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I think he would have written something on this wise: "A sensible, unpretending house; a judicious and convenient disposition of the rooms. Nothing appears to be wanting to the accommodation and comfort of the inmates, who are evidently persons of refinement and culture. The size of the library shows the predominance of intellectual tastes in the family, and the general appearance of the interior-its dispositions and arrangements, indicate a love for domestic life, for refined pleasures, and the simple enjoyments of a quiet country home in the midst of a beautiful nature."

So, I say, the lamented Downing might have written; and it is as perfectly true of the Doctor's house and the Doctor's family, as though he had altered the plan in the way I have supposed he might. Indeed, I think the remarks better apply to the plan the Doctor and his wife fixed upon and carried out, and which I have given a sketch of for the inspection of the reader who takes pleasure in considering such plans. I am fond of studying them myself. I like to read Downing's books on country houses and cottages, and landscape gardening; and I think we in this country owe him a great debt of gratitude-for he has done more than any other person to awaken and extend

a taste for the beautiful in a direction which eminently tends to the improvement of the people in true culture, in happiness, and in goodness.

In considering this plan, the reader will please to note that the Doctor's study is a lean-to, built against the library, and is lighted from the roof. This allows the conservatory to be built around it in the way indicated in the sketch. In cold weather, a hot-water apparatus in the cellar warms the conservatory, the study, and the library— although in the latter a fire is also kept in the grate for its cheerful looks.

The consideration of this plan, as a whole, and especially the largeness of the library, the little study, the conservatory, the absence of a drawingroom proper, the music-room-in short, all the details will tell the judicious and thoughtful reader a good deal about the Doctor and his wife-their dispositions and tastes, and the ways and habits of the family.

Thus it often is that things which at first glance seem to be mere facts, dead and barren, become living, seminal, and fruitful-to those who think.

"O reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring:

O gentle reader! you would find

A tale in every thing."

CHAPTER VI.

HENRY REED.COLERIDGE ON WORDSWORTH'S VERSES.-THE DOCTOR'S THEORY OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND THE BRUTES, AND ALSO OF THE EDIBLE AND POTABLE UNIVERSE, AS PROPOUNDED TO PROFESSOR CLARE.

HENRY REED, Wordsworth's friend and genial editor, whose name calls up to the fancy of all who knew and loved him (and all loved him who knew him) the image of a man of most refined culture, of most intimate acquaintanceship with every thing choice in literature and art, of most pure and perfect taste and judgment for every thing graceful and beautiful, true and good; and more than all this, of a beauty of character such as is seldom seen and never surpassed-manly virtue (planting itself firmly on the ground of clearly seen principle to stand and withstand) united to a womanly tenderness and delicacy of moral feeling and a womanly quickness and rectitude of moral sentiment;-whose name recalls also the terrible images

of that afternoon of the 27th of September, 1854, when the ill-fated Arctic and her three hundred passengers (he among them) went down to a watery grave-images that will be ever vivid in the fancy of those who had dearly loved friends on board, although they have doubtless now grown dim in most others' minds (such is the effect of time, and of the intensity of our times, and the continual recurrence of similar catastrophes, the last one effacing the memory of the one that went before); whose name is now so well and widely known, by those who knew him not when in life, through those exquisite products of his mind, those fruits of his academic studies and labors, which the hand of fraternal piety has given to the world-not all it will give, let us hope, now that the Chinese embassy is ended ;-HENRY REED has a note upon those lines of Wordsworth which I have given at the end of the last chapter. It is in his edition of the poet's works. It is mostly indeed a quotation from Coleridge; and it is that quotation which I wish to quote, but as I quote it from Henry Reed's quotation, I cannot do so without being thus reminded of him-what he was, and of the way of his sad loss to the world. Peace to the memory of one of the best and gentlest of men!

"To have formed the habit," says Coleridge, "of looking at every thing not for what it is relative to the purposes and associations of men in general, but for the truths which it is suited to represent to contemplate objects as words and pregnant symbols ;-the advantages of this are so many, and so important, and so eminently calculated to excite and evolve the power of sound and connected reasoning, of distinct and clear conception, that there are few of Wordsworth's finest passages-and who of living poets can lay claim to half the number ?-that I repeat so often as that homely quatrain :

"O reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring;

O gentle reader! you would find

A tale in every thing."

Now the habit signalized by Coleridge is an eminent quality and a characteristic trait of the Doctor's mind. The universe of matter is to him only matter for reflection. He finds no interest in mere dead facts. To him indeed most facts are living, seminal, fruitful, or if not that, at least suggestive; but, if neither-if utterly dead and barren-they are to him as nothing.

The Doctor has however a way of talking some

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