died.

Mr. Southey thus refers to W. Gilbert in his "Life of Wesley."

"In the year 1796, Mr. G. published the 'Hurricane, a Theosophical
and Western Eclogue,' and shortly afterwards placarded the walls of
London with the largest bills that had at that time been seen,
announcing 'the Law of Fire.' I knew him well and look back with a
melancholy pleasure to the hours which I have passed in his society,
when his mind was in ruins. His madness was of the most
incomprehensible kind, as may be seen in the notes to his
'Hurricane;' but the Poem possesses passages of exquisite beauty. I
have among my papers some memorials of this interesting man. They who
remember him (as some of my readers will,) will not be displeased at
seeing him thus mentioned, with the respect and regret which are due
to a noble mind."

Mr. Wordsworth, also at the end of his "Excursion," has quoted the
following note to the "Hurricane," with the remark that it "is one of the
finest passages of modern English prose."

"A man is supposed to improve by going out into the world, by
visiting London. Artificial man does, he extends with his sphere;
but, alas! that sphere is microscopic; it is formed of minutiae, and
he surrenders his genuine vision to the artist, in order to embrace
it in his ken. His bodily senses grow acute, even to barren and
inhuman pruriency; while his mental become proportionally obtuse. The
reverse is the man of mind. He who is placed in the sphere of nature
and of God, might be a mock at Tattersall's and Brookes's, and a
sneer at St. James's: he would certainly be swallowed alive by the