When first I saw Wordsworth's portrait I turned cold. Don't laugh; I did actually turn cold. He had been so much in my life. I had pictured him so wonderful. Calm; beautiful, with the loftiest kind of beauty; faintly frosty at times, and detached, yet gently cheery and always dignified. It is the picture from a portrait by some one called Hancock. Very bitterly do I dislike Hancock. It is a profile. It would, if I had seen it in the flesh, completely have hidden from my silly short sight the inner splendors. I'm afraid--oh, I'm afraid, and I shiver with shame to think it--that I would have regarded him only as an elderly gentleman of irreproachable character out of whose way it was as well to get because he showed every sign of being a bore. Will you think me irretrievably silly when I tell you that I cried over that picture? For one dreadful moment I stared at it in startled horror; then I banged the book to and fled up into the forest to cry. There was a smugness--but no, I won't think of it. I'll upset all my theories about the face being the mirror of the soul. It can't be. If it is, Peter Bell and The Thorn are accounted for; but who shall account for the bleak nobility, the communings with nature on lofty heights in the light of setting suns? Or, when he comes down nearer, for that bright world he unlocks of things dear to memory, of home, of childhood, of quiet places, of calm affections? And for the tenderness with which it is done? And for its beautiful, simple goodness?