mean Hazlitt, whose death you may have seen announced in the papers. He was a man of extraordinary acuteness, but perverse as Lord Byron himself, whose Life by Galt I have been skimming since I came here.

TO SIR W. ROWAN HAMILTON

TRINITY LODGE, CAMBRIDGE, November 26, 1830. I reached this place nine days ago . . . On the 5th of November, I was a solitary equestrian entering the romantic little town of Ashford-in-the-Waters, on the edge of the wilds of Derbyshire, at the close of the day, when guns were beginning to be let off and squibs to be fired on every side, so that I thought it prudent to dismount and lead my horse through the place, and so on to Bakewell, two miles further. You must know how I happened to be riding through these wild regions. It was my wish that Dora should have the benefit of her pony while at Cambridge, and, very valiantly and economically, I determined, unused as I am to horsemanship, to ride the creature myself. I sent James with it to Lancaster; there mounted, stopped a day at Manchester, a week at Coleorton, and so reached the end of my journey safe and sound-not, however, without encountering two days of tempestuous rain. Thirty-seven miles did I ride in one day through the worst of these storms, and what was my resource? Guess again -writing verses to the memory of my departed friend Sir George Beaumont, whose house I had left the day before. While buffeting the other storm I composed a sonnet on the splendid domain of Chatsworth, which I had

seen in the morning, as contrasted with the secluded habitations of the narrow dells in the Peak; and, as I passed the tame and manufacture-disfigured country of Lancashire, I was reminded, by the faded leaves, of Spring, and threw off a few stanzas of an ode to May. But too much of self and my own performances upon my steed, a descendant no doubt of Pegasus, though her owner and present rider knew nothing of it.

Now a word about Professor Airy: I have seen him twice, but I did not communicate your message; it was at dinner and at an evening party, and I thought it best not to speak of it till I saw him, which I mean to do, upon a morning call. There is a great deal of intellectual activity within the walls of this College, and in the University at large; but conversation turns mainly upon the state of the country and the late change in the administration. The fires have extended to within eight miles of this place, from which I saw one of the worst, if not absolutely the worst, indicated by a redness in the sky, a few nights ago... There is an interesting person in this University for a day or two, whom I have not yet seen, Kenelm Digby, author of The Broadstone of Honour, a book of chivalry, which I think was put into your hands at Rydal Mount. We have also a respectable show of blossom in poetry — two brothers of the name of Tennyson, one in particular not a little promising. . . . My daughter has resumed her German labours, and is not easily drawn from what she takes to. . . . She owes a long letter to her brother in Germany, who, by the by, tells us that he will not cease to look out for the book of Kant you wished for.

"For the power of hills is on thee,

As was witnessed through thine eye
Then, when old Helvellyn won thee
To confess their majesty!"

- To Miss Blackett, p. 312.

TO SIR W. ROWAN HAMILTON

BUXTED RECTORY, SUSSEX, 24th January, 1831.

You are interested about Mr Coleridge. I saw him several times lately, and had long conversations with him. It grieves me to say that his constitution seems much broken up. I have heard that he has been worse since I saw him. His mind has lost none of its vigour, but he is certainly in that state of bodily health that no one who knows him could feel justified in holding out the hope of even an introduction to him as an inducement for your visiting London. Much do I regret this, for you may pass your life without meeting a man of such commanding faculties. I hope that my criticisms have not deterred your sister from poetical composition. The world had indeed had enough of it lately, such as it is; but that is no reason why a sensibility like hers should not give vent to itself in verse.

The summer that is over has been with us as well as with you a brilliant one, for sunshine and fair calm weather brilliant also for its unexampled gaiety in regattas, balls, déjeuners, pic-nics by the lakeside, on the islands, and on the mountain-tops, fireworks by night, dancing on the green-sward by day in short, a fever of pleasure from morn to dewy eve from dewy eve till break of day.