Among those who have permanently elevated and enriched our English literature during the present century, none is entitled to a more honoured place than is William Wordsworth, our greatest laureate; and none of the influences which entered into his life, and served to build up his great career, and to complete his great work, can fail to be of interest. And of all the world's benefactors of all who in any of the primary departments, have achieved most signal distinction, has none been more indebted to the aid of another, than was Wordsworth to the devoted aid and the constraining and softening power of his sister. // In many respects there is a marked similarity between the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb and those of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The burden of the story of each is that of a brother's and sister's love. But there is also a great difference. While one is the tale of an elder sister's affection, and of the brother's self-sacrifice for the tender care of her during periods of nature's saddest affliction, the other tells how a younger sister consecrated her life to her brother's greatest good, relinquishing for herself everything outside him in such a way that she became absorbed in his own existence. But as a self-sacrificing love always brings its own reward, the poet's sister attained hers. She is for all time identified and associated with her brother, who, with a grateful love, has "crowned her for immortality." >As Mr. Paxton Hood remarks: "Not Laura with Petrarch, nor Beatrice with Dante, nor the fair Geraldine with Surrey, are more really connected than is Wordsworth with his sister Dorothy." D CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. OROTHY WORDSWORTH was the only daughter and third child of John and Anne Wordsworth. She was born on Christmas Day, 1771, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, being a year and nine months younger than her famous brother, the poet. John Wordsworth, the father, was an attorney-at-law, who had attained considerable success in his profession, being the solicitor of the then Earl of Lonsdale, in an old manor-house belonging to whose family he resided. Miss Wordsworth's mother was, on the maternal side, descended from an old and distinguished family, being the only daughter of William Cookson, of Penrith, who had married Dorothy Crackenthorp, whose family, we are informed, had, since the early part of the fourteenth century, resided at Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland. The Wordsworths themselves traced their descent from a Yorkshire family of that name who had settled in the county about the time of the Norman Conquest. Dorothy had the misfortune to lose her excellent mother when she was a little more than six years old. After this great loss her father's health declined, and she was left an orphan at the early age of twelve. The sources of information concerning her childhood are very meagre. We cannot doubt that for the qualities of mind and heart which distinguished her she was, in common with the other members of her family-her four brothers, who all won for themselves successful careers-indebted to her parenthood, and especially to her mother, of whom the poet says:— "She was the heart And hinge of all our learning and our loves." The beauty and gentleness of disposition by which, in after years, Dorothy Wordsworth developed into such a perfect woman were not absent in her early childhood. Although we know so little, we have abundant testimony that as a child she was fittingly named Dorotheathe gift of God-and that then her life of ministry to her poet-brother began. We can well imagine how the little dark-eyed brunette, sparkling and impulsive damsel as she was, and the only girl in the family, became the darling of the circle. In after years, when her favourite and famous brother had entered on the career which she helped so much to stimulate and to perfect, we find in his poems many allusions to her, as well in her prattling childhood as in her mature years. The sight of a butterfly calls to the poet's mind the pleasures of the early home, the time when he and his little playmate together chased the butterfly." The kindness of her child heart is told in a few expressive words. says: "A very hunter did I rush Upon the prey;—with leaps and springs I followed on from brake to bush ; The dust from off its wings." He The sight of a sparrow's nest, many years after, also served to bring to the poet's remembrance his father's home and his sister's love. The "bright blue eggs appeared to him "a vision of delight." In them he saw another sparrow's nest, in the years gone by daily visited n company with his little sister. "Behold, within that leafy shade, Those bright blue eggs together laid! I started, seeming to espy The home and sheltered bed, The Sparrow's dwelling, which, hard by Together visited: She looked at it and seemed to fear it, A little Prattler among men. Was with me when a boy : She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And love, and thought, and joy." It is to her early thoughtfulness that the poet alludes in another poem having reference to the same period. In this poem he represents his sister and her young play-fellows gathering spring flowers, and thus records her prudent "Foresight": "Here are daisies, take your fill; Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower: Make your bed or make your bower; God has given a kindlier power You and Charles and I will walk Lurking berries, ripe and red, 'Then will hang on every stalk, Each within the leafy bower; And for that promise spare the flower!" An incident showing the tender sensibility of her nature when a child is also deserving of special men; tion. In a note to the "Second Evening Voluntary," Wordsworth says"My sister, when she first heard the voice of the sea from this point (the high ground on the coast of Cumberland overlooking Whitehaven and the sea beyond it) and beheld the sea spread before her, burst into tears. Our family then lived at Cockermouth, and this fact was often mentioned among us as indicating the sensibility for which she was so remarkable." The death of their mother was, however, the signal for separation. Her brother William was sent to school at Hawkshead, in North Lancashire, and Dorothy went |