ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat when two people, living together as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now - what I mean by the word we never do make much of ourselves. poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty.

None but the

"I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, and much ado we used to have every Thirtyfirst Night of December to account for our exceedings—many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much or that we had not spent so much—or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year - and still we found our slender capital decreasing - but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future-and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with lusty brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in the coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year, no flattering promises about the new year doing better for us."

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occa

sions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds a year.

"It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power-those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked: live better and lie softer. and shall be wise to do so than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days returncould you and I once more walk our thirty miles a day could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see them could the good old one-shilling gallery days return - they are dreams, my cousin, now-but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa-be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of

yours, and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew Ris supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that blue summer house."

very

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

In his clumsily entitled Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg, Wordsworth has these lines, after referring to Hogg and to Walter Scott:

"Nor has the rolling year twice measured,

From sign to sign, its steadfast course,

Since every mortal

power

of Coleridge

Was frozen at its marvellous source;

The rapt One, of the god-like forehead,

The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth.”

And in his poem, Resolution and Independence, though he does not name Coleridge, it is almost certain that he had him in mind when he wrote:

66

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,

As if life's business were a summer mood;

As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call

Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?"

When he read the news of Coleridge's death, Wordsworth's voice faltered and broke, as he said he was the most wonderful man that he had ever known.

It is always worth while to know what one poet thinks of another, especially if the two have been contemporaries, friends, intimate companions. Wordsworth and Coleridge