But death had been there, and the appraiser and auctioneer, and a crowd of eager sale-attenders after them; and the history of the poet and the poet's family life was wound up and done there. A populous dwelling it must have been when Southey and his wife and children, and Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter, and perhaps other friends, were all housed in it. And an active and pleasant house it must have been when great works were going on in it, a Thalaba, a Madoc, an article for the Quarterly, and news from London were coming in, and letters were expected of great interest, and papers were sending off by post to printers and publishers, and correspondents. All that is now passed over as a dream; the whole busy hive is dispersed many ways, and the house and grounds are preparing to let at £55 a-year, just as if no genius had set a greater value on them than on any other premises around. It is when we see these changes that we really feel the vanity of human life. But the beauty of the life of genius is, that though the scene of domestic action and sojourn can become as empty as any other, the home of the poet's mind becomes thenceforth that of the whole heart and mind of his nation, and often far beyond that. The Cossack and the Bohemian--did they not also carry away from it to their far-off lands tokens of their veneration? Before quitting Southey's house for his tomb, I can not resist referring to a little fact connected with his appointment to the laureateship. It is well known that the post was first offered to Walter Scott, who declined it, but recommended Southey, who was chosen. The letters on the whole transaction are given in Lockhart's Life of Scott (chap. xxvi.), and certainly present one of the most luxurious bits of human nature imaginable. Scott, who was then only plain Walter Scott; who was not made Sir Walter for seven years after; who had published the greater number of his popular poetical romances, but had not yet published Waverley; felt, however, quite terrified at the offer of the laureateship. He was quite agonized with shame at the prospect, and wrote off to the Duke of Buccleugh to ask his advice how he was to get decently out of the scrape without offending the prince regent. "I am," says Scott, "very much embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, very much afraid of giving offense, where no one would willingly offend, and perhaps losing the opportunity of smoothing the way to my youngsters through life; on the other hand the _offer is a ridiculous one_; somehow or other, they and I should be well quizzed," etc. * * * "I feel much disposed to shake myself free of it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode-maker is described by Pope as a man out of his way, or out of his senses."