It was sweet, as well as sorrowful, to see how he was mourned.  Everybody, from his old landlady, who cared for him like a mother, to the infant-school children, missed Hartley Coleridge.  I went to his funeral at Grasmere.  The rapid Rotha rippled and dashed over the stones beside the churchyard; the yews rose dark from the faded grass of the graves; and in mighty contrast to both, Helvellyn stood, in wintry silence, and sheeted with spotless snow.  Among the mourners Wordsworth was conspicuous, with his white hair and patriarchal aspect.  He had no cause for painful emotions on his own account; for he had been a faithful friend to the doomed victim who was now beyond the reach of his tempters.  While there was any hope that stern remonstrance might rouse the feeble will and strengthen the suffering conscience to relieve itself, such remonstrance was pressed; and when the case was past hope, Wordsworth’s door was ever open to his old friend’s son.  Wordsworth could stand by that open grave without a misgiving about his own share in the scene which was here closing; and calm and simply grave he looked.  He might mourn over the life; but he could scarcely grieve at the death.  The grave was close behind the family group of the Wordsworth tombs.  It shows, above the name and dates, a sculptured crown of thorns and Greek cross, with the legend, “By thy Cross and Passion, Good Lord, deliver me!”

One had come and gone meantime who was as express a contrast to Hartley Coleridge as could be imagined,—­a man of energy, activity, stern self-discipline, and singular strength of will.  Such a cast of character was an inexplicable puzzle to poor Hartley.  He showed this by giving his impression of another person of the same general mode of life,—­that A.B. was “a monomaniac about everything.”  It was to rest a hard-worked mind and body, and to satisfy a genuine need of his nature, that Dr. Arnold came here from Rugby with his family,—­first, to lodgings for an occasional holiday, and afterwards to a house of his own, at Christmas and Midsummer, and with the intention of living permanently at Fox How, when he should give up his work at Rugby.

He was first at a house at the foot of Rydal Mount, at Christmas, 1831, “with the road on one side of the garden, and the Rotha on the other, which goes brawling away under our windows with its perpetual music.  The higher mountains that bound our view are all snow-capped; but it is all snug, and warm, and green in the valley.  Nowhere on earth have I ever seen a spot of more perfect and enjoyable beauty, with not a single object out of tune with it, look which way I will.”  He built Fox How, two or three years later, and at once began his course of hospitality by having lads of the sixth form as his guests,—­not for purposes of study, but of recreation, and, yet more, to give them that element of education which consists in familiarity with the noblest natural scenery.  The hue and cry which arose when he showed himself a reformer,