Lake Country Sketches

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. But if a certain love of the humorous induced me to enter into or follow up con versations with the few still living among the peasants who were in the habit of seeing Wordsworth in the flesh, there was also a genuine wish to endeavour to find out how far the race of Westmoreland and Cumber land farm-folk the ''matthews'' and the ''michaels'' of the poet as described by him — were real or fancy pictures, or how far the Characters of the dalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by tourist influences during the thirty-two years that have passed since the aged poet was laid to rest.