the Highland girl, to whom, in fact, he seems obliged to recur in
order to give reality to his new emotion.

To conclude the subject of Wordsworth's travels, I will mention here
that in 1823 he made a tour in Holland, and in 1824 in North Wales,
where his sonnet to the torrent at the Devil's Bridge recalls the
Swiss scenery seen in his youth with vigour and dignity. In 1828 he
made another excursion in Belgium with Coleridge, and in 1829 he
visited Ireland with his friend Mr. Marshall. Neither of these tours
was productive. In 1831 he paid a visit with his daughter to Sir
Walter Scott at Abbotsford, before his departure to seek health in
Italy. Scott received them cordially, and had strength to take them
to the Yarrow. "Of that excursion," says Wordsworth, "the verses
_Yarrow Revisited_ are a memorial. On our return in the afternoon
we had to cross the Tweed, directly opposite Abbotsford. A rich, but
sad light, of rather a purple than a golden hue, was spread over the
Eildon hills at that moment; and, thinking it probable that it might
be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream (the Tweed), I was
not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the sonnet
beginning, _A trouble not of clouds nor weeping rain_. At noon on
Thursday we left Abbotsford, and on the morning of that day Sir
Walter and I had a serious conversation, _tete-a-tete_, when he
spoke with gratitude of the happy life which, upon the whole, he had
led. He had written in my daughter's album, before he came into the
breakfast-room that morning, a few stanzas addressed to her; and,
while putting the book into her hand, in his own study, standing by
his desk, he said to her, in my presence, 'I should not have done
anything of this kind but for your father's sake; they are probably
the last verses I shall ever write.' They show how much his mind was
impaired: not by the strain of thought, but by the execution, some