“More Stars” (All Saints’ Day) and “Wakefulness” (The Annunciation) are reminiscences of Charles Coleridge Pode, a little nephew of Mr. Yonge, and his ecstatic joy on the first night of being out of doors late enough to see the glory of the stars. A few months later, on a sister being born, he hoped that her name would be Mary “because he liked the Virgin Mary.” And when, only a few days later, his own mother was taken from him, he lay awake and silent, night after night. He, too, was one who fulfilled his early promise, till, as a young physician, he was cut off after much patient suffering. “More Stars” is also attributed to an exclamation of one of Mr. Peter Young’s children; but in point of fact, most little ones have broken out in a similar joyous shout on their first conscious sight of the starry heavens. Mrs. Keble used to forbear telling of the subjects of these poems, lest, as she said, there might be a sort of blight on the children in breaking the reserve; but most of them are beyond the reach of that danger in publicity; and I can only further mention that the village children _en masse_, and the curate’s in detail, furnished many more of the subjects, while still they only regarded Mr. Keble as their best of playmates. They cheered him when the great sorrow of his life befell him in the secession of John Henry Newman, hitherto his friend and fellow-worker. It came at a time when perhaps he was most fitted to bear it, when his brother in Gloucestershire and his wife at home had just begun to recover from a terrible typhoid fever caught at Bude. Words spoken in the immediate prospect of death, by Mrs. Keble, strengthened her husband’s faith and made him more than ever determined to hold fast by the Church of his fathers; and the thankfulness and exhilaration caused by the improvement in her health carried him the better over the first blow, though he went out alone to a quiet deserted chalk-pit to open the letter which he knew would bring the final news of the reception of his friend into the Roman Church. Nor did his Hursley plans stand still. Under the management of Sir John Taylor Coleridge and other friends, the _Christian Year_ had become much more profitable, and the _Lyra_ also brought in a considerable quota, so that the entire work could be undertaken at Mr. Keble’s expense. It was decided, partly by Mr. Yonge himself, that the enterprise was on too large a scale for his partial knowledge, and moreover, much progress had been made during these nine years in ecclesiology, so that architects who had made it their study were to be found. The design was committed to William Harrison, Esq., a relation of Archdeacon Harrison, a very old friend and contemporary. It followed the lines of the existing church, which were found to be so solid and well built as for the most part only to need casing and not renewal, nor was the old tower taken down.