can neither perceive in what way they must needs be so mischievous as they are said to be, nor how their abolition will certainly lead to all those great national benefits that some persons appear to anticipate; but stronger heads and sterner wills than mine will determine the issue. I only wish the conflict was well over." He had, a few days previously, rated Mr. Holland for not going to hear Mr. Cobden speak at the Cutler's Hall. "I should have gone to hear myself," said the poet, "if I could have been invisible, or allowed to make one of the crowd; but I did not like to encounter the risk of being invited to take a seat on the platform."

In the autumn of 1846, with Miss Gales, he projected a jaunt to Harrogate.

"I am glad you are going," said a friend; "these autumn days are so fine.”

"Aye," answered the poet, in a tone of sadness, "they may be so to young men, who talk of those pensive sensations which old men feel."

"It was a kind of triumph once," is his monody,

"to see

"All nature die, and find myself at ease,

In youth, that seemed an immortality:
But I am changed now, and feel with trees
A brotherhood, and in their obsequies
Think of my own.'

From Harrogate, Sept. 18th, 1846, he writes to his friend, John Holland, as follows:

"I ought to have written to you sooner, though there being no high pressure upon my conscience, I have as usual deferred the obligation to the last hour. Gales and I arrived here safely on Tuesday evening. Mr.

Miss

LETTER TO JOHN HOLLAND.

361

Blackwell met us on our alighting at the entrance of this multifarious collection of all manner of human dwellings, where there are fewer homes than houses; the latter, in bulk and accommodations, being built and furnished for pilgrims and sojourners rather than for the resident inhabitants. Yet at this season so overflowing is the tide of population, that on our arrival, had not our friend Mr. B. been warned of our coming, we might, indeed, have found room enough on High Harrogate Common to spread our garments on the green sward, and rested on our mother's lap, and under the infinity of space, where all the host of heaven sleep by day and watch by night; for no narrower bed or lower roof might have been accessible to afford us shelter.

"Our journey was pleasant and easy; and though I, of course, had forecast in my melancholy and ever-misgiving mind all manner of petty incidents and vexations to cross us by the way, laying out of the question the possible possibilities of explosions, crashes, dangers, and deaths, that imperil travellers by railway, we might, undisturbed, have slept and dreamt most marvellously of these horrors, without one hair-breadth 'scape, between The Mount and Cornwall House, where we are now quartered, and which ought to be called 'The Mount' of Harrogate, being on the highest point yet built upon, and overlooking all below, at a safe distance from the smoke, the smells, the bustle, and all the goings on' (Coleridge's phrase) of human life in this strange place. Strange, surely, it is, where more is seen, and heard, and done, and thought, and said, and suffered, and all the rest of sublunary things- more of these occur and pass in the three months of which a Harrogate year consists than in the remaining nine in common places where everything is common-place from the first of January

to the last of December. We are very comfort ably lodged under the same roof with Mr. Blackwell's family, having our separate establishments, but being very good neighbors. Miss Gales, with her kind regards, says, you shall be very welcome if you will visit us here, and we will make as much of you as we can. Don't forget to call at The Mount; and any letters worth sending, forward as soon as you can. I have neither room nor time to say Farewell, as witness the word itself."

"You mention honey," he replies to a female friend, respecting a promised gift, "and very considerately offer to send me some if I like it, and on a certain condition. I do like it, and consent to the condition, if not to be bound by the letter, yet to keep it according to the spirit. What is sweeter than honey?' was one of the points of Samson's riddle. One of the Apocryphal writers (Eccles. xi. 3) says, beautifully, "The bee is little among such as fly; but her fruit is the chief of sweet things.' On higher and holier authority, however, I find that there is indeed something on earth, even sweeter than the fruit' of the bee, and no wonder, for it came down from heaven, and is yet more delicious than that'angels' food,' the manna that was sent to the children of Israel in the wilderness. The inspired Psalmist says, Ps. xix. see verses 9, 10, and Ps. cxix. v. 103; and you know that these things are so, for you 'have tasted the good word of God;' and may you ever live thereby! For this, may I too hunger and thirst, that my soul may live by it through both worlds; for it is the seed of eternal life when sown and quickened in a prepared heart. I have only to add, in answer to your kind enquiries, that new maladies, almost necessarily incurable in old bodies, multiply upon me with years; and I must be thankful for comparative exemption from very painful ones.

SONNET FROM HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 363

An internal symptom of morbid disease, without anything to be called suffering, is my latest warning of a decaying tabernacle."

The friends returned from their visit to Harrogate, improved in health and spirits.

The first business we find him attending to is the disposal of a hundred pounds, given him by Mr. Roberts for the Moravian Brethren, fifty of which he bestowed upon their missions, and fifty for their ministers' fund. This gentleman had already made him his almoner to the amount of six or seven hundred pounds for similar purposes at various times tributes of personal friendship, as well as proofs of Christian liberality.

A few days afterwards, a stranger called upon the poet, who playfully presented the following epistle of introduc tion from his friend :

"To the Poet James Montgomery. "Poets there are, whom I am well content Only to see in mirror of their verse, Feeling their very presence might disperse The glorious vision which their lines present; But never could my shaping wit invent

An image worthy of a Christian bard

Such as thou art - but ever would discard

Conceit too earthy and irreverent

To be thy likeness.

Therefore I regret

The fate, or fault, or whatsoe'er it be,
Hath made thy holy lineament as yet
A vague imagination unto me.

I more should love and better understand

Thy verse, could I but hold thee by the hand.

"HARTLEY COLERIDGE."

CHAPTER XIX.

66

WILBERFORCE- HOWITT'S HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE POETS VISIT TO WATH REMINISCENCES OF YOUTH — ROSCOE CLUB DEATH OF FRIENDS.

THE clergy of Sheffield having had a private meeting to consider whether anything should be done to counteract the spread of popery, concluded not to make a public demonstration, but to hinder the growth of error by a more diligent sowing of the truth.

"They are right," said Montgomery; "they seem to have acted on the plan of the old penknife cutler, who determined that he would go to bed for a day, in order to devise new patterns; but his faculty of invention proving wholly unproductive, he got up, resolved to do nothing; saying, he thought the old patterns were, after all, the best!" "Have you read the Rev. Henry Wilberforce's discourse on Christian unity?" asked a friend.

"I have: the Protestant clergyman is as infallible, in his own opinion, as the Pope himself, and far less reasonable: he assumes, indeed, without one tittle of evidence, or even of argument, that his church is THE CHURCH; and then, with as much dogmatical gravity as the Roman pontiff could arrogate, he declares that beyond the pale of his communion there is no salvation: with equal bigotry does the vicar of East Farleigh pronounce, not only that 'all