but charmingly situated in the centre of three radiant vallies, i.e. all issuing from the town as from a centre.  This shows the propriety of the Roman station situated near the west end of this place, called Amboglana, commanding one of the most difficult passes in England....  Beautiful woods rise half-way up the sides of the mountains from Ambleside, and seem wishful to cover the naked asperities of the country; but the Iron Works calling for them in the character of charcoal every fourteen or fifteen years, exposes the nakedness of the country.  Among these woods and mountains are many frightful precipices and roaring cascades.  In a still evening several are heard at once, in various keys, forming a kind of savage music; one, half a mile above the town in a wood, seems upwards of a hundred feet fall.—­About as much water as is in the New River precipitates itself over a perpendicular rock into a natural bason, where it seems to recover from its fall before it takes a second and a third tumble over huge stones that break it into a number of streams.  It suffers not this outrage quietly, for it grumbles through hollow glens and stone cavities all the way, till it meets the Rothay, when it quietly enters the Lake’ (pp. 71-3).  It is odd that a book so matterful, and containing many descriptions equal to this of Ambleside, should be so absolutely gone out of sight.  It is a considerable volume, and pp. 1-114 are devoted to the Lake region.  Walker, in 1787, issued anonymously ’An Hasty Sketch of a Tour through Part of the Austrian Netherlands, &c....  By an English Gentleman.’

P. 264.  Quotation from (eheu! eheu!) the still unpublished poem of
‘Grasmere.’

P. 274.  Quotation from Spenser, ‘Fairy Queen,’ b. iii. c. v. st. 39-40.  In st. 39, l. 8, ‘puny’ is a misprint for ‘pumy’ = pumice; in st. 40, l. 3, ‘sang’ similarly misreads ‘song’ = sung, or were singing.

P. 284.  Verse-quotation.  From ‘Sonnet on Needpath Castle,’ as ante.

P. 296, footnote A. Lucretius, ii. 772 seq.; and cf. v. 482 seq.

(b) Kendal and Windermere Railway.

P. 331.  Quotation from Burns,—­Verse-letter to William Simpson, st. 14.

P. 336.  Is this from Dryden?  G.

END OF VOL.  II.

THE PROSE WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

FOR THE FIRST TIME COLLECTED, WITH ADDITIONS FROM UNPUBLISHED
MANUSCRIPTS.

Edited with Preface, Notes, and Illustrations, BY THE REV.  ALEXANDER B.
GROSART,

ST. GEORGE’S, BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL.  III.

CRITICAL AND ETHICAL.

LONDON:  EDWARD MOXON, SON, AND CO.

1 AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1876.

AMS Press, Inc.  New York, N.Y. 10003 1967

Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS OF VOL.  III.