d on their outlandish Irish car,
with a horse, now gibbing and backing over a bank, now reduced to a walk,
with one of the poets leading him by the head, must have cut but a sorry
figure, and wakened many a smile and gibe in passers-by. As they wound
their way up Nithsdale, one can well imagine how some Border lord or
laird, riding, or driving past in smart equipage, would look on them
askance, taking them for what Burns calls a 'wheen gangrel bodies,' or
for a set of Dominie Sampsons from the other side the Border, or for some
offshoot of the 'Auld Licht' Seceders. Poor Coleridge, ill at ease, and
in the dumps all the way, stretched asleep on the car cushions, while the
other two were admiring the scenery, could not have added to their
hilarity. And it must have been a relief to Wordsworth and his sister,
though the Journal hints it not, when he left them at Loch Lomond. But
however grotesque their appearance may have been, they bore within them
that which made their journey rich in delight to themselves, not to say
to others. They were then both in their prime, Wordsworth and his sister
being just past thirty. They had the observant eye and the feeling heart
which money cannot buy. No doubt to them, accustomed to the cleanness
and comfort of the farms and cottages of Westmoreland, those 'homes of
ancient peace,' with their warm stone porches and their shelter of
household sycamores, the dirt and discomfort of the inns and of the
humbler abodes they entered must have been repulsive enough. Even the
gentlemen's seats had to them an air of neglect and desolation, and the
new plantations of larch and fir with which they had then begun to be
surrounded, gave an impression of rawness, barrenness, and lack of
geniality. Nor less in large towns, as in Glasgow, were they struck by
the dulness and dreariness in the aspect and demeanour of the dim 'common
populations.' They saw and felt these things as keenly as any could do.
But, unlike ordinary travellers, they were not scared or disgusted by
them. They did not think that the first appearance was all. They felt
and saw that there was more behind. With lively interest they note the
healthy young women travelling barefoot, though well dressed, the
children without shoes or stockings, the barefoot boys, some with their
caps wreathed with wild-flowers, others who could read Virgil or Homer.
They pass, as friends, beneath the humble cottage roofs, look with
sympathy on t