In the following year, 1823, Wordsworth and his wife left Lee Priory,
"for a little tour in Flanders and Holland," as he phrased it in a
letter to John Kenyon. He wrote 16th May:--
"We shall go to Dover, with a view to embark for Ostend to-morrow,
unless detained by similar obstacles. From Ostend we mean to go to
Ghent, to Antwerp, Breda, Utrecht, Amsterdam--to Rotterdam by
Haarlem, the Hague, and Leyden--thence to Antwerp by another route,
and perhaps shall return by Mechlin, Brussels, Lille, and Ypres to
Calais--or direct to Ostend as we came. We hope to be landed in
England within a month. We shall hurry through London homewards,
where we are naturally anxious already to be, having left Rydal
Mount so far back as February...."
The extracts taken from Mary Wordsworth's Journal show how far they
conformed to, and how far they departed from, their original plan of
travel. In them will be found the same directness and simplicity, the
same vividness of touch, as are seen in her Journal of the longer tour
taken in 1820.