BETTY YEWDALE.
(Extract from a Lecture on “The People of the English Lake Country, in their Humorous Aspect.”)
TILL harping upon married life, I wish to draw your attention to one of the finest passages in Wordsworth’s greatest poem—The Excursion, which abounds in fine passages. In that I refer to, the poet gives a very charming account of the daily life of a humble couple in Little Langdale, on whose hospitality he describes himself, or his hero, as being thrown, when benighted and lost in that narrow vale, where, as I have found occasionally, the closely encircling belt of high mountains makes a dark night very black indeed. The poet says—
“Dark on my road the autumnal evening fell,
And night succeeded with unusual gloom,
So that my feet and hands at length became
Guides better than mine eyes—until a light
High in the gloom appeared, too high, methought,
For human habitation.”