I was born too late to have a distinct remembrance of the origin of the American war; but the state in which I represent Robert’s mind to be, I had frequent opportunities of observing at the commencement of our rupture with France in 1793; opportunities of which I availed myself in the story of the ‘Female Vagrant,’ as told in the poem on ’Guilt and Sorrow.’  The account given by the ‘Solitary,’ towards the close of the second book, in all that belongs to the character of the old man, was taken from a Grasmere pauper, who was boarded in the last house quitting the Vale on the road to Ambleside; the character of his hostess, and all that befell the poor man upon the mountain, belongs to Paterdale.  The woman I knew well; her name was Ruth Jackson, and she was exactly such a person as I describe.  The ruins of the old chapel, among which the old man was found lying, may yet be traced, and stood upon the ridge that divides Paterdale from Boardale and Martindale, having been placed there for the convenience of both districts.  The glorious appearance disclosed above and among the mountains, was described partly from what my friend Mr. Luff, who then lived in Paterdale, witnessed upon this melancholy occasion, and partly from what Mrs. Wordsworth and I had seen, in company with Sir G. and Lady Beaumont, above Hartshope Hall, in our way from Paterdale to Ambleside.

And now for a few words upon the church, its monuments, and of the deceased who are spoken of as lying in the surrounding churchyard.  But first for the one picture given by the ‘Wanderer’ of the living.  In this nothing is introduced but what was taken from Nature, and real life.  The cottage was called Hackett, and stands, as described, on the southern extremity of the ridge which separates the two Langdales.  The pair who inhabited it were called Jonathan and Betty Yewdale.  Once when our children were ill, of whooping-cough I think, we took them for change of air to this cottage, and were in the habit of going there to drink tea upon fine summer afternoons; so that we became intimately acquainted with the characters, habits, and lives of these good, and let me say, in the main, wise people.  The matron had, in her early youth, been a servant in a house at Hawkshead, where several boys boarded, while I was a school-boy there.  I did not remember her as having served in that capacity; but we had many little anecdotes to tell to each other of remarkable boys, incidents, and adventures, which had made a noise in their day in that small town.  These two persons were induced afterwards to settle at Rydal, where they both died.