WM. WORDSWORTH.[63]

37. Home at Grasmere:  ’The Parsonage.’

’The house which I have for some time occupied is the Parsonage of Grasmere.  It stands close by the churchyard [where his two children were buried], and I have found it absolutely necessary that we should quit a place which, by recalling to our minds at every moment the losses we have sustained in the course of the last year [1811-12] would grievously retard our progress toward that tranquillity which it is our duty to aim at.’[64]

38. On Education of the Young.

LETTER TO PROFESSOR HAMILTON, OBSERVATORY, DUBLIN.

Lowther Castle, Sunday Mor[ning] [Sept. 26, 1830].

MY DEAR MR. HAMILTON,

I profit by the frank in which the letter for your sister will be enclosed, to thank you for yours of the 11th, and the accompanying spirited and elegant verses.  You ask many questions, kindly testifying thereby the interest you take in us and our neighbourhood.  Most probably some of them are answered in my daughter’s letter to Miss E.H.  I will, however, myself reply to one or two at the risk of repeating what she may have said. 1st.  Mrs. Hemans has not sent us any tidings of her movements and intentions since she left us; so I am unable to tell you whether she mean to settle in Edinburgh or London.

[63] Memoirs, i. 391-8.

[64] Letter to Lord Lonsdale, Jan. 8. 1813:  Memoirs, ii. 2.

She said she would write as soon as she could procure a frank.  That accommodation is, I suppose, more rare in Scotland than at this season in our neighbourhood.  I assure you the weather has been so unfavourable to out-door amusements since you left us (not but that we have had a sprinkling of fine and bright days), that little or no progress has been made in the game of the Graces; and I fear that amusement must be deferred till next summer, if we or anybody else are to see another.  Mr. Barber has dined with us once, and my sister and Mrs. Marshall, of Halsteads, have seen his palace and grounds; but I cannot report upon the general state of his temper.  I believe he continues to be enchanted, as far as decayed health will allow, with a Mr. Cooper, a clergyman who has just come to the living of Hawkshend (about five miles from Ambleside).  Did I tell you that Professor Wilson, with his two sons and daughter, have been, and probably still are, at Elleray?  He heads the gaieties of the neighbourhood, and has presided as steward at two regattas.  Do these employments come under your notions of action opposed to contemplation?  Why should they not?  Whatever the high moralists may say, the political economists will, I conclude, approve them as setting capital afloat, and giving an impulse to manufacture and handicrafts; but I speak of the improvement which may come thence to navigation and nautical science.  I have dined twice along with my brother (who left