and rarely, perhaps never, have I seen a person so much interrupted in one hour's space as Coleridge, on this occasion, by the courteous attentions of young and old.

Coleridge led me to a drawing-room, rang the bell for refreshments, and omitted no point of a courteous reception. He told me that there would be a very large dinner party on that day, which, perhaps, might be disagreeable to a perfect stranger; but, if not, he could assure me of a most hospitable welcome from the family. I was too anxious to see him under all aspects, to think of declining this invitation. And these little points of business being settled-Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its volume of waters, and its mighty music-swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive. What I mean by saying that his transitions were "just," is by way of contradistinction to that mode of conversation which courts variety by means of verbal connections. Coleridge, to many people, and often I have heard the complaint, seemed to wander; and he seemed then to wander the most, when in fact his resistance to the wandering instinct was greatest, viz. when the compass, and huge circuit, by which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into remote regions, before they began to revolve. Long before this coming-round commenced, most people had lost him, and naturaйy enough supposed that he had lost

himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dominant theme. Had the conversation been thrown upon paper, it might have been easy to trace the continuity of the links: just as in Bishop Berkeley's Siris, from a pedestal so low and abject, so culinary, as Tar Water, the method of preparing it, and its medicinal effects, the dissertation ascends, like Jacob's ladder, by just gradations, into the Heaven of Heavens, and the thrones of the Trinity. But Heaven is there connected with earth by the Homeric chain of gold; and being subject to steady examination, it is easy to trace the links. Whereas, in conversation, the loss of a single word may cause the whole cohesion to disappear from view. However, I can assert, upon my long and intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic, the most severe, was as inalienable from his modes of thinking, as grammar from his language.

ner.

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

THERE are three readers of Coleridge's Ancient MariThe first is gross enough to fancy all the imagery of the mariner's visions delivered by the poet, for actual facts of experience; which being impossible, the whole pulverizes, for that reader, into a baseless fairy tale.

The second reader is wiser than that; he knows that the imagery is not baseless; it is the imagery of febrile delirium, really seen, but not seen as an external reali

ty. The mariner had caught the pestilential fever, which carried off all his mates; he only had survived — the delirium had vanished; but the visions that had haunted the delirium, remained.

"Yes," says the third reader, "they remained ; naturally they did, being scorched by fever into his brain; but how did they happen to remain on his belief as gospel truths? The delirium had vanished, except as visionary memorials of a sorrow that was cancelled? Why was it that craziness settled upon this mariner's brain, driving him, as if he were a Cain or another Wandering Jew, to "pass like night-from land to land," and, at uncertain intervals, wrenching him until he made rehearsal of his errors, even at the hard price of "holding children from their play and old men from the chimney-corner"? That craziness as the third reader dechipers, rose out of a deeper soil than any bodily affection. It had its root in penitential sorrow. O, bitter is the sorrow to a conscientious heart when too late it discovers the depth of a love that has been trampled under foot! That mariner had slain the creature, that on all the earth, loved him best. In the darkness of his cruel superstition he had done it, to save his human brothers from a fancied inconvenience and yet by that very act of cruelty, he had himself called destruction on their heads. The Nemesis that followed punished him through them— him that wronged, through those that wrongfully he sought to benefit. That spirit who watches over the sanctities of love is a strong angel-is a jealous angel, and this angel it was

"That loved the bird, that loved the man

That shot him with his bow."

He it was that followed the cruel archer into silent and

slumbering seas:

"Nine fathoms deep he had followed him

Through the realms of mist and snow."

This jealous angel it was that pursued the man into noonday darkness, and the vision of dying oceans, into delirium, and finally, (when recovered from disease) into an unsettled mind.

SOUTHEY.

I HAD been directed to ask for Greta Hall, which, with some little difficulty, I found; for it stands out of the town a few hundred yards, upon a little eminence overhanging the river Greta. It was about seven o'clock when I reached Southey's door; for I had stopped to dine at a little public house in Threlkeld, and had walked slowly for the last two hours in the dark. The arrival of a stranger occasioned a little sensation in the house; and, by the time the front door could be opened, I saw Mrs. Coleridge, and a gentleman whom I could not doubt to be Southey, standing, very hospitably, to greet my entrance. Southey was, in person, somewhat taller than Wordsworth, being about five feet eleven in height, or a trifle more, whilst Wordsworth was about five feet ten; and, partly from having slender limbs, partly from being more symmetrically formed about the shoulders than Wordsworth, he struck one as a better and lighter figure, to the effect of which his dress con

tributed; for he wore pretty constantly a short jacket and pantaloons, and had much the air of a Tyrolese mountaineer.

His face I profess myself unable to describe accurately. His hair was black, and yet his complexion was fair; his eyes I believe to be hazel and large; but I will not vouch for that fact: his nose aquiline; and he has a remarkable habit of looking up into the air, as if looking at abstractions. The expression of his face was that of a very acute and an aspiring man. So far, it was even noble, as it conveyed a feeling of a serene and gentle pride, habitually familiar with elevating subjects of contemplation. And yet it was impossible that this pride could have been offensive to anybody, chastened as it was by the most unaffected modesty; and this modesty made evident and prominent by the constant expression of reverence for the great men of the age, (when he happened to esteem them such,) and for all the great patriarchs of our literature. The point in which Southey's manner failed the most in conciliating regard, was, in all which related to the external expressions of friendliness. No man could be more sincerely hospitable no man more essentially disposed to give up even his time (the possession which he most valued) to the service of his friends. But there was an air of reserve and distance about him the reserve of a lofty, self-respecting mind, but, perhaps, a little too freezing

in his treatment of all persons who were not among the corps of his ancient fireside friends. Still, even towards the veriest strangers, it is but justice to notice his extreme courtesy in sacrificing his literary employments for the day, whatever they might be, to the duty