follows in next paragraph, in the name of a child of fancy. After all,
you cannot nor ever will write anything with which I shall be so
delighted as what I have heard yourself repeat. You came to town, and I
saw you at a time when your heart was yet bleeding with recent wounds.
Like yourself, I was sore galled with disappointed hope; you had

"Many an holy lay
That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way."

I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and they yet vibrate pleasant
on the sense. When I read in your little volume your nineteenth
effusion, or the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth, or what you call the
"Sigh," I think I hear _you_ again. I image to myself the little smoky
room at the "Salutation and Cat," where we have sat together through the
winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy. When you left
London, I felt a dismal void in my heart. I found myself cut off, at one
and the same time, from two most dear to me, "How blest with ye the path
could I have trod of quiet life!" In your conversation you had blended
so many pleasant fancies that they cheated me of my grief; but in your
absence the tide of melancholy rushed in again, and did its worst
mischief by overwhelming my reason. I have recovered, but feel a stupor
that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I
sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind; but habits are
strong things, and my religious fervours are confined, alas! to some
fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion,

A correspondence, opening with you, has roused me a little from my
lethargy and made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it; I will
not be very troublesome! At some future time I will amuse you with an
account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turn my frenzy