he was dead. There is a strange incident connected with his death, which
may be worth something to those who take an interest in what is now
called "Psychical Research." At the same hour his married daughter was
sitting in a room forty miles away with her little boy, a child just old
enough to talk, and the child stared with intense interest at an empty
chair. His mother asked what attracted his attention, and the child
said, "Don't you see, mamma, the old gentleman who is sitting in that
chair?" I am careful not to add details, as my own imagination might
unconsciously amplify them, but my impression is that the child was
asked to describe the vision more minutely, and that his description
exactly accorded with his grandfather's usual appearance.

The old gentleman preserved the costume and manners of the eighteenth
century, wearing his pig-tail, breeches, and shoe-buckles. He took life
too easily for any intellectual achievements, but he had a great liking
for the French language, and wrote a very original French grammar, which
he had curiously printed in synoptic sheets, at his private expense,
though it was never completed or published. I have sometimes thought it
possible that my own aptitude and affinity for that language may have
been inherited from him, and that his labors may in a manner have
overcome many difficulties for me by the wonderful process of
transmission. He never lived in France, and I believe he never visited
the country, his French conversations being chiefly held with a
good-natured Roman Catholic chaplain at Towneley Hall. My grandfather's
most extensive travels were in Portugal, lasting six months, and with
regard to that journey I remember two painful incidents. His travelling
companion, a younger brother, died abroad, in consequence of having
slept in a damp bed. The other incident is vexatious rather than
tragical, and yet Wordsworth would have seen tragedy in it also. During
his absence from home, my grandfather had confided the care of his