of them strangers to me, and others daily under my notice.

I was born too late to have a distinct remembrance of the origin of the
American war; but the state in which I represent Robert's mind to be, I
had frequent opportunities of observing at the commencement of our
rupture with France in 1793; opportunities of which I availed myself in
the story of the 'Female Vagrant,' as told in the poem on 'Guilt and
Sorrow.' The account given by the 'Solitary,' towards the close of the
second book, in all that belongs to the character of the old man, was
taken from a Grasmere pauper, who was boarded in the last house quitting
the Vale on the road to Ambleside; the character of his hostess, and all
that befell the poor man upon the mountain, belongs to Paterdale. The
woman I knew well; her name was Ruth Jackson, and she was exactly such a
person as I describe. The ruins of the old chapel, among which the old
man was found lying, may yet be traced, and stood upon the ridge that
divides Paterdale from Boardale and Martindale, having been placed there
for the convenience of both districts. The glorious appearance disclosed
above and among the mountains, was described partly from what my friend
Mr. Luff, who then lived in Paterdale, witnessed upon this melancholy
occasion, and partly from what Mrs. Wordsworth and I had seen, in
company with Sir G. and Lady Beaumont, above Hartshope Hall, in our way
from Paterdale to Ambleside.

And now for a few words upon the church, its monuments, and of the
deceased who are spoken of as lying in the surrounding churchyard. But
first for the one picture given by the 'Wanderer' of the living. In this
nothing is introduced but what was taken from Nature, and real life. The
cottage was called Hackett, and stands, as described, on the southern
extremity of the ridge which separates the two Langdales. The pair who
inhabited it were called Jonathan and Betty Yewdale. Once when our
children were ill, of whooping-cough I think, we took them for change of
air to this cottage, and were in the habit of going there to drink tea
upon fine summer afternoons; so that we became intimately acquainted
with the characters, habits, and lives of these good, and let me say, in
the main, wise people. The matron had, in her early youth, been a
servant in a house at Hawkshead, where several boys boarded, while I
was a school-boy there. I did not remember her as having served in that
capacity; but we had many little anecd