especially on the Surrey side, I have explored much; but not nearly so much as I could wish. It is very beautiful, and some of the scenes at the junction of the heath country with the rich valley of the Thames are very striking. Or if I do not venture so far from home, I have always a resource at hand in the bank of the river up to Staines; which, though it be perfectly flat, has yet a great charm from its entire loneliness, there being not a house anywhere near it; and the river here has none of that stir of boats and barges upon it, which makes it in many places as public as the high road. Of what is going on in the world, or anywhere indeed out of Laleham, I know little or nothing. I can get no letters from Oxford, the common complaint I think of all who leave it; and if Penrose did not bring us sometimes a little news from Eton, and Hull from London, I should really, when the holidays begin, find myself six months behind the rest of the world. . . .

Don Juan has been with me for some weeks, but I am determined not to read it, for I was so annoyed by some specimens that I saw in glancing over the leaves, that I will not worry myself with any more of it. I have read enough of the debates since parliament has met to make me marvel at the nonsense talked on both sides, though I am afraid the opposition have the palm out and out. The folly or the mischievous obstinacy with which they persist in palliating the excesses of the Jacobins is really scandalous, though I own I do not wish to see Carlton House trimming up the constitution as if it were an hussar's uniform. I feel, however, growing less and less

political.

you

VI. TO REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Fled borough, January 3rd, 1820.

I conclude that Tucker is with you, so I will begin by sending you both my heartiest wishes for a happy new year; and for and yours, that you may long go on as you have begun, and enjoy every succeeding New Year's Day better and better, and have more solid grounds for the enjoyment of it: and for Tucker, that he may taste equal happiness even if it should not be precisely in the same way. Well, here we are, almost at the extremities of the kingdom; Tucker and you at Sidmouth, and Trevenen and I at Fledborough. We are snowed up all round, and shall be drowned with the flood when it begins to thaw; and as for cold, at

nine A.M. on Saturday the thermometer stood at 0. Alas! for my fingers. Good night "to both on ye," as the poor crazy man used to say in Oxford. . I saw Coleridge when I passed through town on the 22nd, and also his little girl, one of the nicest little children I ever saw. It would have formed a strange contrast with past times, to have seen us standing together in his drawing-room, he nursing the baby in his arms, and dangling it very skilfully, and the little animal in high spirits playing with my hair and clawing me, and laughing very amusingly.

I found them all very well, and quite alone; and since that time I have not stirred beyond these parishes, and except on Sundays have hardly gone further than the garden and the great meadows on the Trent banks. These vast meadows were flooded and frozen before the snow came, and being now covered with snow, afford a very exact picture of those snowy regions which Thalaba passed over on his way to consult the great Simorg at Kaf. I never before saw so uninterrupted and level a space covered with snow, and the effect of it, when the sun is playing over it, is something remarkably beautiful. The river, too, as I saw it in the intense frost of Saturday morning, was uncommonly striking. It had subsided to its natural bed before the snow came: but the frost had set in so rapidly, that the water had been arrested in the willows and thick bushes that overhang the stream, and was forming on them icicles, and as it were fruits of crystal innumerable on every spray, while the snow formed besides a wintry foliage exactly in character with such wintry fruit. The river itself rolled dark and black between these glittering banks, full of floating masses of ice, which from time to time dashed against each other, and as you looked up it in the direction of the sun, it smoked like a furnace. So much for description! Well, now, I will tell you a marvel. I wanted to bring down some presents for each of the sisters here; and for MI brought no other than George Herbert's Divine Songs, which I really bought out of my own head, which "I like very much," which I endeavour to interpret--no easy matter in the hard parts-and which I mean to get for myself. Now do you not think I shall become quite a right thinking sort of person in good time? You need not despair of hearing that I am a violent admirer of Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope, and have given up "the Lord Protector."

I owe Tucker many thanks for his letter altogether, and congratulate him on the Water-Eaton altar piece, as I condole with

E

him on his abandonment of his ancient walks. He ought to bind himself by vow to visit once a term each of our old haunts, in mournful pilgrimage; and as the spring comes on, if the combined influence of wood-anemones, and souvenirs, and nightingales, does not draw him to Bagley Wood, I think the case must be desperate. I know I shall myself cry once or twice in the course of the next half year, "O ubi Campi."

VII. TO REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Laleham, February 23, 1820.

You must know that you are one of three persons in the world to whom I hold it wrong to write short letters; that is to say, you are one of three on whom I can find it in my heart to bestow all my tediousness; and therefore though February 23rd stands at the top of the page, I do not expect that this sheet will be finished for some time to come. The first thing I must say is to congratulate you on Charles's appointment. If this letter reaches you amid the pain of parting, congratulation will indeed seem a strange word; yet it is, I think, a matter of real joy after all; it is just what Charles seems best fitted for; his principles and character you may fully depend on, and India is of all fields of honourable ambition that this world offers, to my mind the fairest. You know I always had a sort of hankering after it myself, and but that I prefer teaching Greek to learning Hindoostanee, and fear there is no immediate hope of the conquest of China, I should have liked to have seen the Ganges well. To your family India must seem natural ground; and for the separation, painful as it must be, yet do we not all in reality part almost as decisively with our friends when we once settle in life, even though the ocean should not divide us? How little intercourse may I dare to anticipate in after days with those who for so many years have been almost my constant companions; and how little have I seen for several years past of my own brother! But this is prosing. If Charles be still with you, give him my kindest remembrances, with every wish for his future happiness; it already seems a dream to look back on the time when he used to come to my rooms to read Herodotus. Tell him I retain some of his scribbling on the pages of my Hederic's Lexicon, which may many a time remind me of him, when he is skirmishing perhaps with Mahrattas

or Chinese, and I am still going over the old ground of iorogins ádegis de. You talk to me of "cutting blocks with a razor;" indeed it does me no good to lead my mind to such notions; for to tell you a secret, I am quite enough inclined of myself to feel above my work, which is very wrong and very foolish. I believe I am usefully employed, and I am sure I am employed more safely for myself than if I had more time for higher studies; it does my mind a marvellous deal of good, or ought to do, to be kept upon bread and water. But be this as it may, and be the price that I am paying much or little, I cannot forget for what I am paying it. (After speaking of his future prospects.) Here, indeed, I sympathize with you in the fear that this earthly happiness may interest me too deeply. The hold which a man's affections have on him is the more dangerous because the less suspected; and one may become an idolator almost before one feels the least sense of danger. Then comes the fear of losing the treasure, which one may love too fondly; and that fear is indeed terrible. The thought of the instability of one's happiness comes in well to interrupt its full indulgence; and if often entertained must make a man either an Epicurean or a Christian in good earnest. Thank eleven o'clock for stopping my prosing! Good night and God bless you!

VIII. TO THE SAME.

(On the Death of his Brother.)

Laleham, December 6, 1820.

It is really quite an alarming time since I wrote to you in February; for I cannot count as anything the two brief letters that passed between us at the time of my marriage. I had intended, however, to have written to you a good long one, so soon as the holidays came; but hearing from —, a few days ago, that you had been expressing a wish to hear from me, I thought I would try to anticipate my intention, and despatch an epistle to you forthwith. It has been an eventful period for me in many ways, since February last, more so, both for good and for evil, than I ever remember before. The loss which we all sustained in May, was the first great affliction that ever befell me; and it has been indeed a heavy one. At first it came so suddenly that I could not feel it so keenly; and I had other thoughts besides upon me, which would not then allow me

to dwell so much upon it. But time has rather made the loss more painful than less so; and now that I am married, and living here calmly and quietly, I often think how he would have enjoyed to have come to Laleham; and all the circumstances of his death occur to me like a frightful dream. It is very extraordinary how often I dream that he is alive, and always with the consciousness that he is alive, after having been supposed dead; and this sometimes has gone so far, that I have in my dream questioned the reality of his being alive, and doubted whether it were not a dream, and have been convinced that it was not, so strongly, that I could hardly shake off the impression on waking. I have, since that, lost another relation, my uncle Delafield, who died quite suddenly at Hastings, in September; his death fell less severely on my mother and aunt, from following so near upon a loss still more distressing to them; but there was in both the same circumstance, which for the time made the shock tenfold greater, that my mother was expecting to see both my brother and my uncle within a few days at Laleham, when she heard of their respective deaths. I attended my uncle's funeral at Kensington, and never did I see greater affliction than that of his children, who were all present. I ought not, however, to dwell only on the painful events that have befallen us, when I have so much of a different kind to be thankful for. My mother is settled, with my aunt, and Susannah, in a more comfortable situation than they have ever been in since we left the Isle of Wight. My mother has got a very good garden, which is an amusement to her in many ways, but chiefly as it enables her to send little presents, &c., to her children; and Susannah's crib lying in a room opening to the garden, she too can enjoy it; and she has been buying some flowering shrubs this autumn, and planting them where they will show themselves to her to the best advantage. My aunt is better, I think, than she commonly is; and she too enjoys her new dwelling, and amuses herself in showing Martha pictures and telling her stories, just as she used to do to me. Going on from my mother's house to Buckland's, you would find Frances, with two children more than you are acquainted with. . . . . From about a quarter before nine till ten o'clock every evening, I am at liberty, and enjoy my wife's company fully: during this time I read out to her, (I am now reading to her Herodotus, translating it as I go on,) or write my Sermons, when it is my fortnight to preach; or write letters, as I am doing at this moment. And though the space of time that I can