Miss Wordsworth gives the following sweet picture of the home at Grasmere on their return:-- “September 25th.--A beautiful autumnal day. Breakfasted at a public-house by the road-side; dined at Threlkeld; and arrived there between eight and nine o’clock, where we found _Mary in perfect health. Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire._” At the ferry-house, and waterfall of Loch Lomond, Wordsworth had been struck with the beauty and kindness of two girls whom they met there, and on his return to Grasmere he wrote the following lines upon one of them:-- “Sweet Highland girl, a very shower Of beauty is thy earthly dower! Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head: And these grey rocks; this household lawn; These trees, a veil just half withdrawn; This fall of water that doth make A murmur near the silent lake; This little bay, a quiet road, That holds in shelter thy abode; In truth together ye do seem Like something fashioned in a dream; Such forms as from their covert peep When earthly cares are laid asleep. Yet dream and vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart: God shield thee to thy latest years! I neither know thee, nor thy peers; And yet my eyes are filled with tears.” This Scottish tour was a little episode in the quiet history of the poet’s residence at Grasmere. The truth is, that Wordsworth could not at this time rest long, even in his beautiful Grasmere, without the excitement of pedestrian travel and adventure. It was likewise a part of his education as a poet; the knowledge which he thus acquired of men, manners, and scenery. He had devoted himself to poetry; and every thing that tended to feed the divine faculty, he grasped at with an avidity equally as intense as that with which your mere canine man grasps at food for his perishing body. Nothing comes amiss to him; high and low, great and small; from the daffodil to Skiddaw--from Skiddaw to heaven and its hosts of glorious stars,--all are seized by this omnivorous poet, fused in his mind, and reproduced by him in song. His limited means are no barrier to his wanderings; he and his sister can live upon black bread and water, so far as rations are concerned; but setting aside the necessity of the case, this economy is for a sacred purpose,--viz.:--that they may enjoy the communion of Nature, and partake of her spiritual banquets. The gods, however, had determined to pet Wordsworth, and recompense him for his religious devotion to their doings through early life; and, to say nothing of the bequest of Raisley Calvert, the second Lord Lonsdale, just as the poet needed a wife, and larger means, paid the debt which his predecessor owed to Wordsworth’s father, amounting to £1,800, as the share of each member of the family. This was a most fortunate circumstance to Wordsworth and his sister;