atiated on the inexhaustible beauty of the arrangements of
Nature, its power of combining in the most secret recesses, and that it
must be for some purpose of beneficence that such operations existed.
After breakfast, we got into the cart of the inn, which had a seat swung
into it, upon which a bolster was put, in honour, I presume, of the Poet
Laureate. In this we jogged on to Seathwaite, getting out to ascend a
craggy eminence on the right, which Mrs. Wordsworth admired: the view
from it is very striking. You see from it all the peculiarities of the
vale, the ravine where the Duddon 'deserts the haunts of men,' 'the
spots of stationary sunshine,' and the homesteads which are scattered
here and there, both on the heights and in the lower ground near
protecting rocks and craggy steeps. Seathwaite I had a perfect
recollection of; and the way we approached it twenty years ago, from
Coniston over Walna Scar, is the way Mr. Wordsworth still recommends as
the most beautiful. We went on some distance beyond the chapel, and
every new turning and opening among the hills allured us on, till at
last the Poet was obliged to exercise the word of command, that we
should proceed no further. The return is always a flat thing, so I shall
not detail it, except that we reached our respective homes in good time;
and I hope I shall never cease to think with gratitude and pleasure of
the kindness of my honoured guide through the lovely scenes he has
rescued from obscurity, although it happily still remains an unvitiated
region, 'which stands in no need of the veil of twilight to soften or
disguise its features: as it glistens in the morning's sun it fills the
spectator's heart with gladsomeness.'

_November 21_.--My mother and I called at Rydal last Saturday, to see
the Wordsworths after their autumnal excursion. We found him only at
home, looking in great vigour and much the better for this little change
of scene and circumstance. He spoke with much interest of a
communication he had had from a benevolent surgeon at Manchester, an
admirer of his, who thinks that a great proportion of the blindness in
this country might be prevented by attention to the diseases of the eye
in childhood. He spoke of two very interesting blind ladies he had seen
at Leamington, one of whom had been at Rydal Mount a short time before
her 'total eclipse,' and now derived the greatest comfort from the
recollection of these beautiful scenes, almost the last she look