later life," he wrote, in 1834, "a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities." But behind all this,--more dreadful still and harder to bear,--was he not the slave of some ingrained perversity of the mind itself, some helpless and hopeless irresolution of character, some enervating spell of that sublime yet pitiable dejection of Hamlet, which kept him forever at war with himself, and, last of all, cast him out upon the homeless ocean of despair, to drift away into ruin and death? There are shapes more awful than his, in the records of literary history,--the ravaged, agonising form of Swift, for instance, and the wonderful, desolate face of Byron; but there is no figure more forlorn and pathetic. This way the memory of Coleridge came upon me, standing at his grave. He should have been laid in some wild, free place, where the grass could grow above him and the trees could wave their branches over his head. They placed him in a ponderous tomb, of gray stone, in Highgate churchyard, and in later times they have reared a new building above it,--the grammar-school of the village,--so that now the tomb, fenced round with iron, is in a cold, barren, gloomy crypt, accessible indeed from the churchyard, through several arches, but grim and doleful in all its surroundings; as if the evil and cruel fate that marred his life were still triumphant over his ashes. CHAPTER XIX ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD In England, as elsewhere, every historic spot is occupied; and of course it sometimes happens, at such a spot, that its association is marred and its sentiment almost destroyed by the presence of the persons and the interests of to-day. The visitor to such places must carry with him not only knowledge and sensibility but imagination and patience. He will not find the way strewn with roses nor the atmosphere of poetry ready-made for his enjoyment. That atmosphere, indeed, for the most part--especially in the cities--he must himself supply. Relics do not robe themselves for exhibition. The Past is utterly indifferent to its worshippers. All manner of little obstacles, too, will arise before the pilgrim, to thwart him in his search. The mental strain and bewilderment, the inevitable physical weariness, the soporific influence of the climate, the tumult of the streets, the frequent and disheartening spectacle of poverty, squalor, and vice, the capricious and untimely rain, the inconvenience of long distances, the ill-timed arrival and consequent disappointment, the occasional nervous sense of loneliness and insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the ignorant, garrulous porter, the extortionate cabman, and the jeering bystander--all these must be regarded with resolute indifference by him who would ramble, pleasantly and profitably, in the footprints of English history. Everything depends, in other words, upon the eyes with which you observe and the spirit which you impart. Never was a keener