comments enriched almost
every page, and Julian was ashamed to take what he knew that the owner
so highly valued.

"But I thought you told me once that you were thinking of publishing a
biography of Coleridge, and an edition of his writings," said Julian.
"Surely, sir, you will want these manuscript notes, won't you?"

"Ah, Julian! that is one of the many plans which have floated through my
mind unfulfilled. My life, I fear, will have been an incomplete one.
Thank God that there is no such thing as a necessary man--_il n'y a
point d'hommes necessaires_; others will be found to do a thousandfold
better the work which I had purposed to do." And then he murmured half
to himself--

"Till, in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death came suddenly, and took them where men never see the sun."

His eyes filled with tears. "No," he said, "take the book, Julian. If
it does you all the good it has done me, it will have been more useful
than I could ever have made it. And when you hang on the eloquent and
earnest words of the great poet philosopher, mingle his teachings with
some few memories of me; it will be like a drop of myrrh, perhaps, in
the cup, but I should like," he added, with faltering voice, "to leave
at least _one_ to think of me with affection."

He turned away as his old pupil grasped his hand; and Julian, as he went
back in the train to Camford, could not help a feeling of real pity that
one so generous and upright in heart and life should be destined to so
lonely and sorrowful a lot.

As he had said, he resigned his Harton mastership at the end of the
term, and sailed to Madeira for his health. He begged Julian to
continue his correspondence with him, and to tell him all about his old
Harton and Camford friends.

During Easter week, while Julian was at Ildown, he received from him a
letter to the following effect:--

"Dear Julian--I was not mistaken in hinting, while you were at Harton,
that we should never meet again. I am on my death-bed; and, in all
probability, the rapid decline which is now wasting my powers, and
which, while I write, shakes me with painful fits of coughing, will
have terminated my life before this letter reaches your hands.

"I leave life, I hope, with simple resignation; and although I have
left undone much which I hoped to have accomplished, yet I die
trusting in God. My friends in this world h