We cannot look upon his conduct on this occasion in any other light than as the natural course of a noble and generous nature. There was nothing in it unfair to the uncle. The uncle had speculated on the probability that separation would weaken his attachment; but the nephew had never stipulated that it should have this effect. The uncle had also anticipated that a change of scene would cure him of his democratic politics, but this did not put the nephew under any obligation to renounce his politics, or to submit them as fully as possible to the experiment to be made on them. One motive for his hastened marriage, he tells us, was, that in the event of his death at Lisbon, or on the voyage, his widow might have some claim on the protection of his own relatives, some of whom were wealthy. But on these relatives he threw no unwarrantable burden--no burden whatever--unless such as pure generosity might feel. There was no young family to be provided for. He would have left behind him a widow, whose prospects in life could not have been injured by merely having borne his name for a few months. Southey was of a confident nature, conscious of his own great abilities, of habitual and indomitable industry. Notwithstanding some occasional and very natural fits of depression, he must have felt persuaded that, sooner or later, in one way or the other, he should secure for himself a respectable position in life. He was engaged to Edith Fricker, and he was determined she should share that position with him, and that, in the mean time, she should at all events have no other doubts or fears than what the inconstancy or perversity of fortune might suggest. Of this, his first visit to Lisbon, very little is recorded. His mind underwent no perceptible change. We have only two letters written by him at this period to his friends in England. From the last of them, he appears to have been impatient to return. It is dated thus--"Feb. 24, 1796, Lisbon, from which God grant me a speedy deliverance!" He returned the same man, and returned to the same perplexities. Full of his poetry, occupied incessantly with literary projects, he has not yet the courage to trust to his pen for the necessary supplies. He will enter the profession of the law. From this he will extract that needful revenue which shall one day establish him in his country house, with his Edith, and amongst books of every description--except the legal. Here follows a chapter in his history which, we think, is one of the most instructive of the whole; certainly not the less instructive because many others have been, and many others will be, submitted to the same trials. If Southey had fulfilled his design, and completed his own biography, it is probably upon this interval, between his first and his second visit to Lisbon, that he would have thought it necessary to dwell with the greatest minuteness.