ration of it amused the whole neighborhood in a
good-natured way. "People from Birthwaite" were the bugbear--Birthwaite
being the end of the railway. In the Summer of 1857, Mrs. Wordsworth's
companion told her (she being then blind) that there were some strangers
in the garden--two or three boys on the mount, looking at the view.
"Boys from Birthwaite," said the old lady, in the well-known tone, which
conveyed that nothing good could come from Birthwaite. When the
strangers were gone, it appeared that they were the Prince of Wales and
his companions. Making allowance for prejudices, neither few nor small,
but easily dissolved when reason and kindliness had opportunity to work,
she was a truly wise woman, equal to all occasions of action, and
supplying other persons' needs and deficiencies.

In the "Memoirs of Wordsworth" it is stated that she was the original of

"She was a phantom of delight;"

and some things in the next few pages look like it; but for the greater
part of the poet's life it was certainly believed by some, who ought to
know, that that wonderful description related to another who flitted
before his imagination in earlier days than those in which he discovered
the aptitude of Mary Hutchinson to his own needs. The last stanza is
very like her; and her husband's sonnet to the painter of her portrait,
in old age, discloses to us how the first stanza might be also, in days
beyond the ken of the existing generation.

Of her early sorrows, in the loss of two children and a beloved sister,
who was domesticated with the family, there are probably no living
witnesses. It will never be forgotten, by those who saw it, how the late
dreary train of afflictions was met. For many years Wordsworth's sister
Dorothy was a melancholy charge. Mrs. Wordsworth was wont to warn any
rash enthusiasts for mountain-walking by the spectacle before them. The
adoring sister would never fail her brother; and she destroyed her
health, and then her reason, by exhausting walks and wrong remedies for
the consequences. Forty miles in a day was not a singular feat of
Dorothy's. During the long years of this devoted creature's helplessness
she was tended with admirable cheerfulness and good sense. Thousands of
lake tourists must remember the locked garden-gate when Miss Wordsworth
was taking the air, and the garden-chair going round and round the
terrace, with the emaciated little woman in it, who occasionally called
out to strangers