CHAPTER XVII.

A QUIET RESTING-PLACE.

A few words only are desirable to be added in reference to the surviving inmate of the home of which Miss Wordsworth was so long a cherished member. The poet's aged widow survived her husband and sister-in-law for some years. She was not solitary in her widowhood, but tenderly loved by devoted friends. Miss Joanna Baillie, writing to Mrs. Fletcher in the June succeeding the death of Wordsworth, says: "Many thanks to you for sending to us a copy of these lines" (the lines upon the companionship of Wordsworth and his sister, before mentioned), "and for letting us know how his excellent wife, Mrs. Wordsworth, bears up under her severe affliction. She was a mate worthy of him or any man, and his sister too, such a devoted noble being as scarcely any other man ever possessed."

Mrs. Fletcher's diary, under date, Sunday, the 7th May, 1854, contains the following entry: "Yesterday, Mrs. Davy brought Mrs. Wordsworth to dinner. It is always a pleasure to see the placid old age of dear Mrs. Wordsworth. Hers has been a life of duty, and it is now an old age of repose, while her affections are kept in constant exercise by the tender interest she takes in her grand-children."

During the last three years of her life Mrs. Wordsworth was blind; and it is deeply pathetic to read how, in her last days, when her sightless eyes could no longer peruse the sacred page, she loved to feel with her trembling fingers a cross which she kept in her room, and which seemed to remind her of the Christian's hope. Her life of calm devotion and disinterested love, succeeded by an old age of resignation and peace, was brought to a serene close on the 17th of January, 1859.

Among the quiet resting-places of the dead, few, if any, are of deeper interest than the peaceful churchyard of Grasmere. Under the shadow of the everlasting hills "girded with joy," and by the banks of the murmuring stream singing in its onward course of hopes beyond the grave, it is a spot which affection would choose for its most tenderly loved. As "the Churchyard among the mountains," many of the annals of which are recorded in that grand philosophic poem, "The Excursion," it could not fail to draw thither the footsteps of the thoughtful. But there is one corner on approaching which we seem to feel more solemnised, to breathe more gently--where the footstep falls lighter and lingers longer. To us it is as sacred a nook as the shadowy corner of the famous Abbey where are laid England's greatest sons. The group of graves gathered there are not glorified by the "religious light" of storied windows, but they are warmed by summer suns, and covered with a garment of purity by winter snows, and over-shadowed by aged yews, which gently shower around them their peaceful and slumberous undersong.

In the south-east corner of this quiet God's Acre is to be found this cluster of graves, surrounded by an iron palisade, to each of which a history of more than common interest is attached. Behind the principal group are three short graves, two of which, being the first formed of the group, attract attention. These are the graves of little Catherine and Thomas Wordsworth, the children of the poet, whose early and sudden deaths have been mentioned. The stone indicating the resting-place of the "loving, and tractable, though wild," Catherine bears the inscription, "Suffer little children to come unto Me." That of her brother contains a few memorial lines recording at once his age and loving disposition:--

"Six months to six years added he remained Upon this sinful earth, by sin unstained: O blessed Lord! Whose mercy then removed A Child whom every eye that looked on loved; Support us, teach us calmly to resign What we possessed, and now is wholly Thine!"

The next green mound, in point of date, is that which covers the remains of the first Mrs. Quillinan, who died on the 25th May, 1822, at the early age of twenty-seven years, six months after the birth of her second daughter. She was a daughter of the late Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart., of Denton Court, near Dover. There is in Grasmere Church a monument to her designed by Sir F. Chantrey.

Miss Sarah Hutchinson, the younger sister of Mrs. Wordsworth, who has been before mentioned, comes next in this remarkable group. Spending, as she did, much of her time with the Wordsworths at Grasmere and Rydal Mount, she was devoted to all the members of the family. Being herself of poetic mould, the poet's home was most congenial to her. It was she, who, during a sickness, the year before her death, wrote the following lines to the Redbreast:--

"Stay, cheerful little Robin! stay, And at my casement sing, Though it should prove a farewell lay And this our parting spring.

"Though I, alas! may ne'er enjoy The promise in thy song; A charm, _that_ thought can not destroy, Doth to thy strain belong.

"Methinks that in my dying hour Thy song would still be dear, And with a more than earthly power My passing Spirit cheer.

"Then, little Bird, this boon confer, Come, and my requiem sing, Nor fail to be the harbinger Of everlasting Spring."

She died as before-mentioned in 1835. Her memorial stone states that she was the beloved sister and faithful friend of mourners, who had caused the stone to be erected, with the earnest wish that their remains might be laid by her side, and a humble hope that through Christ they might together be made partakers of the same blessed resurrection. Twelve years afterwards the sod was again cut, to receive, not yet the aged poet or his wife, but their idolised daughter Dora, the devoted wife of Mr. Quillinan, who, in her forty-third year, after a brief period of wedded happiness, died on the 9th July, 1847. Upon the stone at the head of her grave is chiselled a lamb bearing a cross, and the consolatory words: "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out."

The poet himself was the next to be added to the group, and the slab, with the simple inscription "WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1850," has been gazed upon by as many moistened eyes as the elaborate tombs of any of England's greatest heroes.

Mr. Edward Quillinan, who died in July, 1851, rests near the two beloved companions of his life.

The subject of this brief memoir--the most perfect sister the world hath known--after her sunny youth, her strong maturity, and her afflicted age, now sleeps in peace on the right side of the poet, to whom her self-denying life was devoted, her resting-place, to all who have heard her name being sufficiently indicated by the words

"DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, 1855."

In a few years more the poet's grave received to its shelter the tried and honoured partner of his long life, and the words were added: "Mary Wordsworth, 1859."

From this time there is a break of many years, when the enclosure received another member of the younger generation. Miss Rotha Quillinan, named after the murmuring river, by the banks of which her life was spent, died on the 1st February, 1876. She was the younger daughter of Mr. Quillinan, and, apart from the subsequent relationship, had been an object of especial interest to the poet as his god-daughter. He wrote the following lines in her album:--

"Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey When at the sacred font for thee I stood: Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood, And shalt become thy own sufficient stay; Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day For stedfast hope the contract to fulfil; Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still, Embodied in the music of this Lay, Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream, Whose murmur soothed thy languid Mother's ear After her throes, this Stream of name more dear Since thou dost bear it--a memorial theme For others; for thy future self, a spell To summon fancies out of Time's dark cell."

Her surviving sister still resides in the charming retreat at the foot of Loughrigg Fell, overlooking the vale of Ambleside, which had so long been the home of both.

The latest addition to the group was made so lately as the year 1883, when Mr. William Wordsworth, the last surviving son of the poet, was added to the number.

There is, however, one more grave, which, though not within the enclosure, lies close behind it, and claims our notice. Hartley Coleridge, the eldest son of his more distinguished father, was for many years a familiar figure in the neighbourhood where he now rests. As a child, quiet, intelligent, and promising; as a youth, encouraging the hope that he was gifted with a genius which would lead to a career of no ordinary character; as a collegian, fulfilling the bright hopes of his friends, and attaining signal distinction;--his subsequent history affords one more instance of the fact that the greatest genius may by one failing be crippled, and the brightest promise be never followed by its full fruition. But this is not the place to recount his story. His published poems show that he inherited no small portion of his father's poetic ability. In his subsequently rather aimless life, he endeared himself not a little to the sympathetic inhabitants of the vale by his gentle, warm-hearted, and loving disposition. He was passionately fond of children, and would hardly pass through the village without taking a little one into his arms. For his father's sake, as well as his own, he was a favourite with the Wordsworths. It was by Mrs. Wordsworth, the friend of his infancy, that in his fifty-third year his relatives were summoned to his dying bed; and by Wordsworth himself (a year before his own death) his last resting-place was chosen. "Let him lie by us," said the aged poet, "he would have wished it;" adding to the sexton, "keep the ground for us--we are old people, and it cannot be for long."

The following sonnet may be given as a specimen of Hartley Coleridge's poetry, the closing line not inaptly expressing the prayerful attitude with which he approached the eternal future.

"SHE LOVED MUCH.

"She sat and wept beside His feet. The weight Of sin oppressed her heart; for all the blame, And the poor malice of the worldly shame, To her was past, extinct, and out of date; Only the _sin_ remained--the leprous state. She would be melted by the heat of love, By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove And purge the silver ore adulterate. She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch; And He wiped off the soiling of despair From her sweet soul, because she loved so much. I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears, Make me a humble thing of love and tears."