credited, in 1814 he had been long accustomed to take "from two
quarts of laudanum in a week to a pint a day." He did, however,
ultimately conquer it.

It was during his residence with Mr. Gillman that I knew Coleridge. He
had arranged to write for "The Amulet"; and circumstances warranted my
often seeing him,--a privilege of which I gladly availed myself. In this
home at Highgate, where all even of his whims were studied with
affectionate and attentive care, he preferred the quiet of home
influences to the excitements of society; and although I more than once
met there his friend Charles Lamb, and other noteworthy men, I usually
found him, to my delight, alone. There he cultivated flowers, fed his
pensioners, the birds, and wooed the little children who gambolled on
the heath, where he took his daily walks.

It is a beautiful view,--such as can be rarely seen out of
England,--that which the poet had from the window of his bed-chamber.
Underneath, a valley, rich in "Patrician trees," divides the hill of
Highgate from that of Hampstead; the tower of the old church at
Hampstead rises above a thick wood,--a dense forest it seems, although
here and there a graceful villa stands out from among the dark green
drapery that infolds it. It was easy to imagine the poet often
contrasting this scene with that of "Brockan's sov'ran height," where no
"finer influence of friend or child" had greeted him, and exclaiming,--

"O thou Queen!
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England!"

And what a wonderful change there is in the scene, when the pilgrim to
this shrine at Highgate leaves the garden and walks a few steps beyond
the elm avenue that still fronts the house!

Forty years have brought houses all about the heath, and shut in the
prospect; but from any ascent you may see regal Windsor on one side and
Gravesend on the other,--twenty miles of view, look which way you will.
But when the poet dwelt there, all London was within ken, a few yards
from his door.

The house has undergone some changes, but the garden is much as it was
when I used to find the poet feeding his birds there: it has the same
wall--moss-covered now--that overhangs the dell; a shady tree-walk
shelters it from sun and rain,--it was the poet's walk at midday; a
venerable climber, the Glycenas, was no doubt planted by the poet's
hand: it was new to England when the poet was old, and what more likely
than that his friends would