re] clever body, who will carry on the business as
well as any of 'em."

Nothing could be more affecting than to watch the silent changes in Mrs.
Wordsworth's spirits during the ten years which followed the death of
her daughter. For many months her husband's gloom was terrible, in the
evenings, or in dull weather. Neither of them could see to read much;
and the poet was not one who ever pretended to restrain his emotions,
or assume a cheerfulness which he did not feel. We all knew that the
mother's heart was the bereaved one, however impressed the father's
imagination might be by the picture of his own desolation; and we saw
her mute about her own trial, and growing whiter in the face and smaller
from month to month, while he put no restraint upon his tears and
lamentations. The winter evenings were dreary; and in hot summer days
the aged wife had to follow him, when he was missed for any time, lest
he should be sitting in the sun without his hat. Often she found him
asleep on the heated rock. His final illness was wearing and dreary to
her; but there her part was clear, and she was adequate to it. "You
are going to Dora," she whispered to him, when the issue was no longer
doubtful. She thought he did not hear or heed; but some hours after,
when some one opened the curtain, he said, "Are you Dora?" Composed and
cheerful in the prospect of his approaching rest, and absolutely without
solicitude for herself, the wife was everything to him till the last
moment; and when he was gone, the anxieties of the self-forgetting woman
were over. She attended his funeral, and afterwards chose to fill her
accustomed place among the guests who filled the house. She made tea
that evening as usual; and the lightening of her spirits from that time
forward was evident. It was a lovely April day, the 23d, (Shakspeare's
birth--and death-day,) when her task of nursing closed. The news spread
fast that the old poet was gone; and we all naturally turned our eyes up
to the roof under which he lay. There, above and amidst the young green
of the woods, the modest dwelling shone in the sunlight. The smoke went
up thin and straight into the air; but the closed windows gave the place
a look of death. There he was lying whom we should see no more.

The poor sister remained for five years longer. Travellers, American
and others, must remember having found the garden-gate locked at Rydal
Mount, and perceiving the reason why, in seeing a little garden-c