' need no vindication at this late day.
Ruskin is reiterating their arguments and sentiment eloquently as these
pages pass through the press. Apart from deeper reasons, let the
fault-finder realise to himself the differentia of general approval of
railways, and a railway forced through the 'old churchyard' that holds
his mother's grave or the garden of his young prime. It was a merely
sordid matter on the part of the promoters. Their professions of care
for the poor and interest in the humbler classes getting to the Lakes
had a Judas element in them, nothing higher or purer.

VOL. III.

CRITICAL AND ETHICAL.

I. _Notes and Illustrations of the Poems, incorporating_:

(_a_) The Notes originally added to the first and successive editions.

(_b_) The whole of the I.F. MSS.

This division of the Prose has cost the Editor more labour and thought
than any other, from the scattered and hitherto unclassified
semi-publication of these Notes. Those called 'original' are from the
first and successive editions of the Poems, being found in some and
absent in other collections. An endeavour has been made to include
everything, even the briefest; for judging by himself, the Editor
believes that to the reverent and thoughtful student of WORDSWORTH the
slightest thing is of interest; _e.g._ one turns to the most commonplace
book of topography or contemporary verse in any way noticed by him, just
because it is WORDSWORTH who has noticed it, while an old ballad, a
legend, a bit of rural usage, takes a light of glory from the page in
which it is found. Hence as so much diamond-dust or filings of gold the
published Notes are here brought together. Added, and far exceeding in
quantity and quality alike, it is the privilege of the Editor to print
_completely and in integrity_ the I.F. MSS., as written down to the
dictation of WORDSWORTH by Miss FENWICK. These have been hitherto given
with tantalising and almost provoking fragmentariness in the 'Memoirs'
and in the centenary edition of the Poems--again withdrawn in the recent
Rossetti edition. In these Notes--many of which in both senses are
elaborate and full--are some of the deepest and daintiest-worded things
from WORDSWORTH. The I.F. MSS. are delightfully chatty and informal, and
ages hence will be treasured and studied in relation to the Poems by the
(then) myriad millions of the English-speaking races.

Miss FENWICK, to whom the world is indebted for these MSS., is
immortal