The Pedlar then gives an account of the last inhabitants of the deserted cottage beside them.  These were, a good industrious weaver and his wife and children.  They were very happy for a while; till sickness and want of work came upon them; and then the father enlisted as a soldier, and the wife pined in the lonely cottage—­growing every year more careless and desponding, as her anxiety and fears for her absent husband, of whom no tidings ever reached her, accumulated.  Her children died, and left her cheerless and alone; and at last she died also; and the cottage fell to decay.  We must say, that there is very considerable pathos in the telling of this simple story; and that they who can get over the repugnance excited by the triteness of its incidents, and the lowness of its objects, will not fail to be struck with the author’s knowledge of the human heart, and the power he possesses of stirring up its deepest and gentlest sympathies.  His prolixity, indeed, it is not so easy to get over.  This little story fills about twenty-five quarto pages; and abounds, of course, with mawkish sentiment, and details of preposterous minuteness.  When the tale is told, the travellers take their staffs, and end their first day’s journey, without further adventure, at a little inn.

The Second book sets them forward betimes in the morning.  They pass by a Village Wake; and as they approach a more solitary part of the mountains, the old man tells the author that he is taking him to see an old friend of his, who had formerly been chaplain to a Highland regiment—­had lost a beloved wife—­been roused from his dejection by the first euthusiasm [Transcriber’s note:  sic] of the French Revolution—­had emigrated on its miscarriage to America—­and returned disgusted to hide himself in the retreat to which they were now ascending.  That retreat is then most tediously described—­a smooth green valley in the heart of the mountain, without trees, and with only one dwelling.  Just as they get sight of it from the ridge above, they see a funeral train proceeding from the solitary abode, and hurry on with some apprehension for the fate of the misanthrope—­whom they find, however, in very tolerable condition at the door, and learn that the funeral was that of an aged pauper who had been boarded out by the parish in that cheap farm-house, and had died in consequence of long exposure to heavy rain.  The old chaplain, or, as Mr. Wordsworth is pleased to call him, the Solitary, tells this dull story at prodigious length; and after giving an inflated description of an effect of mountain-mists in the evening sun, treats his visitors with a rustic dinner—­and they walk out to the fields at the close of the second book.

The Third makes no progress in the excursion.  It is entirely filled with moral and religious conversation and debate, and with a more ample detail of the Solitary’s past life, than had been given in the sketch of his friend.  The conversation is exceedingly dull and mystical; and the Solitary’s confessions insufferably diffuse.  Yet there is very considerable force of writing and tenderness of sentiment in this part of the work.