ly very recently died.
Within ten days of his death he wrote the present Editor tenderly and
reverentially of Wordsworth. G.

Rydal Mount, March 24. 1843.

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,

Nothing should have prevented my answering your kind letter from the
Cape, long ago, but the want of matter that seemed worth sending so far,
unless I confined myself to what you must he well assured of, my sincere
esteem and regard for yourself and Lady Gomm, and the expression of good
wishes for your health and happiness. I am still in the same difficulty,
but cannot defer writing longer, lest I should appear to myself unworthy
of your friendship or respect.

You describe the beauties of Rio Janeiro in glowing colours, and your
animated picture was rendered still more agreeable to me by the sight,
which I had enjoyed a little before, of a panorama of the same scene,
executed by a friend of mine, who in his youth studied at the Academy
with a view to practise painting as a profession. He was a very
promising young artist, but having a brother a Brazilian merchant, he
changed his purpose and went to Rio, where he resided many years, and
made a little fortune, which enabled him to purchase and build in
Cumberland, where I saw his splendid portrait of that magnificent
region. What an intricacy of waters, and what boldness and fantastic
variety in the mountains! I suppose, taking the region as a whole, it is
scarcely anywhere surpassed.

If the different quarters of the globe should ever become subject to one
empire, Rio ought to be the metropolis, it is so favoured in every
respect, and so admirably placed for intercourse with all the countries
of the earth. Your approach to the Cape was under awful circumstances,
and, with three great wrecks strewn along the coast of the bay, Lady
Gomm's spirit and fortitude, as described by you, are worthy of all
admiration, and I am sure she will sympathise with the verses I send, to
commemorate a noble exploit of one of her sex. The inhumanity with which
the shipwrecked were lately treated upon the French coast impelled me to
place in contrast the conduct of an English woman and her parents under
like circumstances, as it occurred some years ago. Almost immediately
after I had composed my tribute to the memory of _Grace Darling_, I
learnt that the Queen and Queen Dowager had both just subscribed towards
the erection of a monument to record her heroism, upon the spot that
witnessed it.