s, and I could not help
thinking afterwards, when I came to hear Tennyson read his own poetry,
that the younger Laureate had caught something of the strange,
mysterious tone of the elder bard. It was a sort of chant, deep and
earnest, which conveyed the impression that the reciter had the highest
opinion of the poetry.

Although it was raining still, Wordsworth proposed to show me Lady
Fleming's grounds, and some other spots of interest near his cottage.
Our walk was a wet one; but as he did not seem incommoded by it, I was
only too glad to hold the umbrella over his venerable head. As we went
on, he added now and then a sonnet to the scenery, telling me precisely
the circumstances under which it had been composed. It is many years
since my memorable walk with the author of "The Excursion," but I can
call up his figure and the very tones of his voice so vividly that I
enjoy my interview over again any time I choose. He was then nearly
eighty, but he seemed hale and quite as able to walk up and down the
hills as ever. He always led back the conversation that day to his own
writings, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to
do so. All his most celebrated poems seemed to live in his memory, and
it was easy to start him off by quoting the first line of any of his
pieces. Speaking of the vastness of London, he quoted the whole of his
sonnet describing the great city, as seen in the morning from
Westminster Bridge. When I parted with him at the foot of Rydal Hill, he
gave me messages to Rogers and other friends of his whom I was to see in
London. As we were shaking hands I said, "How glad your many readers in
America would be to see you on our side of the water!" "Ah," he replied,
"I shall never see your country,--that is impossible now; but" (laying
his hand on his son's shoulder) "John shall go, please God, some day." I
watched the aged man as he went slowly up the hill, and saw him
disappear through the little gate that led to his cottage door. The ode
on "Intimations of Immortality" kept sounding in my brain as I came down
the road, long after he had left me.

Since I sat, a little child, in "a woman's school," Wordsworth's poems
had been familiar to me. Here is my first school-book, with a name
written on the cover by dear old "Marm Sloper," setting forth that the
owner thereof is "aged 5." As I went musing along in Westmoreland that
rainy morning, so many years ago, little figures seemed to accompan