oo much of these endings. One
day, when I found a stoppage in the road at the foot of Rydal Mount,
from a sale of furniture, such as is common in this neighborhood every
spring and autumn, I met Mr. Wordsworth,--not looking observant and
amused, but in his blackest mood of melancholy, and evidently wanting to
get out of the way. He said he did not like the sight: he had seen so
many of these sales; he had seen Southey's, not long before; and these
things reminded him how soon there must be a sale at Rydal Mount. It was
remarked by a third person that this was rather a wilful way of being
miserable; but I never saw a stronger love of life than there was in
them all, even so late in their day as this. Mrs. Wordsworth, then past
her three-score years and ten, observed to me that the worst of living
here was that it made one so unwilling to go. It seems but lately that
she said so; yet she nursed to their graves her daughter and her husband
and his sister, and she herself became blind; so that it was not hard
"to go," when the time came.

Southey's decline was painful to witness,--even as his beloved wife's
had been to himself. He never got over her loss; and his mind was
decidedly shaken before he made the second marriage which has been so
much talked over. One most touching scene there was when he had become
unconscious of all that was said and done around him. Mrs. Southey had
been careless of her own interests about money when she married him, and
had sought no protection for her own property. When there was manifestly
no hope of her husband's mind ever recovering, his brother assembled the
family and other witnesses, and showed them a kind of will which he had
drawn up, by which Mrs. Southey's property was returned to herself,
intact. He said they were all aware that their relative could not, in
his condition, make a will, and that he was even unaware of what they
were doing; but that it was right that they should, pledge themselves by
some overt act to fulfil what would certainly have been his wish. The
bowed head could not be raised, but the nerveless hand was guided to
sign the instrument; and all present agreed to respect it as if it
were a veritable will,--as of course they did. The decline was full of
painful circumstances; and it must have been with a heart full of sorrow
that Wordsworth walked over the hills to attend the funeral.

The next funeral was that of his own daughter Dora,--Mrs. Quillinan. A
story ha