“I imagine a case such as this which follows,” says De Quincy, in alluding to the estrangement spoken of above--“the case of a man who for many years has connected himself with the domestic griefs and joys of another, over and above his primary service of giving to him the strength and the encouragement of a profound literary sympathy, at a time of universal scorning from the world; suppose this man to fall into a situation, in which, from want of natural connections, and from his state of insulation in life, it might be most important to his feelings that some support should be lent to him by a friend having a known place and acceptation, and what may be called a root in the country, by means of connections, descent, and long settlement. To look for this might be a most humble demand on the part of one who had testified his devotion in the way supposed. To miss it might---- But enough. I murmur not; complaint is weak at all times; and the hour is passed irrevocably, and by many a year, in which an act of friendship so natural, and costing so little (in both senses so priceless), could have been availing. The ear is deaf that should have been solaced by the sound of welcome. Call, but you will not be heard; shout aloud, but your ‘ave!’ and ‘all hail!’ will now tell only as an echo of departed days, proclaiming the hollowness of human hopes. I, for my part, have long learned the lesson of suffering in silence; and also I have learned to know that, wheresoever female prejudices are concerned, _there_ it will be a trial, more than Herculean, of a man’s wisdom, if he can walk with an even step, and swerve neither to the right nor to the left.” Leaving this sad subject, however, let us return to De Quincy at Grasmere in 1807. Mrs. Coleridge, on leaving the poet’s family for Keswick, invited De Quincy to visit her and Southey, and it was arranged that Wordsworth and the Opium Eater should go together. Accordingly they set off in a farmer’s cart to Ambleside, and from thence mounted the ascent of Kirkstone. Descending towards Brothers’ Water--“a lake which lies immediately below; and about three miles further, through endless woods, and under the shade of mighty fells, immediate dependencies and processes of the still more mighty Helvellyn” they approached the vale of Patterdale, and reached the inn, by moonlight. “All I remember,” says De Quincy is--“that through those romantic woods and rocks of Stybarren--through those silent glens of Glencoin and Glenridding--through that most romantic of parks then belonging to the Duke of Norfolk--viz., Gobarrow Park--we saw alternately for four miles, the most grotesque and the most awful spectacles-- ----“Abbey windows And Moorish temples of the Hindoos,”