow none) of the proprietors, and a
multitude of extravagances of the same sort. Therefore say I, Vive la
Bagatelle; motley is your only wear.

[117] _Memoirs_, ii. 230-1.

You tell me kindly that you have often asked yourself where is Mr.
Wordsworth, and the question has readily been solved for you. He is at
Cambridge: a great mistake! So late as the 5th of November, I will tell
you where I was, a solitary equestrian entering the romantic little town
of Ashford in the Waters, on the edge of Wilds of Derbyshire, at the
close of day, when guns were beginning to be left [let?] off and squibs
to be fired on every side. So that I thought it prudent to dismount and
lead my horse through the place, and so on to Bakewell, two miles
farther. You must know how I happened to be riding through these wild
regions. It was my wish that Dora should have the benefit of her pony
while at Cambridge, and very valiantly and economically I determined,
unused as I am to horsemanship, to ride the creature myself. I sent
James with it to Lancaster; there mounted; stopped a day at Manchester,
a week at Coleorton, and so reached the end of my journey safe and
sound, not, however, without encountering