Oh, gentle reader, you would find
A tale in everything'--

belonging to Wordsworth and to one of Wordsworth's simple, I am almost
ready to say _silly_, poems. I am in doubt what to think of Wordsworth.
I should be ashamed of some of his poems if I had written them myself,
and yet there are points of great beauty, and lines which once in the
mind will not leave it.

"Oct. 31, 1853. People have to learn sometimes not only how much the
heart, but how much the head, can bear. My letter came from Cambridge
[the Harvard Observatory], and I had some work to do over. It was a
wearyful job, but by dint of shutting myself up all day I did manage to
get through with it. The good of my travelling showed itself then, when
I was too tired to read, to listen, or to talk; for the beautiful
scenery of the West was with me in the evening, instead of the tedious
columns of logarithms. It is a blessed thing that these pictures keep in
the mind and come out at the needful hour. I did not call them, but they
seemed to come forth as a regulator for my tired brain, as if they had
been set sentinel-like to watch a proper time to appear.

"November, 1853. There is said to be no up or down in creation, but I
think the _world_ must be _low_, for people who keep themselves
constantly before it do a great deal of stooping!

"Dec. 8, 1853. Last night we had the first meeting of the class in
elocution. It was very pleasant, but my deficiency of ear was never more
apparent to myself. We had exercises in the ascending scale, and I
practised after I came home, with the family as audience. H. says my ear
is competent only to vulgar hearing, and I cannot appreciate nice