"The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange phenomenon of poor ---- ---- whom I have known man and madman twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap; a little too fond of the creature; who isn't at times? but ---- had not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and, unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning, drunk with last night, and with a superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came staggering under his double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament; some wretched calico that he had moped his poor oozy front with had rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of indigo, and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man were competent to. It was like a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined afterward that the whole office had been laughing at him, so strange did his own sounds strike upon his _non_sensorium. But ---- has laugh'd his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself reduced from an abused income of £600 per annum to one-sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' tolerably good service. The quality of mercy was not strained in his behalf; the gentle dews dropped not on him from heaven." Lamb was a creature of ardent sympathies. His social affections were as fresh and tender as those of childhood; and in the subjoined extract from a letter to Wordsworth, these characteristics are admirably portrayed: