and shame forgotten, that he might be delivered from their reproachful pity. In the end, he betook himself to a cottage near Grassmere, and where, on the 6th of January, 1840, he died, not, we trust, without penitence and faith in the Redeemer of guilty and wretched men.
Hartley Coleridge tells us, in one of his confessions, that his first resort to wine was for the purpose of seeking relief from the sting of defeated ambition. This temptation was necessarily brief in its duration; for time would gradually extract this sting from his sensitive mind and heart. This, therefore, was not the doorway of the path which led him down to the gulf. The "wine parties" of Oxford were the scenes in which Hartley Coleridge was betrayed and lost. We have but a momentary glimpse of these things in the biography; but that glimpse is sufficient. It reveals to us what in popular language is called a gay scene, but which to us. and in reality, is sombre as death. In the midst of it there sits a bright-eyed, enthusiastic, impetuous young man, heated with repeated draughts of wine, urged by his fellow revellers to drink deeper, yielding readily to their solicitations, and pouring forth all the while a stream of continuous and sparkling discourse, which fascinated his companions by its wit, its facility and its beauty. Alas! how many of those companions, it may be, are with him in graves where men can only weep and be silent!
It has often been said, and with much truth, that there is no more dangerous gift for a young man than
