¹ "Come in the first stage, so as either to walk, or to be driven in Mr. Gilman's gig, to Caen wood and its delicious groves and alleys, the finest in England, a grand cathedral aisle of giant lime-trees, Pope's favourite composition walk, when with the old Earl."--_Coleridge to Crabb Robinson. Highgate, June_ 1817 Illustration: "The White Hart." Highgate, with all its rural peace, must have been a bustling place in the old times, for all the travel went through it that passed either into or out of London by the great north road,--that road in which Whittington heard the prophetic summons of the bells, and where may still be seen, suitably and rightly marked, the site of the stone on which he sat to rest. Here, indeed, the coaches used to halt, either to feed or to change horses, and here the many neglected little taverns still remaining, with their odd names and their swinging signs, testify to the discarded customs of a bygone age. Some years ago a new road was cut, so that travellers might wind around the hill, and avoid climbing the steep ascent to the village; and since then the grass has begun to grow in the streets. But such bustle as once enlivened the solitude of Highgate could never have been otherwise than agreeable diversion to its inhabitants; while for Coleridge himself, as we can well imagine, the London coach was welcome indeed, that brought to his door such well-loved friends as Charles Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb Robinson, Wordsworth, or Talfourd. To this retreat the author of _The Ancient Mariner_ withdrew in 1815, to live with his friend James Gilman, a surgeon, who had undertaken to rescue him from the demon of opium, but who, as De Quincey intimates, was lured by the poet into the service of the very fiend whom both had striven to subdue. It was his last refuge, and he never left it till he was released from life. As you ramble in that quiet neighbourhood your fancy will not fail to conjure up his placid figure,--the silver hair, the pale face, the great, luminous, changeful blue eyes, the somewhat portly form clothed in black raiment, the slow, feeble walk, the sweet, benignant manner, the voice that was perfect melody, and the inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and wisdom. Coleridge was often seen walking there, with a book in his hand; and the children of the village knew him and loved him. His presence is impressed forever upon the place, to haunt and to hallow it. He was a very great man. The wings of his imagination wave easily in the opal air of the highest heaven. The power and majesty of his thought are such as establish forever in the human mind the conviction of personal immortality. Yet how forlorn the ending that this stately soul was enforced to make! For more than thirty years he was the slave of opium. It blighted his home; it alienated his wife; it ruined his health; it made him utterly wretched. "I have been, through a large portion of my