speech and person of the labourer himself, was an artistic way of emphasising it. From this time the poet more frequently wrote in Dorset than in English, finding that it more fitly clothed the simple life which he chose to portray.

CHAPTER III.

LEARNING

HEAVENLY Source of guiltless joy,
Holy friend through good and ill,

When all idle pleasures cloy,

Thou canst hold my spirit still.

Give the idle their delights,

Wealth unblest, and splendour vain ;

Empty days and sleepless nights,
Seeming bliss in real pain.

Take me to some lofty room

Lighted from the western sky,
Where no glare dispels the gloom
Till the golden eve is nigh.

Where the works of searching thought
Chosen books may still impart
What the wise of old have taught,

What has tried the meek of heart.

Books in long-dead tongues, that stirred
Living hearts in other climes;
Telling to my eyes, unheard,
Glorious deeds of olden times.

Books that purify the thought,
Spirits of the learned dead,
Teachers of the little taught,
Comforters when friends are fled.

Learning! source of guiltless joy,
Holy friend through good and ill,
When all idle pleasures cloy,

Thou canst hold my spirit still.

Poems of Rural Life, 1846.

41

THE TEACHER.

1835-1849.

IN the beginning of the year 1835, William Barnes began to think of change, feeling that a wider sphere would be beneficial to his school, One of his note-books says, "Mere was out of the way for pupils, and I always yearned for Dorset and Dorchester; and as I had strengthened my teaching power, and was told by friends at Dorchester that there was then an opening for a boarding school, I put my hopes of after life in work at that place, to which I returned in 1835, and was happy and thankful with an income on which I brought up my children."

As soon as the summer holidays began in June, several days were occupied in packing furniture, settling accounts, and bidding friends farewell. The two sonnets, "A Garden," and "To a Garden-on Leaving it," were both written in this month; the latter is a tender expression of his regret on leaving

1 Sonnets xxi. and xxii, in Poems, partly of Rural Life, 1846.

Chantry House, where such happy days had been spent.

Sweet garden! peaceful spot! no more in thee
Shall I e'er while away the sunny hour.
Farewell each blooming shrub and lofty tree;
Farewell the mossy path and nodding flow'r ;
I shall not hear again from yonder bow'r
The song of birds or humming of the bee,
Nor listen to the waterfall, nor see

The clouds float on behind the lofty tow'r.

No more at breezy eve or dewy morn

My gliding scythe shall shear thy mossy green;
My busy hands shall never more adorn,

My eyes no more may see this peaceful scene.
But still, sweet spot, wherever I

may be,

My love-led soul will wander back to thee.

The Italian diary of June 26th, sighs "Andammo da Mere a Dorchester, Dio ci benedica," and in his "Memoranda for his Life" he speaks of this change as follows:

"June 26th, 1835. We left Chantry House and Mere, and came to Dorchester, to settle in a house which we had taken in Durngate Street.

"Boys came in very hopefully, and we had soon a fair and fast-filling school, though we did not feel the happiness of the change in the strait-pent house instead of the old Chantry House with its fine open. garden.

"The little I had learnt of Hindustani or Persian now became handy, as one of my first pupils was Mr. C. V. Cox now General Cox, the son of the Rev. C. Cox