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desirable, a line to me will procure a locum tenens at any time. Verbum sat. But you used to complain of our Latin. I am much obliged to you for your Sedbergh news; much of which deeply interested me, particularly the Miss U- -'s legacies. Give my, whatever is proper-you know I am a great stickler for propriety in these matters, though in my heart I hate it to those young ladies when you see them; at least, you may give my love to little Martha, and my grateful remembrances to Mr. U-——— I am afraid I fell sadly in the Miss U's estimation for my heretical opinions about little Sunday-school girls picking flowers on the Sabbath. I certainly had better have held my tongue. Often and often have I resolved never to utter a syllable which can by any possibility provoke a religious or political controversy, for I know that such verbal combats must be both irritating and unedifying; but somehow or other I cannot tolerate dogmas which seem to derogate from the holiest attribute of the Most High. Yet I honour those who boldly and consistently maintain their convictions, however contrary to mine. Ambleside is at this moment a house divided against itself respecting the merits of Mr. Faber, a young clergyman who preached his maiden sermon in Mr. Dawe's pulpit a few Sundays ago, and has continued to occupy it ever since. He is high Church to the very verge of Romanism. I have heard him but once: he is evidently a man of genius; he has the pale face, wild eye, and self-oblivious manner which evinces sincere enthusiasm. He is not the man to fling brimstone at the heads of an unoffending congregation, and then go and dine with the worst sinner that will give him a good feed. Of his sincerity there can be no doubt-of his Christian sanity I have my suspicions. At all events he has put the sincerity of his admirers to an experimentum crucis.

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"But all this is not news, at least not interesting news, to you. From doctrine to dancing may seem a desperate leap, yet I must tell you there was a very grand ball last week at Mr. ; I, who am not invited to G

except when

there is a call of the house, had the honour of a note on that occasion. As gents were superabundant, and fancy waistcoats predominant, I only danced once. I hate to prevent a poor girl getting a partner who will do her credit; for I believe it is not the man whom they best like, but the man whose attentions will give the most éclat, that girls ettle at, and for this righteous end, now that the science of the neckcloth is involved in sable silk, a gentleman's waistcoat and stockings are much more available than his brains. I wish you could have seen E- C; not that he danced, but his loins were girded with a flower-garden which would have confounded Hervey himself. I am glad to see that the young ladies have returned to white-the appropriate vesture of the lilies that toil not. Some looked so lovely that I had reason to be joyful that I shall be forty-one next Monday. If you think on to drink my health, so be it."

"To Mrs. Green, Sedbergh."

About this time his excellent hostess, Mrs. Fleming, dying, some anxiety was entertained about his future residence. He had not, however, to change his abode. The house was taken by a young farmer and his wife, with whom, first at Grasmere, and afterwards at the Nab Cottage, on the banks of Rydal Water, he spent the remainder of his days. I cannot record the names of William and Eleanor Richardson without emotion, remem

* "The aged woman" alluded to in the poem of the two Dinahs

"Whose goodness often seen, but ofter felt
To common duties gave a grace uncommon."

Vol. ii. p. 150.

bering the respectful solicitude with which they watched over him for the twelve years that he passed under their roof, and the affectionate devotion with which they tended upon him during his last sickness.

A few paragraphs may now bring my narrative to a close, so far as it is intended to be a record of events. Day followed day, and week followed week, during these twelve years in even succession, bringing with them the same business, if business it might be called, and the same recreation. Let one description serve for all.

The cottage in which he lived, and with which my brother's name will, I suppose, long be associated, has already attracted the notice of visitors, as having been the abode of Hartley Coleridge. One of these, to me unknown, has recorded his impressions in a not unkindly spirit. He says, that "after the cheerfulness of The Mount, the residence of William Wordsworth, which lies high above it, at the distance of a few furlongs, it looks lonely and desolate." Lonely it is; but not, to my feelings, "desolate." It stands by itself on the road-side, between Ambleside and Grasmere, and at nearly an equal distance between the two, having the little lake of Rydal, with its two woody islets in front, at the distance of a stone's throw from

the door;-a simple rustic dwelling, very low, and somewhat darkened by the mass of ivy which has got a footing on the old bird-nest chimney, with a little cottage-garden on one side, and a small farmyard on the other. A sloping meadow behind leads to the many-coloured side of Nab Scar, which rises steep and, in part, precipitous, through a skirt of trees, with which it is slightly feathered to a considerable height. On the opposite side of the lake runs the range of Loughrigg, greeting the eye with a rich variety of hue and outline, light and shade. On the whole, I take the character of the place to be that of cheerful retirement without seclusion, well fitted for the abiding-place of a man at once contemplative and social, who, living much alone, and in communion with nature, yet needed ready access to the haunts of men—and such was my brother.

It was surely a happy, and, so to speak, a suitable disposition of events-I would not lightly use the word Providential-which brought my brother to spend his latter days, as it were, under the shadow and at the foot of that great poet, his father's friend, --so pronounced in words of immortal fame,-with whom his own infancy and boyhood had been so closely and so affectionately linked. As a poet, he would have accounted this an honourable place, and would have claimed no higher. To this, of

all his contemporaries, he was every way best entitled. Living in such neighbourhood together, and with no greater distance of affection, they were not far divided in their deaths, and now they lie all but side by side.

His time was spent much as it had been when he was a boy, out of doors in lonely reverie, in intercourse with his many friends, or at his desk; for though he read much, it was commonly with the pen in his hand.

Let us see him at home-but indeed his lodging was to him but one of many homes;—his household gods followed him to many a hearth, yet returned with him to their own sanctuary. His friends will not soon forget the little chamber— the walls remain, but the room, as they remember it, is among the things that were-in which he spent so many hours, alone with his books, and with his thoughts, and in which he received his visitors. It is thus described by an intelligent observer, for whom it had a peculiar interest :—

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"Most days the window blind was down, so that when you were in the room you had a light much like a shade.' Hartley was seldom in in summer or fine weather; it was only on dark cold days, or in the evening, that he was at home, and the fire was lit. Then the little chamber looked snug and cosy. One side was occupied by something which resembled a pigeon-box rather than a book-case: then there was a door covered with red baize, that looked like the entrance to a

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