But the Church being resigned, it was necessary to look out for some other career. He thinks of physic, and studies anatomy for a short time, but the dissecting-room disgusts him. He thinks, as doubtless many others have thought, and are thinking still, that some official appointment which would occupy his mornings with business, and leave his evenings for philosophy and poetry, would be a very suitable position, and he writes to his friend Bedford for his advice and interest in the matter. His friend bids him reflect whether he, with his burning republicanism, was exactly the person most likely to obtain the much sought for patronage of Government. At last he thinks of emigration. Rousseau and Coleridge convert the scheme of emigration into the project of _Pantisocracy_. Here is the provision for life, and liberty, and equality. The scheme is perfect. It will be house and home--it will be philosophy put in action. The letters of Southey are not at this time the interesting compositions which some may have expected to find them; neither do they give us much insight into the details of this great scheme (though tried on a small scale) of a community of goods. The earlier letters--say those which, immediately succeeding the autobiography, occupy the remaining part of the first volume of the work--are indeed anything but pleasing or agreeable. The editor himself speaks of them in the following manner: "His letters, which at this time seem to have been exercises in composition, give evidence of his industry, and at the same time indicate a mind imbued with heathen philosophy and Grecian republicanism. They are written often in a style of inflated declamation, which, as we shall see, before many years had passed, subsided into a more natural and tranquil tone under the influence of his matured taste." They are the letters of a clever confident youth, and quite as disagreeable as such effusions usually are; full of flippant absurd judgments on men and things, varied with that affected self-disparagement which never fails to form a conspicuous part of such compositions. Their writers are profound philosophers at one moment, and rail at philosophy the next; full of their future fame, yet despising the only occupation that they love. "I am ready," says Southey, "to quarrel with my friends for not making me a carpenter, and with myself for devoting myself to pursuits certainly unimportant, and of no real utility either to myself or to others." One gets nothing from letters of this description. Our account of Pantisocracy we must take from the words of the editor himself:--