PREFATORY NOTE
xv
her Journal of this Continental Tour, and she replied to him, 23rd May 1824:—
". . . Your advice respecting my Continental Journal is, I am sure, very good, provided it were worth while to make a book of it, i.e. provided I could do so, and provided it were my wish; but it is not. 'Far better,' I say, 'make another tour, and write the Journal on a different plan!' In recopying it, I should, as you advise, omit considerable portions of the description. . . . But, observe, my object is not to make a book, but to leave to my niece a neatly-penned memorial of those few interesting months of our lives. . . ."
X
In 1822, Dorothy Wordsworth went with Joanna Hutchinson to Scotland, for change of air and scene. She wrote of this journey:—
"I had for years promised Joanna to go with her to Edinburgh—that was her object; but we planned a little tour, up the Forth to Stirling, thence by track-boat to Glasgow; from Dumbarton to Rob Roy's cave by steam; stopping at Tarbet; thence in a cart to Inverary; back again to Glasgow, down Loch Fyne, and up the Clyde; thence on the coach to Lanark; and from Lanark to Moffat in a cart. There we stopped two days, my companion being an invalid; and she fancied the waters might cure her, but a bathing-place which nobody frequents is never in order; and we were glad to leave Moffat, crossing the wild country again in a cart, to the banks of the river Esk. We returned to Edinburgh for the sake of warm baths. We were three weeks in lodgings at Edinburgh. Joanna had much of that sort of pleasure which one has in first seeing a foreign country; and in our travels, whether on the outside of a coach, on the deck of a steamboat, or in whatever
