thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which, I flatter myself, will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two gowns already, _I should have jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry_. Ever yours, most truly, WALTER SCOTT." The whole is too rich to need a remark, except that Southey accepted it, and Scott wrote him a letter of warmest congratulation on getting this piece of _court plaster_ clapped on his back, and putting himself into a position to be "well quizzed;" but was quite confounded to learn that the honorarium for the "horrible! thrice horrible!" was not £400 a-year, but only £100 and a butt of wine. I wonder whether poor Southey lived to read Scott's life! The present illustrious holder of this post accepted it with a dignity worthy of his character and fame, declining it till it was stripped of all its disgusting duties. The next step, it is to be hoped, will be to abolish an office equally derogatory to monarch and subject. No poet of reputation should feel himself in a position to pay mercenary praise; no monarch of this country need purchase praise; to a worthy occupier of the throne it will be freely accorded from the universal heart of the nation. Crosthwaite Church, in whose grave-yard Robert Southey's remains lie, is about a quarter of a mile from the house, on the Bassenthwaite water-road. It is a very simple and lowly village church with a low square tower, but stands finely in the wide open valley, surrounded at a considerable distance, by the scenery I have described. I suppose it is nearly a mile from the foot of Skiddaw. From Southey's house the walks to it, and again from it along the winding lanes, and over the quiet fields toward Skiddaw, are particularly pleasant. Southey in his Colloquies speaks of the church and church-yard with much affection. He quotes the account of an old man who more than fifty years ago spoke of the oldest and finest yew-trees in the country standing in this church-yard, and of having seen all the boys of the school-house near, forty in number, perched at once on the boughs of one of them. At the northwest comer of the church-yard, stands Southey's tomb. It is a plain altar-tomb of reddish freestone, covered with a slab of blue slate, with this inscription,--"Here lies the body of Robert Southey, LL.D. Poet Laureate; Born August 12, 1774. Died March 26, 1843. Also of Edith his wife, Born May 20, 1774; Died Nov. 16, 1837. I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord."