bravely and uncomplainingly, but no doubt with keen throbs of
discomfort, and not without detriment at times to the quality of his
writings. The disaster adverted to was the failure of a firm with which
Hood was connected, entailing severe loss upon him. With his accustomed
probity, he refused to avail himself of any legal immunities, and
resolved to meet his engagements in full eventually; but it became
requisite that he should withdraw from England. He proposed to settle
down in some one of the towns on the Rhine, and circumstances fixed his
choice on Coblentz. A great storm which overtook him during the passage
to Rotterdam told damagingly on his already feeble health. Coblentz,
which he reached in March, 1835, pleased him at first; though it was
not long before he found himself a good deal of an Englishman, and his
surroundings vexatiously German. After a while he came to consider a
German Jew and a Jew German nearly convertible terms; and indulged at
times in considerable acrimony of comment, such as a reader of
cosmopolitan temper is not inclined to approve. He had, however, at
least one very agreeable acquaintance at Coblentz--Lieutenant Philip de
Franck, an officer in the Prussian service, of partly English
parentage: the good-fellowship which he kept up with this amiable
gentleman, both in personal intercourse and by letter, was (as we have
seen) even boyishly vivacious and exuberant. In the first instance Hood
lived at No. 372 Castor Hof, where his family joined him in the Spring
of 1835: about a year later, they removed to No. 752 Alten Graben.

Spasms in the chest now began to be a trying and alarming symptom of
his ill-health, which, towards the end of 1836, took a turn for the
worse; he never afterwards rallied very effectually, though the
fluctuations were numerous--(in November, 1838, for instance, he
fancied that a radical improvement had suddenly taken place)--and at
times the danger was imminent. The unfavorable change in question was