It is indisputable that his mind and manners were hurt by the prominence which his life at the Lakes—­a life very public, under the name of seclusion—­gave, in his own eyes; to his own works and conversation; but he was less absorbed in his own objects, less solemn, less severed from ordinary men than is supposed, and has been given out by strangers, who, to the number of eight hundred in a year, have been received by him with a bow, asked to see the garden-terraces where he had meditated this and that work, and dismissed with another bow, and good wishes for their health and pleasure,—­the host having, for the most part, not heard, or not attended to, the name of his visitor.  I have seen him receive in that way a friend, a Commissioner of Education, whom I ventured to take with me, (a thing I very rarely did,) and in the evening have had a message asking if I knew how Mr. Wordsworth could obtain an interview with this very gentleman, who was said to be in the neighborhood.  All this must be very bad for anybody; and so was the distinction of having early chosen this District for a home.  When I first came, I told my friends here that I was alarmed for myself, when I saw the spirit of insolence which seemed to possess the cultivated residents, who really did virtually assume that the mountains and vales were somehow their property, or at least a privilege appropriate to superior people like themselves.  Wordsworth’s sonnets about the railway were a mild expression of his feelings in this direction; and Mrs. Wordsworth, in spite of her excellent sense, took up his song, and declared with unusual warmth that 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.