story of his life was
familiar to me, and I sat as if under the influence of a spell. Soon he
turned and plied me with questions about the prominent men in Paris whom
I had recently seen and heard in the Chamber of Deputies. "How did
Guizot bear himself? What part was De Tocqueville taking in the fray?
Had I noticed George Lafayette especially?" America did not seem to
concern him much, and I waited for him to introduce the subject, if he
chose to do so. He seemed pleased that a youth from a far-away country
should find his way to Rydal cottage to worship at the shrine of an old
poet.

By and by we fell into talk about those who had been his friends and
neighbors among the hills in former years. "And so," he said, "you read
Charles Lamb in America?" "Yes," I replied, "and _love_ him too." "Do
you hear that, Mary?" he eagerly inquired, turning round to Mrs.
Wordsworth. "Yes, William, and no wonder, for he was one to be loved
everywhere," she quickly answered. Then we spoke of Hazlitt, whom he
ranked very high as a prose-writer; and when I quoted a fine passage
from Hazlitt's essay on Jeremy Taylor, he seemed pleased at my
remembrance of it.

He asked about Inman, the American artist, who had painted his portrait,
having been sent on a special mission to Rydal by Professor Henry Reed
of Philadelphia, to procure the likeness. The painter's daughter, who
accompanied her father, made a marked impression on Wordsworth, and both
he and his wife joined in the question, "Are all the girls in America as
pretty as she?" I thought it an honor Mary Inman might well be proud of
to be so complimented by the old bard. In speaking of Henry Reed, his
manner was affectionate and tender.

Now and then I stole a glance at the gentle lady, the poet's wife, as
she sat knitting silently by the fireside. This, then, was the Mary whom
in 1802 he had brought home to be his loving companion through so many
years. I could not help remembering too, as we all sat there together,
that when children they had "practised reading and spelling under the
same old dame at Penrith," and that they had always been lovers. There
sat the woman, now gray-haired and bent, to whom the poet had addressed
those undying poems, "She was a phantom of delight," "Let other bards of
angels sing," "Yes, thou art fair," and "O, dearer far than life and
light are dear." I recalled, too, the "Lines written after Thirty-six
Years of Wedded Life," commemorating her whose