ld age. I cannot but be
touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I
have heard repeated:--

'My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay,
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.'"[60]

Sir Walter's memory, which, in spite of the slight failure of brain
and the mild illusions to which, on the subject of his own prospects,
he was now liable, had as yet been little impaired--indeed, he could
still quote whole pages from all his favourite authors--must have
recurred to those favourite Wordsworthian lines of his with singular
force, as, with Wordsworth for his companion, he gazed on the refuge
of the last Minstrel of his imagination for the last time, and felt in
himself how much of joy in the sight, age had taken away, and how
much, too, of the habit of expecting it, it had unfortunately left
behind. Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of Wordsworth's on this
occasion or not--and if he recalled it, his delight in giving pleasure
would assuredly have led him to let Wordsworth know that he recalled
it--the mood it paints was unquestionably that in which his last day
at Abbotsford was passed. In the evening, referring to the journey
which was to begin the next day, he remarked that Fielding and
Smollett had been driven abroad by declining health, and that they had
never returned; while Wordsworth--willing perhaps to bring out a
brighter feature in the present picture--regretted that the last days
of those two great novelists had not been surrounded by due marks of
respect. With Sir Walter, as he well knew, it was different. The
Liberal Government that he had so bitterly opposed were pressing on
him signs of the honour in which he was held, and a ship of his
Majesty's navy had been placed at his disposal to take him to the
Mediterranean. And Wordsworth himself added his own more durable token
of reverence. As long as English poetry lives, Englishmen will know
something of that last day of the last Minstrel at Newark:--

"Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day,
Their dignity installing
In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves
Were on the bough or falling;
But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd
The forest to embolden,
Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot
Tran