After thanking in prose Lady Fleming for the service she had done to her neighbourhood by erecting this Chapel, I have nothing to say beyond the expression of regret that the architect did not furnish an elevation better suited to the site in a narrow mountain pass, and what is of more consequence, better constructed in the interior for the purposes of worship.  It has no chancel.  The Altar is unbecomingly confined.  The Pews are so narrow as to preclude the possibility of kneeling.  There is no vestry, and what ought to have been first mentioned, the Font, instead of standing at its proper place at the entrance, is thrust into the farthest end of a little pew.  When these defects shall be pointed out to the munificent patroness, they will, it is hoped, be corrected. [In pencil—­Have they not been corrected in part at least? 1843.]

468. *_To a Redbreast (in Sickness)_. [VI.]

Almost the only Verses composed by our lamented sister S.H. [=Miss Sarah
Hutchinson, sister of Mrs. Wordsworth].

469. *_Floating Island_. [VII.]

My poor sister takes a pleasure in repeating these Verses, which she composed not long before the beginning of her sad illness.

470. *_Once I could hail, &c._ [VIII.]

‘No faculty yet given me to espy the dusky shape.’  Afterwards, when I could not avoid seeing it, I wondered at this, and the more so because, like most children, I had been in the habit of watching the moon thro’ all her changes, and had often continued to gaze at it while at the full, till half-blinded.

471. *_The Gleaner (suggested by a Picture)_.

This poem was first printed in the Annual called ‘The Keep-sake.’  The
Painter’s name I am not sure of, but I think it was Holmes.

472. Nightshade. [IX. ii. 6.]

Bekangs Ghyll—­or the dell of Nightshade—­in which stands St. Mary’s
Abbey in Low Furness.

473. Churches—­East and West. [X.]

Our churches, invariably perhaps, stand east and west, but why is by few persons exactly known; nor that the degree of deviation from due east often noticeable in the ancient ones was determined, in each particular case, by the point on the horizon at which the sun rose upon the day of the saint to whom the church was dedicated.  These observances of our ancestors, and the causes of them, are the subject of the following stanzas.

474. The Horn of Egremont Castle. [XI.]

This story is a Cumberland tradition.  I have heard it also related of the Hall of Hutton John, an ancient residence of the Huddlestons, in a sequestered valley upon the river Dacor. [In the I.F.  MSS. the Note runs thus:  ’1806.  A tradition transferred from the ancient mansion of Hutton John, the seat of the Huddlestons, to Egremont Castle.’]

475. *_Goody Blake and Harry Gill_. [XII.]

Written at Alfoxden, 1798.  The incident from Dr. Darwin’s Zoonomia.