others don't like you, but they feel it, and it makes a great impression on them; in fact, nothing can be seen like it in any other country.' I went into the park, where the fair was going on; a vast multitude, but all of the lower orders; not very amusing. The great merit of this Coronation is, that so much has been done for the people: to amuse and interest _them_ seems to have been the principal object. [13] She sent in the evening to inquire after Lord Rolle. July 1st, 1838 {p.109} [Page Head: COLERIDGE AND JOHN STERLING.] This morning hit upon this stanza in Coleridge's 'Ode to Tranquillity':-- 'Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine On him but seldom, power divine, Thy spirit rests! Satiety And sloth, poor counterfeits of thee, Mock the tired worldling. Idle hope And dire remembrance interlope To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.' My own thoughts about myself. Mr. Sterling, whom I met at dinner the other day (son of Sterling, of the 'Times'[14]), said that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats were all greater poets than Dryden, that they had all finer imaginations. He compared 'The Vision of Kubla Khan' to 'Lycidas' for harmony of versification!! [14] [This was Mr. John Sterling, whose life has been written by Thomas Carlyle, and again by Julius Hare, though it was a short and uneventful one. Few men left a deeper mark upon his own contemporaries, not less by the grace and purity of his character than by the vigour of his intellect. It is hard to think that of so bright a promise of life and thought so little remains after him. Sterling was sometimes paradoxical, and he worshipped Coleridge, which may account for the incident related in the text.] July 3rd, 1838 {p.109} I was at the ball at Court last night to which hundreds would have given hundreds to go, and from which I would have gladly stayed away: all was very brilliant and very tiresome. July 4th, 1838 {p.109}