, and is now at home.

_Five o'clock._--All day it has been cloudy and showery, with thunder
now and then; the mists hang low on the surrounding hills, adown which,
at various points, we can see the snow-white fall of little
streamlets--forces they call them here--swollen by the rain. An overcast
day is not so gloomy in the hill-country as in the lowlands; there are
more breaks, more transfusion of sky-light through the gloom, as has
been the case to-day; and, as I found in Lenox, we get better acquainted
with clouds by seeing at what height they lie on the hillsides, and find
that the difference betwixt a fair day and a cloudy and rainy one is
very superficial, after all. Nevertheless, rain is rain, and wets a man
just as much among the mountains as anywhere else; so we have been kept
within doors all day, till an hour or so ago, when Julian and I went
down to the village in quest of the post-office.

We took a path that leads from the hotel across the fields, and, coming
into a wood, crosses the Rothay by a one-arched bridge, and passes the
village church. The Rothay is very swift and turbulent to-day, and
hurries along with foam-specks on its surface, filling its banks from
brim to brim, a stream perhaps twenty feet wide, perhaps more; for I am
willing that the good little river should have all it can fairly claim.
It is the St. Lawrence of several of these English lakes, through which
it flows, and carries off their superfluous waters. In its haste, and
with its rushing sound, it was pleasant both to see and hear; and it
sweeps by one side of the old churchyard where Wordsworth lies
buried,--the side where his grave is made. The church of Grasmere is a
very plain structure, with a low body, on one side of which is a low
porch with a pointed arch. The tower is square, and looks ancient; but
the whole is overlaid with plaster of a buff or pale-yellow hue. It was
originally built, I suppose, of rough, shingly stones, as many of the
houses hereabouts are now, and the plaster is used to give a finish. We
found the gate of the churchyard wide open; and the grass was lying on
the graves, having probably been mowed yesterday. It is but a small
churchyard, and with few monuments of any pretension in it, most of them
being slate headstones, standing erect. From the gate at which we
entered a distinct foot-track leads to the corner nearest the
river-side, and I turned into it by a sort of instinct, the more readily
as I saw a