Visit to Rydal Mount.-A Companion.-An Excursion on Windermere. Opposition to Steam.-Labour misapplied.-Strange Fancies-Esthwaite.-Hawkshead.-Coniston.-The Old Man.

NEXT morning I started once more for Rydal Mount, remarking, as I passed, the junction of the rivers Brathay and Rothay, the principal feeders of Lake Windermere, and where the Roman town of Dictis alluded to in the last chapter, is supposed to have stood. Of these streams, a fact very interesting to the lover of natural history has been mentioned by Mr. Wordsworth. He says, that the charr and trout, at the approach of the spawning season, may be seen proceeding together out of the lake up the

stream, to the point where the Brathay and Rothay meet, when they uniformly separate, as if by mutual arrangement, the charr always, and all of them, taking the Brathay, and the trout, the Rothay. I have heard no explanation of this circumstance, nor any answer to Mr. Wordsworth's queries, whether the fact is to be accounted for by a difference in the quality of the waters, or by some geological peculiarity in the beds of the two streams.

Rydal Hall, the residence of the very ancient family of Le Fleming, a family that was of importance in the district when King Stephen endowed the Abbey of St. Mary's of Furness, stands on the right of the lane leading to Rydal Mount, the latter being on the left. The hall is a square, ungainly building, and is in no way worthy of remark or notice, if we except the fact in its history, that on the same spot the same family have resided for seven centuries, and been the benefactors of the neighbourhood. Mr. Wordsworth has addressed one of his poems to Lady Le Fleming,

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On seeing the foundation prepared for the erection of Rydal Chapel," in which he alludes to the antiquity of the family.

Oh, Lady! from a noble line

Of chieftains sprung, who stoutly bore
The spear, yet gave to works divine
A bounteous help in days of yore,
As records mouldering in the dell
Of Deadly Nightshade yet may tell,)

Thee, kindred aspirations moved
To build within a vale beloved

For Him, upon whose high behests

All peace depends, all safety rests.

There

The vale of Deadly Night Shade, here alluded to, is the vale in which Furness Abbey is built. are two waterfalls in the grounds of Rydal Hall, which may be seen on application at the lodge. The upper fall is in a glen above the hall; but the lower fall, by far the more beautiful of the two, is seen from a summer-house in the pleasure grounds.

I found the Bard of the Excursion walking in his garden when I arrived at the Mount; and long and fervently did I admire the beauty of the scene from the lawn before his window, and the calm philosophy and true love of nature that had led him to make choice of such a place, and keep himself in such happy and such long seclusion from the busy world.

The view of Windermere from his door was the finest I had yet seen; and at another part of his grounds, the view of Rydal water was combined with that of Windermere, forming, with Loughrigg in front, amid the encircling hills on every side, a landscape of extreme beauty. It is no part of the plan of this little book to record the conversation of Mr. Wordsworth during the two hours that I had the pleasure and advantage of his society. Interesting as the record might be, and often as the bad example

has been set of repeating conversations never meant to be repeated, and of perpetuating in print the unstudied expressions of confidential intercourse, the practice is unwarrantable. When a great man has departed from amongst us; when there is no longer the possibility of hearing his voice in his own familiar haunts; and when every reminiscence, however trifling, becomes of value, these records of conversations are like so many treasures recovered from the yawning depths of oblivion; but in the lifetime of a great man, publication is an offence against him, and against society. If he have been informed that his words are to be taken down; and that he is speaking to the public through the medium of his interlocutor, the case is different; but as neither Mr. Wordsworth nor myself had any such notion, our long conversation upon poets, poetry, criticism, hill-climbing, autographhunting, and various other matters, must remain untold. An exception in the case of one portion of our talk may, however, be made with advantage, as it does honour to the illustrious dead; and is a topic of much interest to all students and to all the drudges of literature. In speaking of the lamented Southey, whose name is so intimately associated with his own, and whose friendship and society he enjoyed for so many years, he dwelt with much emphasis upon the long-continued and systematic economy of his time, by which he was enabled to vary his studies from

history to philosophy-from philosophy to politics— from politics to poetry, and do more work in each than would have sufficed to make the reputation of half a dozen men of inferior attainments. At the period of his death, and indeed long before, it was the general opinion that he had tasked his brain too severely by study; that his intellect had become overclouded from excess of mental toil; and that he had laboured "not wisely, but too well." Mr. Wordsworth, however, upon my putting the question to him, denied that such was the case. Though Southey's labours were almost superhuman, and were varied in a wonderful manner, they seemed, he said, rather to refresh and strengthen, than to weary and weaken his mind. He fell a victim, not to literary toil, but to his strong affection for his first wife, which led him night after night, when his labours of the day were ended, to watch with sleepless anxiety over her sick bed. The strongest mind, as he observed, will ultimately give way under the long-continued deprivation of the natural refreshment of the body. No brain can remain in permanent health that has been overtasked by nightly vigils, still more than by daily labour. When such vigils are accompanied by the perpetually-recurring pain of beholding the sufferings of a beloved object, and the as perpetually-recurring fear of losing it, they become doubly and trebly injurious; and the labour that must be done, becomes