idea, in the Sonnets on the river Duddon, not quite so amply as the original idea itself. He says, when strolling alone, he was always with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making studies from nature, whence his striking and accurate transcripts of such things. It will be noticed, in the article on Wordsworth, that these rambles, in the ignorant minds of the country people, converted him and Coleridge into suspicious characters. Coleridge was so open and simple, that they said, "As to Coleridge, he is a whirlbrain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth! he is a _dark_ traitor. You never hear _him_ say a syllable on the subject!" Coleridge himself, in his Biographia Literaria, tells us, that a certain baronet, in the neighborhood, got government to send down a spy to watch them. That this spy was a very honest fellow, for a wonder. That he heard them, he said, at first, talking a deal of _Spy Nosey_ (Spinosa), and thought they were up to him, as his nose was none of the smallest; but he soon found that it was all about books. Coleridge also gives the amusing dialogue between the innkeeper and the baronet, the innkeeper having been ordered to entertain the spy, but, like the spy, soon found that the strange gentlemen were only _poets_, and going to put Quantock into verse. Many are the testimonies of attachment to this neighborhood, and the wild Quantock hills, to be found in the poems of Coleridge; and in the third book of the Excursion, Wordsworth describes the Quantock, and their rambles, with all the gusto of a fond memory. First, we have a peep at his own abode. We are conveyed-- "To a low cottage in a sunny bay, Where the salt sea innocuously breaks, And the sea breeze as innocently breathes On Devon's leafy shores; a sheltered hold In a soft clime, encouraging the soil To a luxuriant bounty. As our steps Approach the embowered abode--our chosen seat See rooted in the earth, her kindly bed The unendangered myrtle, decked with flowers, Before the threshold stands to welcome us! While, in the flowering myrtle's neighborhood, Not overlooked, but courting no regard, Those native plants, the holly and the yew. Give modest intimation to the mind How willingly their aid they would unite With the green myrtle, to endear the hours Of winter, and protect that pleasant place." This, though placed in Devon instead of Somerset, accurately describes Wordsworth's pleasant nook there; but the Quantock walks are more strikingly like.