On the 13th of April, 1836, Wordsworth took part in the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone of certain new schools, about to be erected at Bowness, Windermere, and made a speech upon the occasion; in which he advocates a very humble kind of instruction for the working classes; forgetting that man is to be educated because he _is a man_, and not neglected because he happens to be one of the “lower orders.” I have no sympathy with this foolish cant about educating people according to their station, and am sorry that Wordsworth’s sanction can be quoted in its favour. I must reserve what I have to say upon this subject, however, for my analysis of the mind and writings of the poet. In 1835, Wordsworth published his “Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems.” Speaking of “Yarrow Re-visited,” he says: “In the autumn of 1831, my daughter and I set off from Rydal, to visit Sir Walter Scott, before his departure for Italy. This journey had been delayed by an inflammation in my eyes, till we found that the time appointed for his leaving home would be too near for him to receive us without considerable inconvenience. Nevertheless we proceeded, and reached Abbotsford on Monday. I was then scarcely able to lift up my eyes to the light. How sadly changed did I find him from the man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful, a few years before, when he said, at the inn at Patterdale, in my presence, his daughter, Ann, also being there, with Mr. Lockhart, my own wife and daughter, and Mr. Quillinan: ‘I mean to live till I am eighty, and shall write as long as I live.’ Though we had none of us the least thought of the cloud of misfortune which was then going to break upon his head, I was startled, and almost shocked, at that bold saying, which could scarcely be uttered by such a man, without a momentary forgetfulness of the instability of human life. But to return to Abbotsford. The inmates and guests we found there, were Sir Walter, Major Scott, Anne Scott, and Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart; Mr. Laidlaw, a very old friend of Sir Walter’s; one of Burns’s sons, an officer of the Indian service, had left the house the day before, and had kindly expressed his regret that he could not wait my arrival, a regret that I may truly say was mutual. In the evening, Mr. and Mrs. Liddell sang, and Mrs. Lockhart chaunted old ballads to her harp; and Mr. Allan, hanging over the back of a chair, told, and acted, odd stories in a humourous way. With this exhibition, and his daughters’ singing, Sir Walter was much amused, and, indeed, so were we all, as far as circumstances would allow.”