THE wandering minstrel and his sister--that great-hearted, most beautiful, and devoted sister, whom we cannot help loving so devoutly,--went in the spring of 1799 to visit their friends, the Hutchinsons, at Stockton-on-Tees, and remained there, with occasional exceptions, until the close of the year. Here dwelt Miss Mary Hutchinson, for whom the poet had begun to conceive such passion as he was capable of from the time of her visit to him and his sister, at Alfoxden. For although Dr. Wordsworth is silent also respecting this visit, De Quincy tells us that it actually took place.--And now the lovers--in their saturnine way--had leisure to cement their attachment, and what is more, they took advantage of it, as their subsequent marriage, about the commencement of the present century, sufficiently proves.--Many other things, however, occupied the poet’s attention beside this, and we find him, September 20, planning another tour, and this time through the lake district, with his friends Cottle and Coleridge. It was the first time that the latter had seen the lake country, and he, in writing to Miss Wordsworth, thus speaks of it:-- “At Temple Sowerby we met your brother John, who accompanied us to Hawes-water, Ambleside, and the divine sisters, Rydal and Grasmere. Here we stayed two days. We accompanied John over the fork of Helvellyn, on a day when light and darkness co-existed in contiguous masses, and the earth and sky were but one. Nature lived for us in all her grandest accidents. We quitted him by a wild turn, just as we caught a sight of the gloomy Ullswater. “Your brother John is one of you; a man who hath solitary usings of his own intellect, deep in feelings, with a subtle tact, a swift instinct of truth and beauty; he interests me much. “You can feel what I cannot express for myself, how deeply I have been impressed by a world of scenery, absolutely new to me. At Rydal and Grasmere I received, I think, the deepest delight; yet Hawes-water, through many a varying view, kept my eyes dim with tears; and the evening approaching, Derwent-water, in diversity of harmonious features, in the majesty of its beauties, and in the beauty of its majesty ... and the black crags close under the snowy mountains, whose snows were pinkish with the setting sun, and the reflections from the rich clouds that floated over some, and rested over others!--it was to me a vision of a fair country: why were you not with us?” It was in this tour that Wordsworth resolved to settle at Grasmere. First he thought of building a house by the lake side, and to enable him to do this, his brother John offered to give him £40 to buy the land. There was a small house to let, however, at Grasmere, which, after much deliberation with his sister, he finally hired, and the two inseparables entered upon it on St. Thomas’s Day, 1799.