But the human interest of the lakes centers around Grasmere and Rydal Water. Perchance Rydal and Grasmere and Dove Cottage are out of place in a chronicle of unfamiliar England, and yet who could write of the Lake District with no reference to the very attractions that have made it most famous? It is late as we pass the quaint old church "with bald bare tower" and pause at the cottage just off the highroad, where Wordsworth passed so many years in humble state that verged closely on poverty, as one would count it now. There is little of the picturesque in the gray-stone slate-roofed cottage, though the diamond-paned windows and the rose vines climbing to the eaves somewhat relieve the monotony of the square walls and the rude stone fence just in front. Like Shakespeare's house, it is now the property of an association which insures its preservation in memory of the poet. It has been restored as nearly as possible to the same condition as during the occupancy of the Wordsworths, and the collection of books and other relics pertaining to them is being constantly increased. It is easy for us to enter into the daily life of the poet as we pass through the small and rather rudely furnished rooms; and one must indeed be totally lacking in poetic instinct if he cannot feel at least a touch of sympathy with the pleasant surroundings so often the theme of the great laureate of the simple life. We sit in the rustic seat which Wordsworth was wont to occupy and can look over the gray roof of the cottage to the long succession of hills stretching away until their blue outlines are silhouetted against the sunset sky--verily an inspiration even to the most matter-of-fact intellect. We know that much of Wordsworth's best work was composed in the little garden to the rear of the cottage--a bit of earth that he loved with an intensity that has found more than one expression in his written words. And it was of the very seat upon which we sit that he wrote: "Beneath these fruit tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard seat! And birds and flowers once more to greet My last year's friends together." But to know more of the simple, happy life at Dove Cottage, one may read from the letter written by Dorothy in 1800: