lic affairs, without close and
constant contact with those who are taking the lead in them.[7] There
was a lesson for the Cassandra of a later day in the picture of Southey
when Mrs. Fletcher took tea with him in 1833.

[Footnote 6: Hartley Coleridge must, in Mr. Greg's case, have overcome
one of his prepossessions. 'I don't like cotton manufacturers much, nor
merchants over much. Cobden seems to be a good kind of fellow, but I
wish he were not a cotton-spinner. I rather respect him. I'm always on
the side of the poor.']

[Footnote 7: I do not forget the interesting passage in Mill's
_Autobiography_ (pp. 262, 263), where he contends that 'by means of the
regular receipt of newspapers and periodicals, a political writer, who
lives many hundreds of miles from the chief seat of the politics of his
country, is kept _au courant_ of even the most temporary politics, and
is able to acquire a more correct view of the state and progress of
opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with individuals.']

I never saw any one [she said] whose mind was in so
morbid a state as that of this excellent poet and amiable
man on the subject of the present political aspect of
affairs in England. He is utterly desponding. He believes
the downfall of the Church and the subversion of all law
and government is at hand; for in spite of all our
endeavours to steer clear of politics, he slid unconsciously
into the subject, and proclaimed his belief that the ruin
of all that was sacred and venerable was impending.[8]

[Footnote 8: _Autobiography_, p. 214.]

The condition, say of Bury, in Lancashire, at that time, contrasted with
its condition to-day, is the adequate answer to these dreary
vaticinations.

One resident of the Lake District was as energetic and hopeful as
Southey was despondent. This was Harriet Martineau, whom Mr. Greg first
introduced to the captivating beauty of Westmoreland, and whom he
induced in 1850 to settle there. Other friends--the Speddings, the
Arnolds at Fox How, the Davys at Ambleside, the Fletchers at
Lancrigg--formed a delightful circle, all within tolerably easy reach,
and affording a haven of kind and nourishing companionship. But, for a
thinker upon the practical aspects of political and social science, it
was all too far from--

Labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar.

For during these years Mr. Greg did not handle merely the abstract
principles of politics and so