A HUNDRED years ago England was particularly rich in great brothers and sisters. There were William and Caroline Herschel, Charles and Mary Lamb, and, perhaps, chief of all, William and Dorothy Wordsworth. These last were certainly the greatest as tested by the position of the brother in the world of literature. He won and maintained a place among the greatest of English poets; but the very greatness of the brother was the cause why the sister is known only as a tributary to his genius. It is not that his achievements dwarf hers by comparison; she made no conscious contribution to literature; she felt from the outset of their life together that he was capable of giving to his countrymen thoughts which the world would not willingly let die, and she deliberately suppressed in herself all cultivation of her own powers, save such as should contribute to support, sustain, and promote his. As Charles Lamb said of his own sister, “If the balance has been against her, it was a noble trade.” There is, however, much evidence that the balance was not against Dorothy Wordsworth. She did not sacrifice herself in vain. She chose to give up all independent cultivation of her own considerable poetic gifts, and also to renounce all hopes of love and marriage, for the sake of devoting her whole life to her brother, and of helping to a freer and nobler utterance the poet who has given us “The Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” “The Ode to Duty,” “The Happy Warrior,” and a host of songs and sonnets among the most beautiful in our language. The sister freely and generously gave, the brother freely and generously received, and freely and generously acknowledged the value of the gift. Over and over again, in prose and verse, Wordsworth acknowledges all that he owes to his sister; never more warmly than when, on the approach of old age, disease had laid its hand upon her, and the long accustomed support seemed likely to be withdrawn. When Coleridge and Dorothy lay prostrate under the stroke of sickness, Wordsworth wrote at the age of sixty-two: “He and my beloved sister are the two beings to whom my intellect is most indebted, and they are now proceeding, as it were, with equal steps, along the path of sickness, I will not say towards the grave; but I trust towards a blessed immortality.” If Wordsworth, reviewing the past, could speak thus of his sister, it must be of interest to us to endeavour to discern what her influence over him was, and how their life together was passed.