CHAPTER V.

'Oh! if there be an Elysium on earth,

It is this, it is this.'

Moore.

Grasmere described-Dove Cottage-Lyrical Ballads,' in two volumes (1800)-Wordsworth is visited by his brother John-His great poetic period (1795-1800) referred to-Is visited by Coleridge (August, 1800)-Life at Dove Cottage -Visits France with his sister.

GRASMERE is unquestionably one of the sweetest and most charmingly-situated villages in the Lake District, or throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

'Earth has not anything to show more fair :
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.'

A more picturesque spot it would well-nigh be impossible to imagine, nestling as it does upon the border of the lovely little lake that bears its name, surrounded by the everlasting hills, with its white. scattered buildings dotting the green landscape here and there like sheep, and its old church (dedicated to St. Oswald) towering amid the abounding trees. The lake, which is scarcely half a mile wide at its

broadest part, is a beautiful sheet of water, and presents an exquisite picture, with its crystal wavelets kissing the fertile fields; while the magnificent mountain scenery, clothed at times in all the colours of the rainbow, forms a bewitching background which, like Cleopatra's person, 'beggars all description.' As one gazes upon the tranquil bosom of the mere, bathed in golden glory, or on the encircling hills 'framed in the prodigality of nature, unless he have no poetry in his soul, he must perforce exclaim in the fulness of his heart:

'. . . If there's peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'

The poet Gray, who died in 1771, the year after Wordsworth was born, has given us an unrivalled word-painting of Grasmere, which he visited in October, 1769. Of course, the scene has been slightly disfigured during the intervening century. He says: Passed by the little chapel of Wiborn [Wythburn], out of which the Sunday congregation were then issuing. Passed a beck [rivulet] near Dunmailrouse [Dunmailraise], and entered Westmoreland a second time; now begin to see Helmcrag, distinguished from its rugged neighbours, not so much by its height, as by the strange, broken outline of its top, like some gigantic building demolished, and the stones that composed it flung across each other in wild confusion. Just beyond it, opens one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever

attempted to imitate.

The bosom of the mountains

spreading here into a broad basin, discovers in the midst Grasmere water; its margin is hollowed into small bays with bold eminences, some of them rocks, some of soft turf, that half conceal and vary the figure of the little lake they command. From the shore, a low promontory pushes itself far into the water, and on it stands a white village, with the parish church rising in the midst of it; hanging inclosures, cornfields, and meadows green as an emerald with their trees, hedges, and cattle, fill up the whole space from the edge of the water. opposite to you is a large farmhouse, at the bottom of a steep, smooth lawn embosomed in old woods, which climb half-way up the mountain's side, and discover above them a broken line of crags, that crown the scene. Not a single red tile, no glaring gentleman's house or garden-walls, break in upon the repose of this little unsuspected paradise; but all is peace, rusticity, and happy poverty, in its neatest and most becoming attire.'

Just

Nathaniel Hawthorne thus writes of Grasmere : This little town seems to me as pretty a place as ever I met with in my life. It is quite shut in by hills that rise up immediately around it, like a neighbourhood of kindly giants. These hills descend steeply to the verge of the level on which the village stands, and there they terminate at once, the whole site of the little town being as even as a

floor. I call it a village, but it is no village at all, all the dwellings stand apart, each in its own little domain, and each, I believe, with its own little lane leading to it, independently of the rest. Many of these are old cottages, plastered white, with antique porches, and roses, and other vines, trained against them, and shrubbery growing about them, and some are covered with ivy. There are a few edifices of more pretension and of modern build, but not so striking as to put the rest out of countenance. . . The whole looks like a real seclusion, shut out from the great world by those encircling hills, on the sides of which, whenever they are not too steep, you see the division lines of property and tokens of cultivation-taking from them their pretensions of savage majesty, but bringing them nearer to the heart of man.'

Such is Grasmere, where Wordsworth and his sister settled. The dwelling in which they resided, known as Dove Cottage, still retains its former character and appearance. It stands on the visitor's right as he passes through Town End. In Wordsworth's days it was a charming retreat; and room must be found for the following beautiful sonnet, composed by the poet when in an admonitory mood:

'Well may'st thou halt-and gaze with brightening eye! The lovely cottage in the guardian nook

Hath stirred thee deeply; with its own dear brook,
Its own small pasture, almost its own sky!

But covet not the abode ;-forbear to sigh,
As many do, repining while they look ;

Intruders-who would tear from Nature's book
This precious leaf, with harsh impiety.

Think what the home must be if it were thine,

Even thine, though few thy wants! Roof, window, door,
The very flowers are sacred to the poor,

The roses to the porch which they entwine :
Yea, all, that now enchants thee, from the day
On which it should be touched, would melt away.'

But times are altered. The cottage is more or less surrounded by the outbuildings of a large and busy hotel; and the quiet and privacy which, doubtless, rendered it so blissful an abiding-place to the poet, are now, more especially in the visiting season, things of the past. To the Wordsworths it must truly have been an earthly paradise; and the poet, deeply enamoured with his choice, took, according to De Quincey, a seven or eight years' lease of it. At that time the view from the cottage, since gravely interrupted, was almost unsurpassed, the building overlooking the picturesque lake of Grasmere; whilst behind the premises there was, and still is, a small garden, in addition to an orchard, through which its own dear brook' murmured pleasantly as it rippled along, its banks in spring being brightly decked with daffodils and primroses. The views from the orchard are wide and varied, and beautiful in the extreme.

Frequent allusions to the cottage and its surroundings are to be found in Wordsworth's poems,