Wordsworth was never unmindful of the home of his birth. He left Cockermouth for schooldays at Hawkshead when he was a boy of nine, and though in the holidays, for the next five years, he paid an occasional visit to the place, his chief vacation associations were with Penrith. The Poet's connection with this town ceased at his father's death in 1784, when he was a lad of fourteen; but he never forgot it. From nature and her overflowing soul here in his childhood days he had received so much that all his thoughts were steeped in a feeling of grateful remembrance of it. He visited the home of his childhood occasionally to refresh his heart with a cup of remembrance, and we find a note of a certain visit in Dorothy's letter to Mrs. Marshall. Writing in September, 1807, she says:--'W. and M. have just returned. They were at Cockermouth, our native place you know, and the Terrace Walk--that you have heard me speak of many a time--with the privet hedge, is still full of roses as it was thirty years ago. Yes, I remember it for more than thirty years.' {224} In 1836 he interests himself in a scheme for building a new church. He writes to his friend Poole, of Nether Stowey, for assistance to this object. He tells him that Cockermouth is in a state of much spiritual destitution, nearly 6000 souls and only 300 sittings for the poor. Wordsworth cared for the poor. 'I have been the means,' he says, 'of setting on foot the project of erecting a new church there, and the inhabitants look to me for much more assistance than I can possibly afford them, through any influence that I possess.' As a Keswick parson, I gather with pride further on in that letter, that it was the fact of the new church of St. John's having been built there that spurred him on; and that he hopes Cockermouth will do as Keswick has done, and thus excite other towns to follow so good an example. It is interesting to note that the Cockermouthians of that day were not of one mind in the matter, or the Poet had been misled as to native church feeling; for the inhabitants having a windfall of £2000 given them by the Lord of Egremont that year, to spend as they pleased, preferred a new market place to a new church, and the old Poet {225} writes:--'This was wanted, so we cannot complain.' But Wordsworth was disappointed and grieved too at the spirit of unkindness shown by some of the people of his native town to his good Lord Lonsdale. I have had access to a MS. letter of Wordsworth's, which shows that the Church-building project fell through, as far as he was concerned, by reason of what he considered the unfair treatment of an offer of help, made by the then Lord Lonsdale to the town, in connection with the church accommodation needed.