Note 56 — Last Words of Distinguished Men and Women. (continued 5)

William Wordsworth died April 23rd, 1850, at the age of 80, and was buried in the little centry-garth of St. Oswald's, Grasmere, between, as De Quincey records, "a yew-tree of his own planting, and an aged thorn." On his tombstone is an inscription from the pen of Keble, in which he is styled, "a chief minister, not only of noblest poesy, but of high and Sacred truth." Surely the tender lover of Nature, and high-priest of her mysteries, could have no fitter resting-place than this Westmoreland churchyard, where, as some one has written, "the turf is washed green by summer dew, and winter rain, and in early spring is beautifully dappled with lichens and golden moss?" This reads very prettily, and represents the thing as it should be. But what are the facts? The literary pilgrim who may chance to visit the spot will follow a narrow muddy path among the grave mounds, till he reaches a gloomy dingy corner, with a group of blue-black head-stones of funereal slate. Everything round the place is decayed and blighted; no green grass is there; all is dull, dark and depressing. The poet's corner is ill-drained; and there is a tiny moat of water round the base of the stone curb, in which is fixed the iron railing that surrounds the grave. Yet here is a remarkable group of memorial tombs. Near to the poet lie all the beloved members of his household. Here slumbers his favorite sister, Dorothy; here, too, Mrs. Wordsworth,—Dora Wordsworth,—her husband, Edward Quillinan, the poet, and translator of the Lusiad,—the two infant children of Wordsworth,—and behind these, Hartley Coleridge, that "inheritor of unfulfilled renown," whose bier the poet followed one snowy day in January, unwitting that, before the trees were again clad with verdure, he would be borne along the same narrow path to his own long rest. Surely something should be done to rescue the poet's monument from decay, and render it more in accordance with the verdant foliage and the sun-bright hills around, of which he sung so lovingly and so well.

William Bates.