kindly and sensitive
nature could not sustain him in so virtuous an opposition, it is well
that the two men did not meet on the top of Skiddaw.--Canning's visit to
Storrs, on Windermere, was a great event in its day; and Lockhart tells
us, in his "Life of Scott," what the regatta was like, when Wilson
played Admiral, and the group of local poets, and Scott, were in the
train of the statesman. Since that day, it has been a common thing for
illustrious persons to appear in our valleys. Statesmen, churchmen,
university-men, princes, peers, bishops, authors, artists, flock hither;
and during the latter years of Wordsworth's life, the average number
of strangers who called at Rydal Mount in the course of the season was
eight hundred.

During the growth of the District from its wildness to this thronged
state, a minor light of the region was kindling, flickering, failing,
gleaming, and at last going out,--anxiously watched and tended, but to
little purpose. The life of Hartley Coleridge has been published by his
family; and there can, therefore, be no scruple in speaking of him here.
The remembrance of him haunts us all,--almost as his ghost haunts his
kind landlady. Long after his death, she used to "hear him at night
laughing in his room," as he used to do when he lived there. A peculiar
laugh it was, which broke out when fancies crossed him, whether he was
alone or in company. Travellers used to look after him on the road, and
guides and drivers were always willing to tell about him; and still
his old friends almost expect to see Hartley at any turn,--the little
figure, with the round face, marked by the blackest eyebrows and
eyelashes, and by a smile and expression of great eccentricity. As we
passed, he would make a full stop in the road, face about, take off his
black-and-white straw hat, and bow down to the ground. The first glance
in return was always to see whether he was sober. The Hutchinsons must
remember him. He was one of the audience, when they held their concert
under the sycamores in Mr. Harrison's grounds at Ambleside; and he
thereupon wrote a sonnet,[A] doubtless well known in America. When I
wanted his leave to publish that sonnet, in an account of "Frolics with
the Hutchinsons," it was necessary to hunt him up, from public-house
to public-house, early in the morning. It is because these things are
universally known,--because he was seen staggering in the road, and
spoken of by drivers and lax artisans as