but his own.  It was one of Southey’s spurts of insolent bigotry; and Lamb’s plea for tolerance and fair play was so sound as to make it a poor affectation in Southey to assume a pardoning air; but, if Lamb’s 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 an alehouse comrade, that I speak of him here, in order that I may testify how he was beloved and cherished by the best people in his neighborhood.  I can hardly speak of him myself as a personal acquaintance; for I could not venture on inviting him to my house.  I saw what it was to others to be subject to day-long