ghter, lost their mother in
1778, when William was eight, and Dorothy six years old. The father died
five years afterwards, at the close of 1783, and the family home at
Cockermouth was broken up and the children scattered. Before his
father's death, William, in his ninth year, had gone with his elder
brother to school at Hawkshead, by the lake of Esthwaite, and after the
father died Dorothy was brought up by a cousin on her mother's side, Miss
Threlkeld, afterwards Mrs. Rawson, who lived in Halifax. During the
eight years which Wordsworth spent at school, or, at any rate, from the
time of his father's death, he and his sister seem seldom, if ever, to
have met.

The first college vacation in the summer of 1788 brought him back to his
old school in the vale of Esthwaite, and either this or the next of his
undergraduate summers restored him to the society of his sister at
Penrith. This meeting is thus described in the 'Prelude:'--

'In summer, making quest for works of art,
Or scenes renowned for beauty, I explored
That streamlet whose blue current works its way
Between romantic Dovedale's spiry rocks;
Pried into Yorkshire dales, or hidden tracts
Of my own native region, and was blest
Between these sundry wanderings with a joy
Above all joys, that seemed another morn
Risen on mid-noon; blest with the presence, Friend!
Of that sole sister, her who hath been long
Dear to thee also, thy true friend and mine,
Now, after separation desolate
Restored to me--such absence that she seemed
A gift then first bestowed.'

They then together wandered by the banks of Emont, among the woods of
Lowther, and 'climbing the Border Beacon looked wistfully towards the dim
regions of Scotland.' Then and there too Wordsworth first met that young
kinswoman who was his wife to be.

During the following summers the Poet was busy with walking tours in
Switzerland and North Italy, his residence in France, his absorption in
the French Revolution, which kept him some years longer apart from his
sister. During those years Miss Wordsworth lived much with her uncle Dr.
Cookson, who was a canon of Windsor and a favourite with the Court, and
there met with people of more learning and refinement, but not of greater
worth, than those she had left in her northern home.

In the beginning of 1794 Wordsworth, returned from his wanderings, came
to visit his sister at Halifax, his head still in a whirl with
r