and was detained all night on account of the
weather, that detention lasted for the greater
part of a year, so charmed was the circle in
which he and his host met each other. And to
poor Hartley Coleridge, too, he was always kind
and manly; doing the best he could for his great
infirmity, and trying to win him over to better
things by keeping up his self-respect. It was
quite characteristic of him, so strong and
massive as he was, that he should have so much
gentleness for the two men who, of all their
generation, showed most moral weakness and
infirmity of purpose. But then he was so
tender to all who needed it, in the midst of his
leonine passion and strength! His dogs were
his friends, the birds in the bushes his
dependents, to his children and grandchildren he
made himself a big baby that he might be on an
equality with them; but sometimes rather a
dangerous baby, too, as when he found out that
the right way to carry a little infant was, by
clutching at its clothes at the back, which
he would do all the way down stairs, then lay
it down on the hearth-rug in his own room, and
forget all about the beastie till reminded of it
by its being missed in the family. Still, he
never did any real harm; no bird or dog most
certainly, and even no baby came to its death at
his hands; and his somewhat original manner
of nursing never ended in a tragedy, which
might be accounted good luck as much as
anything else.

He was not so careful with inanimate
treasures, and not so lucky. He had a watch,
which he wound up " irregularly, by fits
and starts, thrice a day, perhaps, or once a
week, till it fell into an intermittent fever, grew
delirious, and gave up the ghost;" but he only
wanted that it should go, and its hands point
somewhere, no matter where. Then he had a
snuff-box, a dozen snuff-boxes, and they were
always being lost; everything he had was always
being lost, " even that broad-brimmed hat of his
sometimes went amissing;" gloves, letters, pocket-
handkerchiefs, everything strolled away into the
dust and fishing-flies, the litter and barley-
sugar of his den; and when the hour of his
class had come he had often only a half-shaved
face and a vagrant wardrobe to meet it. Another
of his " ways " was his loyalty to a tin
candlestick, and a common tallow candle to be
manipulated with snuffers. That was never allowed
to be removed from his table; for after he once
had blown out the gas and nearly suffocated a
whole family, he would hear of no modern
improvement in the way of gas or colza oil, but
kept to his tin candlestick and tallow candle
as the ultimate perfection of the art of illuminating.
His tin candlestick and an old earthenware
inkstand were his chief treasures, and he
never lost sight of them.

But all this pleasant and abounding life must
come to its close; the strong hand must be made
weak, the fiery heart cold, the rich fulness of
manhood must lie stricken and withered, and that
great and noble nature become but a memory
and thiug of the past. From the 13th of October,
1853, he died to the outside world. The veil
was drawn over that magnificent intellect; and
all those keen perceptions which had once lighted
up his whole being into such loving sympathy
with nature and such grand revealings of thought,
were blunted now and lost. From October to
April in the next year, he lay in that sad state
which often ends the career of the hard thinker
and the strong worker; and on the third day
he died to life, as he had already died to thought
and the world; just in the early spring which he
had always loved so much, and with which some
of his happiest memories were associated. He
has left none behind to wear his mantle. Of
a fuller, stronger, firmer manhood than falls
to the lot of most literary men—with the
strength of an athlete, and the naturalness of
a hunter and a savage—with the simplicity
of a child, the acuteness of a logician, the
passion of a poet, and the self-abandonment
of a hero—he gathered up into himself the
characteristics of many men, and was one
of the few instances of "many-sidedness"
which the world of literature contains. No
one who knew him can ever forget him, and
no one who knew him could do other than love
him. His generous, loving, impulsive nature,
his eloquence and his delightful converse, his
keen wit and sun-bright intellect, his
magnificent organisation and the thoroughly healthy
temperament of the man, all made him a king of
men—a lion in a forest full of smaller beasts—
the type of power and passion, unequalled by
few, surpassed by none.

In his daughter MARY, John Wilson has a
biographer who brings to her work perceptions
akin to his, and a great loving heart in no wise
degenerate. Flashes of the father's spirit,
humour, and tenderness, light up the daughter's
labour of love and duty, and show us glimpses
of the parent in the child.

A CLEAR TITLE TO LAND.

THE squire has a daughter to settle, and is
himself unsettled by the college debts of his
first-born. He will mortgage a few acres.
Cannot he do that without being nearly
worried out of his life by the demands and
intrusive inquiries of the attorney acting for
the lender? Why, the fellow has even
insinuated that two paltry lost title-deeds affecting
a small part of the estate which were mislaid
some fifteen years ago, might have been
pawned. My lord has been adding to his fields,
and absorbing the possessions of the little men
around him. Last year there died an old man,
whose little farm had been bought of him fifty
years ago, without much asking how he got
it. What need to ask? His family had always
held it. But, at his death, up started an
unexpected claim. The old man, when in his
younger days he sold his farm, had but a life
interest. His father's will, produced by the
new claimant, proved this so completely to my
lord, that he must either give up possession or
buy the desired farm over again. Paying twice