"Yes, yes," I thought, as I watched them walking in the garden, and talking over their future plans, with that look of perfect confidence which tells so much; "those hearts are united now—they will soon grow so close that nothing earthly will avail to separate them."
I wiped my spectacles—they had often been dimmed the last day or two—and taking little Herbert's hand, we, too, sallied forth for a confidential tête-à-tête among the daisies.
I went to see Amy when she was once more settled in a house of her own, and, though Mrs. R. sighed and shook her head, every time poor Amy's domestic arrangements were alluded to, I thought every thing about her charming. True, she was waited upon by a tidy housemaid, instead of a tall footman; true, if she required a special dainty to appear upon her table, she was obliged to soil the tips of her own delicate fingers, instead of commanding the service of a professional artiste; true, if she wished to go abroad, she walked, instead of using a carriage. But what then? I could not see that she was a bit the worse for any of these changes. Then, again, she did not now go one night to the opera, another to the theatre, and a third to a ball; but she was so busy in the daytime, and so happy in the evening, in the company of her husband, that she had no desire for such amusements. She no longer presided over great entertainments, but her small, cheerful, pretty house, furnished with good taste and thoroughly arranged for comfort, was always hospitably open to those true friends whom adverse fortune had not rendered shy or indifferent.
"Poor Amy does seem happy," remarked her mother, after we had spent a delightful evening with the young folks, and a party of old friends; "it is very strange, but she does seem happy in spite of her misfortunes."
"Misfortunes!" exclaimed my brother; "call them blessings! Yes, Margaret, I am a convert at last, and ready to confess that women are improvable, and that the loss of wealth may prove an inestimable blessing!"
ANECDOTES OF WORDSWORTH.
It is not our intention to criticise the writings of the great philosophical poet of modern times, but merely to note down a few recollections of the benign old man before they pass away forever with the fleeting shades of memory.
Glorious old man of the mountain, methinks we see him now: his deep-set gray eyes steeped in contemplation; his hand buried in his waistcoat—one leg crossed over the other—reciting in a deep, but somewhat tremulous voice, a passage, either from Milton or himself—the only two poets he honored by his quotations. While the vision stands before us, let us sketch the outward and visible shape, which held a great spirit within its fold.
Tall, and broadly formed, spare of flesh, with a slight stoop, carelessly dressed; a fine oval face; a nose aquiline, though somewhat heavy; bald about the brow, with a few gray hairs straggling over the forehead; fragments of gray whiskers, and a mouth, inclined to be large, but energetically compressed; his eyebrows turned upward when listening, and contracted when talking, with a deep voice, broken by its very emphasis: this is as near a picture as we can give of the "Bard of Rydal." To a certain extent, although in a different sense, what Pope wrote for Gay, applies to Wordsworth: