As Dora has told your sister, Sir W. was our guide to Yarrow.  The pleasure of that day induced me to add a third to the two poems upon Yarrow, ‘Yarrow Revisited.’  It is in the same measure, and as much in the same spirit as matter of fact would allow.  You are artist enough to know that it is next to impossible entirely to harmonise things that rest upon their poetic credibility, and are idealised by distance of time and space, with those that rest upon the evidence of the hour, and have about them the thorny points of actual life.  I am interrupted by a stranger, and a gleam of fine weather reminds me also of taking advantage of it the moment I am at liberty, for we have had a week of incessant rain.

                   [Ever faithfully yours,
                        WM. WORDSWORTH.][119]

[119] Memoirs, ii. 241-2.  Given completely (instead of the brief extract) from the original.  The autograph, &c. cut away.  G.

73. Tour in Scotland.

LETTER TO LADY FREDERICK BENTINCK.

Rydal Mount, Nov. 9.

MY DEAR LADY FREDERICK,

* * * * *

You are quite right, dear Lady F., in congratulating me on my late ramble in Scotland.  I set off with a severe inflammation in one of my eyes, which was removed by being so much in the open air; and for more than a month I scarcely saw a newspaper, or heard of their contents.  During this time we almost forgot, my daughter and I, the deplorable state of the country.  My spirits rallied, and, with exercise—­for I often walked scarcely less than twenty miles a day—­and the employment of composing verses, amid scenery the most beautiful, and at a season when the foliage was most rich and varied, the time flew away delightfully; and when we came back into the world again, it seemed as if I had waked from a dream, that never was to return.  We travelled in an open carriage with one horse, driven by Dora; and while we were in the Highlands I walked most of the way by the side of the carriage, which left us leisure to observe the beautiful appearances.  The rainbows and coloured mists floating about the hills were more like enchantment than anything I ever saw, even among the Alps.  There was in particular, the day we made the tour of Loch Lomond in the steamboat, a fragment of a rainbow, so broad, so splendid, so glorious, with its reflection in the calm water, it astonished every one on board, a party of foreigners especially, who could not refrain from expressing their pleasure in a more lively manner than we are accustomed to do.  My object in going to Scotland so late in the season was to see Sir Walter Scott before his departure.  We stayed with him three days, and he quitted Abbotsford the day after we left it.  His health has undoubtedly been much shattered, by successive shocks of apoplexy, but his friends say he is so much recovered, that they entertain good hopes of his life and faculties being spared.  Mr. Lockhart tells me that he derived benefit by a change of his treatment made by his London physicians, and that he embarked in good spirits.