tottering steps. Our condition might have been more forlorn, had not Mr.
Coleridge from before cheered on his associates in misfortune; and
intrepidity produces intrepidity.

The deepest sorrow often admits of some alleviation, and at present our
source of beguilement was to invent some appropriate name, in designation
of this most[*] horrible channel of communication between man and man.
Various acrimonious epithets were propounded, but they all wanted an
adequate measure of causticity; when Mr. Southey censuring in us our want
of charity, and the rash spirit that loaded with abuse objects which
if beheld in noon-day might be allied even to the picturesque,
proposed that our path-way, whatever it was, should simply be
called--"Bowling-green-lane."

[* Transcriber's note: Corrected from original 'mot'.]

We should have smiled assent, but we had just arrived at a spot that
overshadowed every countenance with ten-fold seriousness! This was no
moment for gratuitous triflings. We had arrived at a spot, where there
was just light enough to descry three roads, in this bosom of the wood,
diverging off in different directions! two of them must be collaterals;
and to fix on the one which was honest, where all had equal claims to bad
pre-eminence, exceeded our divining power. Each awhile ruminated in
silence; reflecting that we were far from the habitations of man, with
darkness only not intense around us! We now shouted aloud, in the faint
hope that some solitary woodman might hear, and come to our relief. The
shrill voices of the ladies, in the stillness of night, formed the
essence of harmony. All was silence! No murmur! No response! The three
lanes lay before us. If we pursued one, it might by the next morning,
conduct us safe back to Chepstow; and if we confided in the other, it