green fields, with daisies and buttercups, were as
good for Lancashire operatives as our lakes and valleys. I proposed that
the people should judge of this for themselves; but there was no end to
ridicule of "the people from Birthwaite" (the end of the railway, five
miles off). Some had been seen getting their dinner in the churchyard,
and others inquiring how best to get up Loughrigg,--"evidently, quite
puzzled, and not knowing where to go." My reply, "that they would know
next time," was not at all sympathized in. The effect of this exclusive
temper was pernicious in the neighborhood. A petition to Parliament
against the railway was not brought to me, as it was well known that
I would not sign it; but some little girls undertook my case; and the
effect of their parroting of Mr. Wordsworth, about "ourselves" and "the
common people" who intrude upon us, was as sad as it was absurd. The
whole matter ended rather remarkably. When all were gone but Mrs.
Wordsworth, and she was blind, a friend who was as a daughter to her
remarked, one summer day, that there were some boys on the Mount in
the garden. "Ah!" said Mrs. Wordsworth, "there is no end to those
people;--boys from Birthwaite!--boys from Birthwaite!" It was the Prince
of Wales, with a companion or two.

The notion of Wordsworth's solemnity and sublimity, as something
unremitting, was a total mistake. It probably arose from the want of
proportion in his mind, as in his sister's, before referred to. But he
relished the common business of life, and not only could take in, but
originate a joke. I remember his quizzing a common friend of ours,--one
much esteemed by us all,--who had a wonderful ability of falling asleep
in an instant, when not talking. Mr. Wordsworth told me of the extreme
eagerness of this gentleman, Mrs. Wordsworth, and himself, to see the
view over Switzerland from the ridge of the Jura. Mrs. Wordsworth could
not walk so fast as the gentlemen, and her husband let the friend go on
by himself. When they arrived, a minute or two after him, they found him
sitting on a stone in face of all Switzerland, fast asleep. When Mr.
Wordsworth mimicked the sleep, with his head on one side, anybody
could have told whom he was quizzing.--He and Mrs. Wordsworth, but too
naturally impressed with the mischief of overwalking in the case of
women, took up a wholly mistaken notion that I walked too much. One day
I was returning from a circuit of ten miles with a guest, when