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summer vacation of 1788, after visiting Esthwaite, the scene of his 
schoolboy days, and other parts of the Lake District, he during 
the latter part of the vacation visited Penrith. His biographer 
thus alludes to this visit:—‘‘ His mother’s relatives resided at 
Penrith, on the southern frontier of Cumberland. Here he was 
restored to the society of his sister, and of one who was one day 
to be nearer to him than a sister (Mary Hutchinson). He enjoyed 
with them those delightful scenes by which Penrith is surrounded. 
He mounted the Border Beacon on the north-east of the town; 
and on that eminence, now (1851) overgrown with fir trees which 
intercept the view, but which was then free and open and displayed 
a glorious panorama, he beheld the wide plain stretched far and 
near below, closed by the dark hills of Ullswater on the west and 
by the dim ridges of Scotland on the north.” 
Wordsworth’s visit thus so eloquently described must have been 
just before his uncle’s marriage, the vacation ending on October 
ist, and the marriage being on the 17th. There is no record of 
Wordsworth again visiting Penrith until 1794, when he was there 
for some months attending to his friend Raisley Calvert, who, as 
an invalid, had come to Penrith. On that occasion Wordsworth 
lodged with Mrs. Sowerby, at the Robin Hood Inn, the premises 
now occupied by Mr. Cockbain, in King-street. Raisley Calvert 
died at Penrith, but was not buried there. After his death it was 
found he had by his will left Wordsworth the sum of 4g00, which 
little fortune enabled him to devote himself to a literary life 
without the dread of poverty. Mary Hutchinson, the poet’s 
future wife, lost her mother in 1783; her brother William died 
the year following, and her father the year after that. Their 
tombstone, a large flat, blue slab, level with the ground, may be 
seen near the north-west corner of the church tower, in a line with 
the raised tomb of the Monkhouses, of which family Mrs. Hutch- 
inson was a member. After the death of her parents, Mary 
Hutchinson with her brother and sisters left Penrith for Sockburn, 
in Durham, and afterwards went into Yorkshire, whither in 1802, 
Wordsworth, aided and abetted by Dorothy, his loved and indis- 
pensable sister, went to claim Mary as his wife. Wordsworth and 
