Charles and Mary Lamb and Mr. Green dine with us on Sunday next, when we are to see Mathews' Picture Gallery. Can you and Mrs. Allsop join the party? or, if Mrs. Allsop's health should make this hazardous or too great an exertion, can you come yourself? I am sure she will forgive me for putting the question. God bless you and your affectionate S. T. COLERIDGE. LETTER 204. TO ALLSOP June 29th, 1822. My dear Friend, As fervent a prayer, as glow-trembling a joy, thanksgiving that seeks to steady itself by prayer, and prayer that dissolves itself into thanks and gladness, as ever eddied in or streamed onward from love and friendship, for pain and dread, for travail of body and spirit passed over, and a mother smiling over the firstborn at her bosom, have sped toward you from the moment I opened your Letter. For as if there had been a light suffused along the paper at that part, "birth of a Daughter after a very short illness," were the first words I saw. "Well pleased!" To be sure you are. It was scarcely a week ago that--during the only hour free from visits, visitors, and visitations that we have had to ourselves for I do not know how long--Mrs. Gillman and I had settled the point; and, after a strict, patient, and impartial poll of the _pro's_ and _con's_ on both sides, a Girl it was to be, and a Girl was returned by a very large majority of wishes. But as wishes, like strawberries, do not bear carriage well, or at least require to be poised on the _head_, I will send a scanty specimen of the Reasons by way of _Hansel_. _Imprimis_, A Girl takes five times as much spoiling to spoil her. _Item._--It is a great advantage both in respect of Temper, Manners, and the Quickening of the Faculties, for a Boy to have a Sister or Sisters a year or two older than himself.--But I devote this brief scroll to Feeling: so no more of disquisition, except it be to declare the entire coincidence of my experience with yours as to the very rare occurrence of strong and deep Feeling in conjunction with free power and vivacity in the expression of it. The most eminent Tragedians, Garrick for instance, are known to have had their emotions as much at command, and almost as much on the surface, as the muscles of their countenances; and the French, who are all Actors, are proverbially heartless. Is it that it is a false and feverous state for the Centre to live in the Circumference? The vital warmth seldom rises to the surface in the form of sensible Heat, without becoming hectic and inimical to the Life within, the only source of real sensibility. Eloquence itself--I speak of it as habitual and at call--too often is, and is always like to engender, a species of histrionism.