Within the charmed circle of home, Southey’s temper and manners were full of a strong and sweet hilarity; and the home circle was in itself a considerable group of persons. The Pantisocratic scheme of a community was, after all, near finding a fulfilment, only that the Greta ran by in place of the Susquehanna, and that Southey took upon his own shoulders the work of the dead Lovell, and of Coleridge, who lay in weakness and dejection, whelmed under the tide of dreams. For some little time Coleridge continued to reside at Keswick, an admirable companion in almost all moods of mind, for all kinds of wisdom, and all kinds of nonsense. When he was driven abroad in search of health, it seemed as if a brightness were gone out of the air, and the horizon of life had grown definite and contracted. “It is now almost ten years,” Southey writes, “since he and I first met in my rooms at Oxford, which meeting decided the destiny of both.... I am perpetually pained at thinking what he ought to be, ... but the tidings of his death would come upon me more like a stroke of lightning than any evil I have ever yet endured.” Mrs. Coleridge, with her children, remained at Greta Hall. That quaint little metaphysician, Hartley—now answering to the name of Moses, now to that of Job, the oddest of all God’s creatures—was an unceasing wonder and delight to his uncle: “a strange, strange boy, ‘exquisitely wild,’ an utter visionary, like the moon among thin clouds, he moves in a circle of his own making. He alone is a light of his own. Of all human beings I never saw one so utterly naked of self.” When his father expressed surprise that Hartley should take his pleasure of wheel-barrow-riding so sadly, “The pity is”—explained little Job—“the pity is, _I’se_ always thinking of my thoughts.” “‘I’m a boy of a very religious turn,’ he says; for he always talks of himself and examines his own character, just as if he were speaking of another person, and as impartially. Every night he makes an extempore prayer aloud; but it is always in bed, and not till he is comfortable there and got into the mood. When he is ready, he touches Mrs. Wilson, who sleeps with him, and says, ‘Now listen!’ and off he sets like a preacher.” Younger than Hartley was Derwent Coleridge, a fair, broad-chested boy, with merry eye and roguish lips, now grown out of that yellow frock in which he had earned his name of Stumpy Canary. Sara Coleridge, when her uncle came to Keswick after the death of his own Margery, was a little grand-lama at that worshipful age of seven months. A fall into the Greta, a year and a half later, helped to change her to the delicate creature whose large blue eyes would look up timidly from under her lace border and mufflings of muslin. No feeling towards their father save a reverent loyalty did the Coleridge children ever learn under Southey’s roof. But when the pale-faced wanderer returned from Italy, he surprised and froze his daughter by a sudden revelation of that