Neither can we forget, as we sit here musing, whose green English carpet, down in Kent, we so lately rested on under the trees,—­nor how we wandered off with the lord of that hospitable manor to an old castle hard by his grounds, and climbed with him to the turret-tops,—­nor how we heard him repeople in fancy the aged ruin, as we leaned over the wall and looked into the desolate court-yard below.  The world has given audience to this man, thought we, for many a year; but one who has never heard the sound of his laughing voice knows not half his wondrous power.  When he reads his “Christmas Carol,” go far to hear him, judicious friend, if you happen to be in England, and let us all hope together that we shall have that keen gratification next year in America.  To know him is to love and esteem him tenfold more than if you only read of him.

Let us bear in mind, too, how happily the hours went by with us so recently in the vine-embowered cottage of dear L.H., the beautiful old man with silver hair,—­

  “As hoary frost with spangles doth attire
  The mossy branches of an oak.”

The sound of the poet’s voice was like the musical fall of water in our ears, and every sentence he uttered then is still a melody.  As we sit dreamily here, he speaks to us again of “life’s morning march, when his bosom was young,” and of his later years, when his struggles were many and keen, and only his pen was the lever which rolled poverty away from his door.  We can hear him, as we pause over this leaf, as we heard the old clock that night at sea.  He tells us of his cherished companions, now all gone,—­of Shelley, and Keats, and Charles Lamb, whom he loved,—­of Byron, and Coleridge, and the rest.  As we sit at his little table, he hands us a manuscript, and says it is the “Endymion,” John Keats’s gift to himself.  He reads to us from it some of his favorite lines, and the tones of his voice are very tender over his dead friend’s poem.  As we pass out of his door that evening, the moon falls on his white locks, his thin hand rests for a moment on our shoulder, and we hear him say very kindly, “God bless you!”

In London, not long after this, we meet again the bard of “Rimini,” and his discourse is still sweet as any dulcimer.  Another old man is with him, a poet also, whose songs are among the bravest in England’s Helicon.  We observe how these two friends love each other, and as they stand apart in the anteroom, the eldest with his arm around his brother bard, we think it is a very pleasant sight, and not to be forgotten ever.  And when, a few months later, we are among the Alpine hills, and word comes to us that L.H. is laid to rest in Kensal Green Churchyard, we are grateful to have looked upon his cheerful countenance, and to have heard him say, “God bless you!”