The following extract shows the interest which he took in the very implements of his industry, and may serve as an illustration of Wordsworth's stanzas on his "spade." "Eighth month, 16th, 1789. Yesterday I parted without regret from an old acquaintance--I set by my scythe for this year. I have often this season seen the dark blue mountains before the sun and his rising embroider them with gold. I have had many a good sleep in the shade among fragrant grass and refreshing breezes, and though closely engaged in what may be thought heavy work, I was sensible of the enjoyments of life with uninterrupted health." In the closing years of the last century, when the spirit of patriotic ardour was so thoroughly roused in England by the restlessness of France and the ambition of Napoleon, he lived on at his pastoral farm, "busy with his husbandry." In London, he made the acquaintance of Edmund Burke; and Thomas Clarkson, the philanthropist,--whose labours for the abolition of the slave trade are matter of history,--became his intimate friend, and was a frequent visitor at Yanwath. Clarkson afterwards bought an estate near to Wilkinson's home, on the shores of Ullswater, where he built a house, and named it Eusemere, and there the Wordsworths were not infrequent guests. (See the note to the poem beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud," vol. iii. p. 5.) Wordsworth stayed at Yanwath for two days in 1806. The _Tours to the British Mountains, with the Descriptive Poems of Lowther and Emont Vale_ (London, 1824), have been referred to in the note to _The Solitary Reaper_, vol. ii. p. 399, one of the poems in the "Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1803." It is an interesting volume--the prose much superior to the verse--and might be reprinted with advantage. Wilkinson was urged repeatedly to publish his "Tour through the Highlands," but he always declined, and it was printed at last without his knowledge, by some one to whom he had lent his MS. Wilkinson's relations to Wordsworth are alluded to in the note to _The Solitary Reaper_. He is occasionally referred to in Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal of January and March 1802, _e.g._:--"Monday, 12th March.--The ground covered with snow. Walked to T. Wilkinson's and sent for letters. The woman brought me one from Wm. and Mary. It was a sharp windy night. Thomas Wilkinson came with me to Barton, and questioned me like a catechiser all the way. Every question was like the snapping of a little thread about my heart. I was so full of thought of my half-read letter and other things."