[Footnote L:  Harmodius and Aristogiton of Athens murdered the tyrant Hipparchus, 514 B.C., and delivered the city from the rule of the Pisistratidae, much as Brutus rose against Caesar.—­Ed.]

[Footnote M:  He crossed the Channel, and returned to England reluctantly, in December 1792.  Compare p. 376, l. 349: 

  ‘Since I withdrew unwillingly from France.’

Ed.]

[Footnote N:  Had he remained longer in Paris, he would probably have fallen a victim, amongst the Brissotins, to the reactionary fury of the Jacobin party.—­Ed.]

[Footnote O:  He left England in November 1791, and returned in December 1792.—­Ed.]

[Footnote P:  He stayed in London during the winter of 1792-3 and spring of 1793, probably with his elder brother Richard (who was a solicitor there), writing his remarkable letter on the French Revolution to the Bishop of Landaff, and doubtless making arrangements for the publication of the ‘Evening Walk’.  The ‘Descriptive Sketches’ were not written till the summer of 1793 (compare the thirteenth book of ‘The Prelude’, p. 366); but in a letter dated “Forncett, February 16th, 1793,” his sister sends to a friend an interesting criticism of her brother’s verses.  The ‘Evening Walk’ must therefore have appeared in January 1793.—­Ed.]

[Footnote Q:  The movement for the abolition of slavery, led by Clarkson and Wilberforce.  Compare the sonnet ’To Thomas Clarkson, on the final passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, March’ 1807, in vol. iv.—­Ed.]

[Footnote R:  The red-cross flag, i. e. the British ensign.

“On the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, James I. issued a proclamation that all subjects of this isle and the kingdom of Great Britain should bear in the main-top the red cross commonly called St. George’s Cross, and the white cross commonly called St. Andrew’s Cross, joined together according to the form made by our own heralds. This was the first Union Jack.”

‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ (ninth edition), article “Flag.”—­Ed.]

[Footnote S:  In the Isle of Wight.  Wordsworth spent a month of the summer of 1793 there, with William Calvert. (See the Advertisement to ‘Guilt and Sorrow’, vol. i. p. 77.)—­Ed.]

[Footnote T:  The goddess of Reason, enthroned in Paris, November 10th, 1793.—­Ed.]

[Footnote U:  Jeanne-Marie Phlipon—­Madame Roland—­was guillotined on the 8th of November 1793.

“Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her:  a remarkable request; which was refused.  Looking at the Statue of Liberty which stands there, she says bitterly:  O Liberty, what things are done in thy name! ...  Like a white Grecian Statue, serenely complete,” adds Carlyle, “she shines in that black wreck of things,—­long memorable.”

‘French Revolution’, vol. iii. book v. chap. 2.