The pillars of the gateway in front of the mansion remained when we first took up our abode at Grasmere. Two or three cottages still remain, which are called Knott-houses from the name of the gentleman (I have called him a knight) concerning whom these traditions survive. He was the ancestor of the Knott family, formerly considerable proprietors in the district. What follows in the discourse of the Wanderer upon the changes he had witnessed in rural life, by the introduction of machinery, is truly described from what I myself saw during my boyhood and early youth, and from what was often told me by persons of this humble calling. Happily, most happily, for these mountains, the mischief was diverted from the banks of their beautiful streams, and transferred to open and flat countries abounding in coal, where the agency of steam was found much more effectual for carrying on those demoralising works. Had it not been for this invention, long before the present time every torrent and river in this district would have had its factory, large and populous in proportion to the power of the water that could there have been commanded. Parliament has interfered to prevent the night-work which was once carried on in these mills as actively as during the daytime, and by necessity still more perniciously—a sad disgrace to the proprietors, and to the nation which could so long tolerate such unnatural proceedings. Reviewing at this late period, 1843, what I put into the mouths of my interlocutors a few years after the commencement of the century, I grieve that so little progress has been made in diminishing the evils deplored, or promoting the benefits of education which the Wanderer anticipates. The results of Lord Ashley's labours to defer the time when children might legally be allowed to work in factories, and his endeavours to limit still farther the hours of permitted

of

labour, have fallen far short of his own humane wishes, and those of every benevolent and rightminded man who has carefully attended to this subject: and in the present session of Parliament (1843) Sir James Graham's attempt to establish a course of religious education among the children employed in factories has been abandoned, in consequence of what might easily have been foreseen, the vehement and turbulent opposition of the Dissenters: so that, for many years to come, it may be thought expedient to leave the religious instruction of children entirely in the hands of the several denominations of Christians in the island, each body to work according to its own means and in its own way. Such is my own confidence, a confidence I share with many others of my most valued friends, in the superior advantages, both religious and social, which attend a course instruction presided over and guided by the clergy of the Church of England, that I have no doubt that, if but once its members, lay and clerical, were duly sensible of those benefits, their church would daily gain ground, and rapidly, upon every shape and fashion of Dissent: and in that case, a great majority in Parliament being sensible of these benefits, the Ministers of the country might be emboldened, were it necessary, to apply funds of the State to the support of education on Church principles. Before I conclude, I cannot forbear noticing the strenuous efforts made at this time in Parliament, by so many persons, to extend manufacturing and commercial industry at the expense of agricultural, though we have recently had abundant proofs that the apprehensions expressed by the Wanderer were not groundless.

"I spake of mischief by the wise diffused

With gladness, thinking that the more it spreads
The healthier, the securer, we become-
Delusion which a moment may destroy!"

The Chartists are well aware of this possibility, and cling to it with an ardour and perseverance which nothing but wiser and more brotherly dealing towards

the many, on the part of the wealthy few, can moderate or remove.

"While, from the grassy mountain's open side
We gazed, in silence hushed."

The point here fixed upon in my imagination is halfway up the northern side of Loughrigg Fell, from which the Pastor and his companions were supposed to look upwards to the sky and mountain-tops, and round the vale, with the lake lying immediately beneath them.

But turned not without welcome promise made,
That he would share the pleasures and pursuits
Of yet another summer's day, consumed
In wandering with us."

When I reported this promise of the Solitary, and
long after, it was my wish, and I might say intention,
that we should resume our wanderings, and pass the
Borders into his native country, where, as I hoped,
he might witness, in the society of the Wanderer,
some religious ceremony-a sacrament, say, in the
open fields, or a preaching among the mountains-
which, by recalling to his mind the days of his early
childhood, when he had been present on such
occasions in company with his parents and nearest
kindred, might have dissolved his heart into tender-
ness, and so have done more towards restoring the
Christian faith in which he had been educated, and,
with that, contentedness and even cheerfulness of
mind, than all that the Wanderer and Pastor, by their
several effusions and addresses, had been able to
effect. An issue like this was in my intentions.
alas!

"Mid the wreck of is and was,

Things incomplete and purposes betrayed
Make sadder transits o'er thought's optic glass
Than noblest objects utterly decayed!"

But,

Notes.1

p. i. Sonnet. The poet's father had been law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Lord Lonsdale. William, second Lord Lonsdale, created Earl of Lonsdale in 1807, was a constant friend to the poet, and by his influence Wordsworth in 1813 became Distributor of Stamps to the county of Westmoreland, thus for the first time obtaining a competent income. He now went to live at Rydal Mount.'

It was

p. iv. Preface. Wordsworth's poem "addressed to a dear Friend" (S. T. Coleridge), written 1800-1805, was published as The Prelude, a title suggested by Mrs Wordsworth after the poet's death in 1850. His philosophical poem consist of three parts. Of the "to be entitled The Recluse,' was, as he says, first part, only the first book (that called by the poet Home at Grasmere) was ever written. published in 1889 under the unfortunately misleading title The Recluse. The second part, The Excursion, was written chiefly at Allan Bank, Grasmere, 18081811, but Books I. and II. date from 1795-1804, and passages continued to be added to the work up to the year of publication, 1814. Important changes in the. text were made for the editions of 1827, 1832, 1837, 1845. The text in the present edition is the last text approved by the poet. The proposed third part of The Recluse was never written.

1 Notes by Wordsworth himself are indicated by his initials.