Southey was, by this time, animated and deluded by all the too sanguine credulity and glowing enthusiasm which so often mark and cloud the morning of genius, and lead its possessor astray. While in a state of intellectual fever and political excitement he made the acquaintance of Coleridge, with whom he soon devised the fanciful and bubble-like scheme since known and ridiculed as “Pantisocracy.” This consisted of fantastic plans for collecting a number of discontented youths, as brother-adventurers, and forming a colony in the New World, on a thoroughly social basis. Southey wasted much time and care on this chimerical idea; and it was decided that the aspirants to perfect earthly content and felicity should commence operations by purchasing, with their common contributions, a quantity of land, which they were all to spend their labor in cultivating. Each was to have a fair share of work assigned to him, while it was arranged that the female emigrants――for one important regulation provided that they were, without exception, to be married men――should manage all domestic matters. Southey luxuriated in golden dreams and visionary anticipations; his ardent spirit swelled and rose high. All obstacles disappeared before his enthusiastic gaze, and he engaged the hand and affections of a dowerless but captivating damsel in his native place, who rejoiced in the very romantic name of Edith, and had no insuperable objections to accompany him to the land of promise, which lay sweetly, as his fancy pictured it, ready to receive them on the banks of the Susquehannah River, flowing with milk and honey. So far all went as smoothly with Southey as a total inexperience of the real world, and full and entire confidence in his own untried powers of action, could render matters to a strong imagination. But there was yet a lioness of no ordinary ferocity in the way. Miss Tyler had still to be informed, and the startling intelligence that her hopeful nephew had, without consulting her wishes, selected a partner for life, was instantly productive of one most inconvenient result. It brought upon him the sudden and rebounding torrents of her wrath. The night was rainy, but she was cut to the heart; and, mercilessly turning him out of doors, she never condescended to see his face again. This was a sufficiently portentous commencement for the Pantisocratic form of society; and the scheme, as might have been foreseen, proving utterly impracticable, the day-dream vanished into thin air when the most distant effort was made to realize it.