Who can tell how far this was fostered by those old-fashioned habits of strictness which it is the present habit to view as repellent?  Every morning, immediately after breakfast, Lady Patteson read the Psalms and Lessons for the day with the four children, and after these a portion of some book of religious instruction, such as ’Horne on the Psalms’ or ‘Daubeny on the Catechism.’  The ensuing studies were in charge of Miss Neill, the governess, and the life-long friend of her pupils; but the mother made the religious instruction her individual care, and thus upheld its pre-eminence.  Sunday was likewise kept distinct in reading, teaching, employment, and whole tone of conversation, and the effect was assuredly not that weariness which such observance is often supposed to produce, but rather lasting benefit and happy associations.  Coley really enjoyed Bible-reading, and entered into explanations, and even then often picked up a passage in the sermons he heard at St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields from the Rev. J. Endell Tyler, and would give his home-oracles no peace till they had made it as clear to his comprehension as was possible.

The love of his home may be gathered from the fact that his letters have been preserved in an unbroken series, beginning from a country visit in 1834, after a slight attack of scarlet fever, written in the round-hand of a boy of seven years old, and finished off with the big Roman capitals finis, Amen, and ending with the uncompleted sheets, bearing as their last date September 19, 1871.

The boy’s first school was at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, of which his great-grandfather and great-uncle had both been head-masters.

There was much to make Ottery homelike to Coley, for his grandparents lived at Heath’s Court, close to the church, and in the manor-house near at hand their third son, Francis George Coleridge, a solicitor, whose three boys were near contemporaries of Coley, and two of them already in the school.

From first to last his letters to his parents show no symptom of carelessness; they are full of ease and confidence, outpourings of whatever interested him, whether small or great, but always respectful as well as affectionate, and written with care and pains, being evidently his very best; nor does the good old formula, ’Your affectionate and dutiful son,’ ever fail or ever produce stiffness.

The shrinking from rough companions, and the desire to be with the homelike relatives around, proved a temptation, and the little boy was guilty of making false excuses to obtain leave of absence.  We cannot refrain from giving his letter of penitence, chiefly for the sake of the good sense and kindness of his uncle’s treatment:—­

’April 26, 1836.