HAWKSTEAD SCHOOL. 77 



soil and geographical position ; these most 

 commonly determining the prevailing occu- 

 pations, and the occupations having their 

 influence in the formation of habits and modes 

 of thought. Not an imaginative people, any 

 more than the Danes, those' of this district are 

 a calculating people. I was assured hy an 

 eminent man, a native, himself a distinguished 

 mathematician and astronomer, and who had 

 received his school education in one of the 

 villages of the district, Hawkshead, that that 

 school had sent to Cambridge in his recol- 

 lection, then extending to fifty years, no fewer 

 than twelve senior wranglers. 



AMICUS. When we visited that neat and 

 pretty village the other day, you pointed out 

 the school-room ; you pointed out the Dame's 

 house where our great Poet nestled when a 

 boy, and the yew tree by the road side, an 

 early subject of his muse, of those "lines," as 

 they are called, which contain the germ of his 

 after writings, and are almost equal to anything 

 he ever wrote, but you said nothing of the glories 

 of the school. 



PISCATOR. Alas ! they are passed away. A 

 school, which, when at its height, little more 



