eft the woods were thick. Huge old hollies showed
the ravages of age and storm. A riotous undergrowth of bushes and
bracken filled the spaces between the taller trees. Doves were
murmuring in the shade. Rabbits scampered across the road. In an open
park at the edge of the wood, a herd of twenty or thirty fallow deer
with pale spotted sides and twinkling tails trotted slowly up the
slope.

Alfoxton House is a long, two-story building of white stucco, with a
pillared porch facing the hills. The back looks out over a walled
garden, with velvet turf and brilliant flowers and pretty evergreens,
toward the sea-shore. The house has been much changed and enlarged
since the days when young William Wordsworth rented it, (hardly more
than a good farmhouse), for twenty-three pounds a year, and lived in it
with his sister from 1797 to 1798, in order to be near his friend
Coleridge at Nether Stowey. There is not a room that remains the same,
though the present owner has wisely brought together as much of the old
wood-work as possible into one chamber, which is known as Wordsworth's
study. But the poet's real study was out of doors; and it was there
that we looked for the things that he loved.

In a field beyond the house there were two splendid old ash-trees,
which must have been full-grown in Wordsworth's day. We stretched
ourselves among the gnarled roots, my little Dorothy and I, and fed our
eyes upon the view that must have often refreshed him, while his
Dorothy was leading his heart back with gentle touches toward the
recovery of joy. There was the soft, dimpled landscape, in tones of
silvery verdure, blue in distance, green near at hand, sloping down to
the shining sea. The sky was delicate and friendly, bending close above
us, with long lines of snowy clouds. There was hardly a breath of wind.
Far to the east we saw the rich plain rolling away to Bridgewater and
the bare line of the distant Mendip Hills. Shadows of clouds swept
slowly across the land. Colours shifted and blended. On the steep hill
behind us a row of trees stood out clear against the blue.

"With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh."

What induced Wordsworth to leave a place so beautiful? A most prosaic
reason. He was practically driven out by the suspicion and mistrust of
his country neighbours. A poet was a creature that they could not
understand. His long rambles among the hills by day and night,
regardless of the weather; his habit of talking t