What were the sights of those sweet days that linger still, and will always linger, in my remembrance? A ramble in the park of Patterdale Hall [the old name of the estate is Halsteads], which is full of American trees; a golden morning in Dovedale, with Irving, much like Jaques, reclined upon a shaded rock, half-way up the mountain, musing and moralising in his sweet, kind way, beside the brawling stream; the first prospect of Windermere, from above Ambleside,--a vision of heaven upon earth; the drive by Rydal Water, which has all the loveliness of celestial pictures seen in dreams; the glimpse of stately Rydal Hall and of the sequestered Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth so long lived and where he died; the Wishing Gate, where one of us, I know, wished in his heart that he could be young again and be wiser than to waste his youth in self-willed folly; the restful hours of observation and thought at delicious Grasmere, where we stood in silence at Wordsworth's grave and heard the murmur of Rotha singing at his feet; the lovely drive past Matterdale, across the moorlands, with only clouds and rooks for our chance companions, and mountains for sentinels along our way; the ramble through Keswick, all golden and glowing in the afternoon sun, till we stood by Crosthwaite church and read the words of commemoration that grace the tomb of Robert Southey; the divine circuit of Derwent,--surely the loveliest sheet of water in England; the descent into the vale of Keswick, with sunset on the rippling crystal of the lake and the perfume of countless wild roses on the evening wind. These things, and the midnight talk about these things,--Irving, so tranquil, so gentle, so full of keen and sweet appreciation of them,--Bendall, so bright and thoughtful,--Marshall, so quaint and jolly, and so full of knowledge equally of nature and of books!--can never be forgotten. In one heart they are cherished forever. [Illustration: _Grasmere Church._] Wordsworth is buried in Grasmere churchyard, close by the wall, on the bank of the little river Rotha. "Sing him thy best," said Matthew Arnold, in his lovely dirge for the great poet-- "Sing him thy best! for few or none Hears thy voice right, now he is gone." In the same grave with Wordsworth sleeps his devoted wife. Beside them rest the poet's no less devoted sister Dorothy, who died at Rydal Mount in 1855, aged 83, and his daughter, Dora, together with her husband Edward Quillinan, of whom Arnold wrote so tenderly: "Alive, we would have changed his lot, We would not change it now." On the low gravestone that marks the sepulchre of Wordsworth are written these words: "William Wordsworth, 1850. Mary Wordsworth, 1859." In the neighbouring church a mural tablet presents this inscription: