visit of above an hour from Wordsworth and his wife. He was in
excellent spirits, and repeated with a solemn beauty, quite peculiar to
himself, a sonnet he had lately composed on 'Young England;' and his
indignant burst 'Where then is _old_, our dear old England?' was one of
the finest bursts of Nature and Art combined I have ever heard. My dear
mother's face, too, while he was repeating it, was a fine addition to
the picture; and I could not help feeling they were both noble specimens
of 'dear old England.' Mrs. Wordsworth, too, is a goodly type of another
class of old England, more thoroughly English perhaps than either of the
others, but they made an admirable trio; and Mrs. Wordsworth's face
expressed more admiration of her husband in his bardic mood than I ever
saw before. He discussed mesmerism very agreeably, stating strongly his
detestation of clairvoyance; not only on the presumption of its being
altogether false, but supposing it, for argument sake, to be true, then
he thinks it would be an engine of enormous evil, putting it in the
power of any malicious person to blast the character of another, and
shaking to the very foundations the belief in individual responsibility.
He is not disposed to reject without examination the assertions with
regard to the curative powers of mesmerism. He spoke to-day with
pleasure of having heard that Mr. Lockhart had been struck by his lines
from a MSS. poem, printed in his Railway-Sonnet pamphlet.

* * * * *

_February 24th_.--Snow still on the ground. It has never been quite
clear of snow since the 27th January. Partial thaws have allowed us to
peep out into the world of Ambleside and Rydal; and last Saturday we
drank tea at Foxhow, and met the Wordsworths and Miss F----. He is very
happy to have his friend home again, and was in a very agreeable mood.
He repeated his sonnet on the 'Pennsylvanians,' and again that on 'Young
England,' which I admire so much.

* * * * *

_March 6th_.--Wordsworth, whom we met yesterday at dinner at the Oaks,
expressed his dislike to monuments in churches; partly from the
absurdity and falsehood of the epitaphs which sometimes belonged to
them, and partly from their injuring the architectural beauties of the
edifice, as they grievously did in Westminster Abbey and many other
cathedrals. He made an exception in favour of those old knightly
monuments, which he admitted added to the so