e year from a
longish spout, with an overflow one by its side--comes direct from the
little drop well in Betty B.'s garden, after having its voice stripped
and boxed therein; and, falling out of the spout into a deep stone
basin and culvert, runs through the town to join the Town Beck.

So wedded are the Hawkshead folk to this, their familiar fountainhead,
that though water is supplied in stand-pipes now from a Reservoir, the
folks won't have it, and come here to this spout-house, bucket and jug
in hand, morn, noon and night. I have never seen anything so like a
continental scene at the gathering at Hawkshead spout-house.

Lastly, there is a very aged thorn-tree in the churchyard--blown over
but propped up--in which the forefathers of the hamlet used to sit as
boys (in the thorn, that is, not the churchyard), and which has been
worn smooth by many Hawkshead generations. The tradition is, that
_Wordsworth used to sit a deal in it when at school._"

Ed.

* * * * *

NOTE III.--THE HAWKSHEAD MORNING WALK: SUMMER VACATION

(See p. 197, 'The Prelude', book iv. ll. 323-38)

If the farm-house where Wordsworth spent the evening before this
memorable morning walk was either at Elterwater or High Arnside, and the
homeward pathway led across the ridge of Ironkeld, either by the old
mountain road (now almost disused), or over the pathless fells, there
are two points from either of which the sea might be seen in the
distance. The one is from the heights looking down to the Duddon
estuary, across the Coniston valley; the other is from a spot nearer
Hawkshead, where Morecambe Bay is visible. In the former case "the
meadows and the lower grounds" would be those in Yewdale; in the latter
case, they would be those between Latterbarrow and Hawkshead; and, on
either alternative, the "solid mountains" would be those of the Coniston
group--the Old Man and Wetherlam. It is also possible that the course of
the walk was over the Latterbarrow fells, or heights of Colthouse; but,
from the reference to the sunrise "not unseen" from the copse and field,
through which the "homeward pathway wound," it may be supposed that the
course was south-east, and therefore not over these fells, when his back
would have been to the sun. Dr. Cradock's note [Footnote T to book iv]
to the text (p. 197) sums up all that can "be safely said"; but Mr.
Rawnsley has supplied me with the