r. When
Southey lost his idolized boy, Herbert, and had to watch over his insane
wife, always his dearest friend, and all the dearer for her helpless
and patient suffering under an impenetrable gloom,--when Wordsworth was
bereaved of the daughter who made the brightness of his life in his old
age,--and when Wilson was shaken to the centre by the loss of his wife,
and mourned alone in the damp shades of Elleray, where he would allow
not a twig to be cut from the trees she loved,--the sorrow of each moved
them all. Elleray was a gloomy place then, and Wilson never surmounted
the melancholy which beset him there; and he wisely parted with it
some years before his death. The later depression in his case was in
proportion to the earlier exhilaration. His love of Nature and of genial
human intercourse had been too exuberant; and he became incapable of
enjoyment from either, in his last years. He never recovered from an
attack of pressure on the brain, and died paralyzed in the spring of
1854. He had before gone from among us with his joy; and then we heard
that he had dropped out of life with his griefs; and our beautiful
region, and the region of life, were so much the darker in a thousand
eyes.

While speaking of Elleray, we should pay a passing tribute of gratitude
to an older worthy of that neighborhood,--the well-known Bishop of
Llandaff, Richard Watson, who did more for the beauty of Windermere than
any other person. There is nothing to praise in the damp old mansion
at Calgarth, set down in low ground, and actually with its back to the
lake, and its front windows commanding no view; but the woods are the
glory of Bishop Watson. He was not a happy prelate, believing himself
undervalued and neglected, and fretting his heart over his want of
promotion; but be must have had many a blessed hour while planting
those woods for which many generations will be grateful to him. Let
the traveller remember him, when looking abroad from Miller Brow, near
Bowness. Below lies the whole length of Windermere, from the white
houses of Clappersgate, nestling under Loughrigg at the head, to the
Beacon at the foot. The whole range of both shores, with their bays
and coves and promontories, can be traced; and the green islands are
clustered in the centre; and the whole gradation of edifices is seen,
from Wray Castle, on its rising ground, to the tiny boat-houses, each
on its creek. All these features are enhanced in beauty by the Calgarth
w