uently has one to observe in
both sexes the same thing, and how mortifying is the reflection!

_As on a sunny bank the tender lamb_.--The story that follows was told
to Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister, by the sister of this unhappy young
woman. Every particular was exactly as I have related. The party was not
known to me, though she lived at Hawkshead; but it was after I left
school. The clergyman who administered comfort to her in her distress I
knew well. Her sister, who told the story, was the wife of a leading
yeoman in the Vale of Grasmere, and they were an affectionate pair, and
greatly respected by every one who knew them. Neither lived to be old;
and their estate, which was, perhaps, the most considerable then in the
Vale, and was endeared to them by many remembrances of a salutary
character, not easily understood or sympathised with by those who are
born to great affluence, past to their eldest son, according to the
practice of these Vales, who died soon after he came into possession. He
was an amiable and promising youth, but was succeeded by an only
brother, a good-natured man, who fell into habits of drinking, by which
he gradually reduced his property, and the other day the last acre of it
was sold, and his wife and children, and he himself still surviving,
have very little left to live upon; which it would not, perhaps, have
been worth while to record here, but that through all trials this woman
has proved a model of patience, meekness, affectionate forbearance, and
forgiveness. Their eldest son, who through the vices of his father has
thus been robbed of an ancient family inheritance, was never heard to
murmur or complain against the cause of their distress, and is now,
deservedly, the chief prop of his mother's hopes.

BOOK VII.--The clergyman and his family described at the beginning of
this book were, during many years, our principal associates in the Vale
of Grasmere, unless I were to except our very nearest neighbours. I have
entered so particularly into the main points of their history, that I
will barely testify in prose that (with the single exception of the
particulars of their journey to Grasmere, which, however, was exactly
copied from real life in another instance) the whole that I have said of
them is as faithful to the truth as words can make it. There was much
talent in the family, and the eldest son was distinguished for poetical
talent, of which a specimen is given in my Notes to the Sonnet