hey
were not less beautiful than I have endeavoured to make them appear. We
had taken a little dinner with us in a basket, and invited them to
partake of it, which the mother refused to do both for herself and her
children, saying it was with them a fast-day; adding diffidently, that
whether such observances were right or wrong, _she_ felt it her duty to
keep them strictly. The Jews, who are numerous in this part of the
Rhine, greatly surpass the German peasantry in the beauty of their
features and in the intelligence of their countenances. But the lower
classes of the German peasantry have, here at least, the air of people
grievously opprest. Nursing mothers at the age of seven or eight and
twenty often look haggard and far more decayed and withered than women
of Cumberland and Westmoreland twice their age. This comes from being
under-fed and over-worked in their vineyards in a hot and glaring sun.
[In pencil on opposite page--The three went from my house in
Bryanston-street, London--E.Q.]

180. *_On the Power of Sound_. [LI.]

Rydal Mount, 1828. I have often regretted that my tour in Ireland,
chiefly performed in the short days of October in a carriage and four (I
was with Mr. Marshall), supplied my memory with so few images that were
new and with so little motive to write. The lines, however, in this
poem, 'Thou too he heard, lone eagle!' &c., were suggested near the
Giant's Causeway, or rather at the promontory of Fairhead, where a pair
of eagles wheeled above our heads, and darted off as if to hide
themselves in a blaze of sky made by the setting sun.

181. _Peter Bell: a Tale_.

DEDICATION.
'What's in a _Name_?'
'Brutus will start a Spirit as soon as Caesar!'

To ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ., P.L., ETC., ETC.
MY DEAR FRIEND,

The Tale of 'Peter Bell,' which I now introduce to your notice, and to
that of the Public, has, in its Manuscript state, nearly survived its
_minority_:--for it first saw the light in the summer of 1798. During
this long interval, pains have been taken at different times to make the
production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or, rather, to fit
it for filling _permanently_ a station, however humble, in the
Literature of our Country. This has, indeed, been the aim of all my
endeavours in Poetry, which, you know, have been sufficiently laborious
to prove that I deem the Art not lightly to be approached; and that the
attainment of excellence in