English Lands, Letters and Kings, vol. 4: The Later Georges to Victoria

by Donald Grant Mitchell

CHAPTER I.

The reader will, perhaps, remember that we brought our last year’s ramble amongst British Lands and Letters to an end—in the charming Lake District of England. There, we found Coleridge, before he was yet besotted by his opium-hunger; there, too, we had Church-interview with the stately, silver-haired poet of Rydal Mount—making ready for his last Excursion into the deepest of Nature’s mysteries.

The reader will recall, further, how this poet and seer, signalized some of the later years of his life by indignant protests against the schemes—which were then afoot—for pushing railways among the rural serenities of Westmoreland.