excited by the bright morning sunshine, and he entered at once on a full flow of discourse.  He looked very benevolently on Henry as he mounted on the top of the coach, and seemed quite disposed to give an old man’s blessing to the young man entering on an untried field, and then (nowise interrupted by the hurrying to and fro of ostlers with their smoking horses, or passengers with their carpet bags) he launched into a dissertation, in which there was, I thought, a remarkable union of his powerful diction, and his practical, thoughtful good sense, on the subject of college habits, and of his utter distrust of all attempts to nurse virtue by an avoidance of temptation.  He expressed also his entire want of confidence (from experience he said) of highly-wrought religious expression in youth.  The safest training for the mind in religion he considered to be a contemplating of the character and personal history of Christ.  ‘Work it,’ he said, ’into your thoughts, into your imagination, make it a real presence in the mind.’  I was rejoiced to hear this plain, loving confession of a Christian faith from Wordsworth.  I never heard one more earnest, more as if it came out of a devoutly believing heart.

[247] The close of Lady Richardson’s ‘Reminiscences’ here in the Memoirs is not given, as being more fully introduced under December 1841, p. 438.  The repetition of the same sentiments in 1843, however, is noticeable.  For a vivid and sweetly toned paper on Wordsworth by Lady Richardson—­based on the Memoirs—­see Sharpe’s London Magazine for March 1853, pp. 148-55.  G.

The Oaks, March 5. 1844.

On our way to Lancrigg to-day, we called at Foxhow.  We met Mr. Wordsworth there, and asked him to go with us.  It was a beautiful day, one of his very own ‘mild days’ of this month.  He kindly consented, and walked with us to meet the carriage at Pelter Bridge.  On our drive, he mentioned, with marked pleasure, a dedication written by Mr. Keble, and sent to him for his approval, and for his permission to have it prefixed to Mr. Keble’s new volumes of Latin Lectures on Poetry delivered at Oxford.  Mr. Wordsworth said that he had never seen any estimate of his poetical powers, or more especially of his aims in poetry, that appeared to him so discriminating and so satisfactory.  He considers praise a perilous and a difficult thing.  On this subject he often quotes his lamented friend, Sir George Beaumont, whom, in his intercourse with men of genius, literary aspirants, he describes as admirable in the modesty which he inculcated and practised on this head.

The Oaks, Ambleside, July 11. 1844.