and serene melody was in such perfect keeping with the scene. The eye and the ear both reported the same beauty and harmony. Then the clear, rich fife of the grosbeak from the tops of the tallest trees, the simple flute-like note of the veery, and the sweetly ringing, wildly lyrical outburst of the winter wren, sometimes from the roof of our butternut-colored tent--all joining with it--formed one of the most noteworthy bits of a bird symphony it has ever been my good luck to hear. Often at sundown, too, while we sat idly in our boat, watching the trout break the glassy surface here and there, the same soothing melody would be poured out all around us, and kept up till darkness filled the woods. The last note would be that of the wood thrush, calling out "_quit_," "_quit_." Across there in a particular point, I used at night to hear another thrush, the olive-backed, the song a slight variation of the veery's. I did hear in England in the twilight the robin, blackbird, and song-thrush unite their voices, producing a loud, pleasing chorus; add the nightingale and you have great volume and power, but still the pure melody of my songsters by the lake is probably not reached. VII IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY No other English poet had touched me quite so closely as Wordsworth. All cultivated men delight in Shakespeare; he is the universal genius; but Wordsworth's poetry has more the character of a message, and a message special and personal, to a comparatively small circle of readers. He stands for a particular phase of human thought and experience, and his service to certain minds is like an initiation into a new order of truths. Note what a revelation he was to the logical mind of John Stuart Mill. His limitations make him all the more private and precious, like the seclusion of one of his mountain dales. He is not and can never be the world's poet, but more especially the poet of those who love solitude and solitary communion with nature. Shakespeare's attitude toward nature is for the most part like that of a gay, careless reveler, who leaves his companions for a moment to pluck a flower or gather a shell here and there, as they stroll "By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beachéd margent of the sea." He is, of course, preëminent in all purely poetic achievements, but his poems can never minister to the spirit in the way Wordsworth's do. One can hardly appreciate the extent to which the latter poet has absorbed and reproduced the spirit of the Westmoreland scenery until he has visited that region. I paused there a few days in early June, on my way south, and again on my return late in July. I walked up from Windermere to Grasmere, where, on the second visit, I took up my abode at the historic Swan Inn, where Scott used to go surreptitiously to get his mug of beer when he was stopping with Wordsworth.