In the vestry-room there is a library consisting of theological works, for circulation amongst the parishioners, but judging from the dusty state of the volumes, old divinity is not a favourite study with the reading public of Conistone. Leaving the church, you may notice, flanking the church-yard at two of its corners, a couple of tasteful little buildings, whose character and use you cannot well mistake. They are the boys’ and girls’ schools, and have been conducted upon the Home and Colonial School system, which, during the three or four years it has been tried here, has given great satisfaction. [Sidenote: THE BLACK BULL.] Opposite to the school and to the church gates, stands the Black Bull Inn, one of that low-browed, old-fashioned, roomy and snug class of public houses once so numerous in all the rural districts of England, but now fast disappearing before the sweep of modern improvement, or, if you like it better, modern innovation—and around whose ample hearths “the rude forefathers of the hamlet” were wont to muddle their brains, whilst settling the affairs of the parish, or discussing those of the country;— “Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, And news much older than their ale went round.” This same Black Bull derives a sort of classical interest from being the “Howf” where the English Opium-eater took up his quarters, when he made his two unsuccessful attempts to accept Mr Wordsworth’s invitation to visit him at Grasmere. You want to know what made the attempts unsuccessful! Upon my word, I can scarcely tell you; but I can give you Mr De Quincey’s own account of the matter, as detailed in his interesting autobiographical sketches in _Tait’s Magazine_:—“My delay”—in accepting a long-standing invitation—“was due to anything rather than to waning interest. On the contrary, the real cause of my delay was the too great profundity, and the increasing profundity of my interest in this regeneration of our national poetry; and the increasing awe, in due proportion to the decaying thoughtlessness of boyhood, which possessed me for the character of its author. So far from neglecting Wordsworth, it is a fact, (and Professor Wilson who, without knowing me in those, or for many subsequent years, shared my feelings towards both the poetry and the poet, has a story of his own experience somewhat similar to report)—it is a fact, I say, that twice I had undertaken a long journey expressly for the purpose of paying my respects to Wordsworth; twice I came so far as the little rustic inn (at that time the sole inn in the neighbourhood) at Church Conistone—the village which stands at the north-western angle of Conistone Water; and on neither occasion could I summon confidence enough to appear before him. * * * The very image of Wordsworth, as I pre-figured it to my own planet-struck eye, crushed my faculties as before Elijah or St. Paul. Twice, as I said, did I advance as far