he planted a stone-pine (which is flourishing) under the terrace-wall, washed his hands in the watering-pot, and gave the place and me at once his blessing and some thrifty counsel.  When I began farming, he told me an immense deal about his cow; and both of them came to see my first calf, and ascertain whether she had the proper marks of the handsome short-horn of the region.  The distinctive impression which the family made on the minds of the people about them was that of practical ability; and it was thoroughly well conveyed by the remark of a man at Rydal, on hearing some talk of Mrs. Wordsworth, a few days after the poet’s death:  —­“She’s a gay [rare] 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.