or many of the villages in the neighbourhood of Oxford. The soil is clayey and chalky-the streams far from crystal —the hills bare and shapeless—the trees not venerable—the town itself irregular, which is its only beauty. There were, however, some wildish, half-common fields, wherein the hedgerows had returned to a state of nature, with old remains of hawthorn bowers and clumps of shady trees, where I used to dream my mornings away right pleasantly. Then there were meadows and bean-fields, wealthy-looking farms, and comfortable mansions; Bremhill and Bowood, and others of less note besides. And there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people, in whose company I always thought S. T. C. more than usually pleasant. And then there were for a time strolling players, for whom, and indeed for all itinerants, I have a great liking. The first half of that long vacation was the happiest of my life, next to my two visits to Nether Hall, and my sojourning at Ellery, and my lake excursions with poor Burton, and a few weeks of dear delusion at the close of 1822. I was at Calne in the close of Waterloo year. But Waterloo was not to me what the victories of 1814 had been. Young as I was, I saw there was no hope for freedom or happiness in the restoration, and I could never bear the idea of England being beaten. I was less bitter against Boney on his return from Elba than on any of his former vagaries. I know not whether I should like to visit Calne again. All I knew or loved must be gone, and I myself far other or worse. But there is no place where sad recollections await me not.”

His other long vacations were passed at Highgate or Keswick. It was during the last of these, and at Greta Hall, that he became acquainted with Chauncey Hare Townshend, then on a visit with Mr. Southey. To this gentleman, whose cultivated talent and graceful genius qualified

him to appreciate the character and estimate the powers of his eccentric friend, I am indebted for some delightful reminiscences, principally referring to this period of my brother's life. From these it will appear that previous to taking had become a diligent student.

his degree he

"It was, I think, in the summer of the year 1818, that I first saw your brother Hartley, during a visit that I was paying to Mr. Southey at Greta Hall. I cannot easily convey to you the impression of interest which he made on my mind at that time. There was something so wonderfully original in his method of expressing himself, that on me, then a young man, and only cognisant externally of the prose of life, his sayings, all stamped with the impress of poetry, produced an effect analogous to that which the mountains of Cumberland, and the scenery of the North, were working on my southern-born eye and imagination.

"It was the custom of Hartley at that time to study the whole day, and only towards the dusk of the evening to come forth for needful exercise and recreation. My attention was at first aroused by seeing from my window a figure flitting about amongst the trees and shrubs of the garden with quick and agitated motion. This was Hartley, who, in the ardour of preparing for his college examination, did not even take his meals with the family; but snatched a hasty morsel in his own apartment, and only, as I have said, sought the free air when the fading daylight no longer permitted him to see his books. Having found out who he was, that so mysteriously flitted about the garden, I was determined to lose no time in making his acquaintance; and through the instrumentality of Mrs. Coleridge, I paid Hartley a visit to what he called his den. This was a room afterwards converted by Mr. Southey into a supplementary library, but then appropriated as a study to Hartley, and presenting a

most picturesque and student-like disorder of scattered pamphlets and open folios. Here I was received by Hartley with much urbanity and friendliness, and from that time we were a good deal together. Years have swept from my mind the particulars of our various conversations, yet the general impression on my memory of eloquence and beauty will never pass away. We skimmed the fields of literature together; together we explored the fair and bright regions of metaphysics. Politics nearly excepted, we ran over every subject of human thought and inquiry, Hartley throwing upon all the light, I might say splendour, of his own fine intelligence. Religion was our frequent theme, and in this I had occasion to admire the profound knowledge of Hartley; the perfect view he had of free salvation by the only merits of Christ, and the large liberality of his sentiments.

"Added to all this was a fineness of perception; a keenness of feeling which continually made me feel how exactly Mr. Wordsworth must have delineated Hartley, years before, in the period of early childhood. I allude to the lines 'To, H. C., six years old,' beginning

'O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought

The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol.'

Perhaps something of the sadder feeling with which our great philosophical poet then regarded the imaginative child accompanied the delight which Hartley's conversation then gave me. One could not help thinking-'Here are faculties too fine for the "unkindly shocks" of every-day life.' And Hartley, though far from betraying anything sickly in his mental texture, he was force itself both in thought and expression-had his moments of despondency, such as perhaps the finest and even the most energetic organisations cannot fail occasionally to have.

"One especial day when this spirit was manifested, comes out to me from the indistincter mass of recollections with

peculiar vividness. It was on a Sunday, almost the only day on which Hartley was to be tempted from his studies, when we took our way at an early hour towards a church in St. John's Vale, with the intention of there attending divine service. The gleaming weather was even better calculated for the embellishment of the mountains than unbroken sunshine would have been. There had been rain in the night, and a few clouds still hung upon the mountain summits like white crowns. Wordsworth's lines were musically repeated, as all poetry was, by Hartley :—

'All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;

The grass is bright with raindrops;-on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth.'

And so on throughout a great part of that fine poem, entitled 'Resolution and Independence,' (I must remark, by the way, that Hartley's verbal memory was astonishing,) till he had repeated the stanza,—

'But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might

Of joy in minds that can no further go,

As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low;
To me that morning did it happen so

And fears and fancies thick upon me came;

Dim sadness-and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could

name.'

Hartley here stopped, and there was a pause of silencebroken by his saying in somewhat of an altered and lower tone-'I cannot tell you how exactly this and other expressions in this grand poem of Wordsworth's hit my mood at certain times so exclusively as almost to render me unobservant of its corrective and higher tendencies.

"The fear that kills;

And hope that is unwilling to be fed,—'

these have I known-I have even heard a voice, yes, not like a creation of the fancy, but an audible and sensuous voice forboding evil to me.'

"I tried to combat the idea; but at that moment the idea was predominant, and was not to be combated. Hartley shook his head in silence. His brow was contracted. But in a mind like his despondent thoughts were but passing guests, and could find no permanent resting-place. Other moods of his have shown him to me hopeful, buoyant, always energetic; and even on the occasion I refer to, the dejection was but short-lived. However, he said no more at that moment, and soon after we reached the quiet humble church so beautifully situated on the projecting ledge of an elevated mountain swell. Before we entered the house of God we could not help pausing, as we stood before the quaint old wooden porch, to take one look at the landscape below us. Fit preparation for hearing God's Gospel was such a revelation of creative power and beauty. A small river, winding over the brown moor beneath, was distinctly shown in all its wanderings by its marvellous reflection of the blue heaven. The fine mountain commonly called Saddleback, more poetically Blen Cathra, was before us, closing up the vista of the vale with its grand Olympian form. Round it were dark and wreathing clouds, through which its summit pierced in light so intense that irresistibly it presented to my mind an image of Mount Sinai when the Lord descended upon it in fire.' Almost could I have figured to myself Moses descending from out the darkness, bearing with him the 'two tables of stone,' while the whole Jewish nation, standing at the nether part of the mount,' awaited him in trembling expectation.

"As we looked on this grand scenery, I could see Hartley's face grow lighter; and after we were seated in the church itself, where windows freely open admitted glimpses of sky and mountain, together with the elastic mountain breeze, his countenance entirely regained its accustomed cheerfulness. When, too, after the service, we, at the clergyman's