approved the suggestion, and we ushered forth, in the dreariness of
midnight, to behold this real spectacle of sublimity! Our ardour indeed,
was a little cooled when, by the glimmering of the stars, we perceived a
dark expanse stretched by our path,--an ugly mill-pond, by the side of
which we groped, preserving, as well as we could, a respectful distance,
and entering into a mutual compact that if (after all) one should fall
in, the other should do all that in him lay to pull him out.

But I leave further extraneous impositions on the reader's
attention,--the Wye, and other etceteras, briefly to remark, that we
safely returned the next day, after an excursion where the reality
exceeded the promise: and it may be added, quite in time to enable Mr.
Southey to prepare for, and deliver his Lecture, "on the Rise, Fall, and
Decline of the Roman Empire." Mr. Coleridge was not present.

The publication of Mr. C.'s volume of Poems having been attended with
some rather peculiar circumstances, to detail them a little may amuse the
reader. On my expressing to him a wish to begin the printing as early as
he found it convenient, he sent me the following note.


"My dear friend,

The printer may depend on copy on Monday morning, and if he can work a
sheet a day, he shall have it.

S. T. C."


A day or two after, and before the receipt of the copy, I received from