s tree in rocky situations, and of its durability, I have
often thought that the one I am describing must have been as old as the
Christian era. The tree lay in the line of a fence. Great masses of its
ruins were strewn about, and some had been rolled down the hill-side and
lay near the road at the bottom. As you approached the tree you were
struck with the number of shrubs and young plants, ashes, &c. which had
found a bed upon the decayed trunk and grew to no inconsiderable height,
forming, as it were, a part of the hedgerow. In no part of England, or
of Europe, have I ever seen a yew-tree at all approaching this in
magnitude, as it must have stood. By the bye, Hutton, the Old Guide of
Keswick, had been so imprest with the remains of this tree that he used
gravely to tell strangers that there could be no doubt of its having
been in existence before the Flood.

132. *_Nutting_. [VI.]

Written in Germany: intended as part of a poem on my own life, but
struck out as not being wanted there. Like most of my schoolfellows I
was an impassioned Nutter. For this pleasure the Vale of Esthwaite,
abounding in coppice wood, furnished a very wide range. These verses
arose out of the remembrance of feelings I had often had when a boy, and
particularly in the extensive woods that still stretch from the side of
Esthwaite Lake towards Graythwaite, the seat of the ancient family of
Sandys.

133. *_She was a Phantom of Delight_. [VIII.]

1804. Town-End. The germ of this Poem was four lines composed as a part
of the verses on the Highland Girl. Though beginning in this way, it was
written from my heart, as is sufficiently obvious.

134. *_The Nightingale_. [IX.]

Town-End, 1806. [So, but corrected in pencil 'Written at Coleorton.']

135. *_Three Years she grew, &c._ [X.]

1799. Composed in the Hartz Forest. [In pencil on opposite page--Who?]

136. _I wandered lonely as a Cloud_. [XII.] [= 'The Daffodils.']

Town-End, 1804. 'The Daffodils.' The two best lines in it are by Mary.
The daffodils grew and still grow on the margin of Ulswater, and
probably may be seen to this day as beautiful in the month of March
nodding their golden heads beside the dancing and foaming waves. [In
pencil on opposite page--Mrs. Wordsworth--but which? See the answer to
this, _infra_.]

137. _The Daffodils_. [xii.]

Grasmere, Nov. 4.

MT DEAR WRANGHAM,

I am indeed much pleased that Mrs. Wrangham and yourself ha