mind.  Her eye was full of light, her manner and gesture of dignity; her voice rich, sonorous, and finely modulated; her tide of talk marked by candor, justice, and showing in every sentence her ripe experience and her noble, genial nature.  Dear to memory will be the sight of her in the beautiful seclusion of her home among the mountains, a picturesque, flower-wreathed dwelling, where affection, tranquillity, and wisdom were the gods of the hearth, to whom was offered no vain oblation.  Grant us more such women, Time!  Grant to men the power to reverence, to seek for such!

Our visit to Mr. Wordsworth was very pleasant.  He also is seventy-six, but his is a florid, fair old age.  He walked with us to all his haunts about the house.  Its situation is beautiful, and the “Rydalian Laurels” are magnificent.  Still I saw abodes among the hills that I should have preferred for Wordsworth, more wild and still, more romantic; the fresh and lovely Rydal Mount seems merely the retirement of a gentleman, rather than the haunt of a poet.  He showed his benignity of disposition in several little things, especially in his attentions to a young boy we had with us.  This boy had left the Circus, exhibiting its feats of horsemanship in Ambleside “for that day only,” at his own desire to see Wordsworth, and I feared he would be disappointed, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to see a poet, I had found no Apollo, flaming with youthful glory, laurel-crowned and lyre in hand, but, instead, a reverend old man clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden-path; however, he was not disappointed, but seemed in timid reverence to recognize the spirit that had dictated “Laodamia” and “Dion,”—­and Wordsworth, in his turn, seemed to feel and prize a congenial nature in this child.

Taking us into the house, he showed us the picture of his sister, repeating with much expression some lines of hers, and those so famous of his about her, beginning, “Five years,” &c.; also his own picture, by Inman, of whom he spoke with esteem.

Mr. Wordsworth is fond of the hollyhock, a partiality scarcely deserved by the flower, but which marks the simplicity of his tastes.  He had made a long avenue of them of all colors, from the crimson-brown to rose, straw-color, and white, and pleased himself with having made proselytes to a liking for them among his neighbors.

I never have seen such magnificent fuchsias as at Ambleside, and there was one to be seen in every cottage-yard.  They are no longer here under the shelter of the green-house, as with us, and as they used to be in England.  The plant, from its grace and finished elegance, being a great favorite of mine, I should like to see it as frequently and of as luxuriant a growth at home, and asked their mode of culture, which I here mark down, for the benefit of all who may be interested.  Make a bed of bog-earth and sand, put down slips of the fuchsia, and give them a great deal of water,—­this is all they need.  People have them out here in winter, but perhaps they would not bear the cold of our Januaries.