English poet's home since Shakespeare; and few homes, certainly,
have been moulded into such close accordance with their inmates'
nature. The house, which has been altered since Wordsworth's day,
stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar, above Rydal
Lake. The garden was described by Bishop Wordsworth immediately
after his uncle's death, while every terrace-walk and flowering
alley spoke of the poet's loving care. He tells of the "tall ash-tree,
in which a thrush has sung, for hours together, during many years;"
of the "laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung;" of
the stone steps "in the interstices of which grow the yellow
flowering poppy, and the wild geranium or Poor Robin,"--

Gay
With his red stalks upon a sunny day.

And then of the terraces--one levelled for Miss Fenwick's use, and
welcome to himself in aged years; and one ascending, and leading to
the "far terrace" on the mountain's side, where the poet was wont to
murmur his verses as they came. Within the house were disposed his
simple treasures: the ancestral almery, on which the names of unknown
Wordsworths may be deciphered still; Sir George Beaumont's pictures
of "The White Doe of Rylstone" and "The Thorn," and the cuckoo clock
which brought vernal thoughts to cheer the sleepless bed of age, and
which sounded its noonday summons when his spirit fled.

Wordsworth's worldly fortunes, as if by some benignant guardianship
of Providence, were at all times proportioned to his successive needs.
About the date of his removal to Rydal (in March 1813) he was
appointed, through Lord Lonsdale's interest, to the distributorship
of stamps for the county of Westmoreland, to which office the same