he had no desire to excel in his examination, he spent his last vacation among the Alps, and his last week in reading "Clarissa Harlowe."
His vacations, to which he alludes in the "Prelude," he generally spent in wandering among the scenes of his earlier days. His first vacation he returned to Esthwaite. In his last he took a pedestrian tour in France, accompanied by a friend and brother collegian. They left on the 13th of July, 1790, one day before the King swore that he would observe the new constitution. They crossed the Alps, wandered through Switzerland, purchased a boat at Basle, and floated down the Rhine to Cologne, and then returned by Calais, landing in England, in October. How his mind was affected by what he saw on his tour, may be judged from one or two brief extracts from a letter to his sister. "My spirits," he writes, "have been kept in a perpetual hurry of delight, by the almost uninterrupted succession of sublime and beautiful objects which have passed before my eyes during the course of the last month." As a specimen of scene painting, the following description must be quoted. Speaking of the Lake Como, he says: " It is narrow, and the shadows of the mountains were early thrown across it. It was beautiful to watch them travelling up the side of the hills—for several hours to remark one half of a village covered with shade, and the other bright with the strongest sunshine. It was with regret that we passed every turn of this charming path, where every new picture was purchased by the loss of another which we should never have been tired of gazing upon. The shores of the lake consist of steeps covered with large sweeping woods of chestnut, spotted with villages; some clinging from the summits of the advancing rocks, and others hiding themselves within their recesses. Nor was the surface of the lake less interesting than its shores; half of it glowing with the richest green and gold, the
