The Wordsworth Society held a successful anniversary meeting at the
Freemasons' Tavern on Wednesday, the chair being taken, first, by Mr. Browning, the poet, and later by Lord Coleridge, who was the president of the year. Several papers were read, of which the most valuable and elaborate was one by Professor Knight, on the various portraits of Words- worth ; while the most amusing was one by the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, on the traditional view of Wordsworth which is still cherished in the country-side of the Lake District,—where Wordsworth evidently never made the kind of impression pro- duced by Hartley Coleridge, who was the pet of the Rydal and and Grasmere " Statesmen." Wordsworth himself was noted rather for the curious way in which he went "bumming " about with his head down, and for his profound interest in the shape of cottage chimneys and the culture of forest trees. Lord Coleridge, in his pleasant speech, related an interesting story of Bishop Thirlwall's last great speech in the House of Lords, —the speech in 1869, against the Tory assertion that the dis- establishment of the Irish Church was to be regarded as an act of sacrilege :—Some one having remarked to him that the speech must have been rather a dangerous effort at his advanced age, he admitted that it was so, but said that he was amply re- paid for it by a solitary walk on Westminster Bridge in the summer dawn after the debate, when he bad the pleasure of repeating to himself Wordsworth's noble sonnet, written on that spot at the same hour. That is the sort of impression which hardly any English poet has made on men's hearts, except Wordsworth. Wordsworth's genuine admirers feel that even a momentary self-identification with his higher moods is more than a compensation, more than an ample reward, for toil and risk, and even suffering.
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