The marriage of Wordsworth, in 1802, did not occasion any waning of sympathy or cessation of intercourse between him and his sister. The circle was then only widened, not broken. Dorothy continued to be an honoured inmate of her brother's home, the sharer of his labours, and companion of his walks and excursions; in speech as well as in silence together garnering scenes of beauty and flowers of thought both for their own future lives and the world's weal. Thus the years passed with them calmly; each in its varying experiences of intense life--life haloed by the inward eye which glorifies the daily task, and finds in all Nature a fitting shrine--worth a decade of common days. It was a time of rare friendships also. It was by no means true of the Wordsworths that they withdrew themselves from the world in a selfish seclusion. Necessarily they were sensitive, and shunned the world's loud ways. If this had not been so we should never have had some of the finest poems in the language. To the humble cottage at Grasmere came, however, for treasured intercourse with the great master, many of the most gifted and cultured men of the time. But not for these only did Wordsworth live and write. He loved, and moved in and out among the sturdy and independent dalesmen among whom he had chosen to pass his life. There he found food for thought and pen, and perhaps never became grander in song or higher as a teacher than in delineating human life and nature as found in lowly homes. As has been suggested, Miss Wordsworth might have earned for herself a place in literature had she not so entirely lived only for and in her brother. She was one of the most graceful and accomplished of letter writers; and the fragments from her journals, from time to time given to the world, written chiefly in the Alfoxden days and the early years at Grasmere, contain passages of rare beauty. To instance a few lines only. Alluding to a favourite birch tree, she says: "It was yielding to a gust of wind with all its tender twigs; the sun shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower. It was a tree in shape, with stem and branches; but it was like a spirit of water." Recording one of her early visits with her brother to the Continent, she says: "Left London between five and six o'clock of the morning, outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul's, with the river--multitude of boats--made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge; the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, and were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature's own grand spectacles.... Arrived at Calais at four in the morning. Delightful walks in the evening; seeing far off in the west the coast of England, like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening star and the glory of the sky; the reflections in