Le had ever read to human justice and pity. The man's real name was, I think, Hatfield. And amongst the papers were two separate correspondences, of some length, with two young women, apparently of superior condition in life (one the daughter of an English clergyman), whom this villain had deluded by marriage, and, after some cohabitation, abandoned,-one of them with a family of young children. Great was the emotion of Coleridge when he recurred to his remembrance of these letters, and bitter, almost vindictive-was the indignation with which he spoke of Hatfield. One set of letters appeared to have been written under too certain a knowledge of his villany to whom they were addressed; though still relying on some possible remains of humanity, or perhaps (the poor writer might think) on some lingering preference for herself. The other set was even more distressing; they were written under the first conflicts of suspicions, alternately repelling with warmth the gloomy doubts which were fast arising, and then yielding to their afflicting evidence; raving in one page under the misery of alarm, in another courting the delusions of hope, and luring back the perfidious deserter,here resigning herself to despair, and there again labouring to show that all might yet be well. Coleridge said often, in looking back upon that frightful exposure of human guilt and misery, that the man who, when pursued by these heartrending apostrophes, and with this litany of anguish sounding in his ears, from despairing women and from famishing children, could yet find it possible to enjoy the calm pleasures of a Lake tourist, and deliberately to hunt for the picturesque, must have been a fiend of that order which fortunately does not often emerge amongst men. It is painful to remember that, in those days, amongst the

multitudes who ended their career in the same ignomin ous way, and the majority for offences connected with the forgery of bank notes, there must have been a considerable number who perished from the very opposite cause―viz., because they felt, too passionately and profoundly for prudence, the claims of those who looked up to them for support. One common scaffold confounds the most flinty hearts and the tenderest. However, in this instance, it was in some measure the heartless part of Hatfield's conduct which drew upon him his ruin for the Cumberland jury honestly declared their unwillingness to hang him for having forged a frank; and both they, and those who refused to aid his escape when first apprehended, were reconciled to this harshness entirely by what they heard of his conduct to their injured young fellow-country

woman.

She, meantime, under the name of The Beauty of Buttermere, became an object of interest to all England; melodramas were produced in the London suburban* theatres

*In connexion with this mention of " suburban" and minor theatres, it is but fair to cite a passage expressly relating to Mary of Butter mere from the Seventh Book (entitled "Residence in London") of Wordsworth's "Prelude :"

'Here, too, were forms and pressures of the time,

Rough, bold, as Grecian comedy display'd

When Art was young; dramas of living men,
And recent things yet warm with life; a sea-fight,

Shipwreck, or some domestic incident

Divulged by Truth, and magnified by Fame;

Such as the daring brotherhood of late

Set forth, too serious theme for that light place

I mean, O distant friend! a story drawn

From our own ground-the Maid of Buttermere;
And how, unfaithful to a virtuous wife,
Deserted and deceived, the spoiler came

upon her story; and for many a year afterwards, shoals of tourists crowded to the secluded lake, and the little homely cabaret, which had been the scene of her brief romance. It was fortunate for a person in her distressing situation, that her home was not in a town: the few and simple neighbours, who had witnessed her imaginary elevation, having little knowledge of worldly feelings, never for an instant connected with her disappointment any sense of the ludicrous, or spoke of it as a calamity to which her vanity might have co-operated. They treated it as unmixed injury, reflecting shame upon nobody but the wicked perpetrator. Hence, without much trial to her womanly sensibilities, she found herself able to resume her

And woo'd the artless daughter of the hills,
And wedded her, in cruel mockery

Of love and marriage bonds. These words to thee
Must needs bring back the moment when we first,
Ere the broad world rang with the maiden's name,
Beheld her serving at the cottage inn,
Both stricken, as she enter'd or withdrew,
With admiration of her modest mien

And carriage, mark'd by unexampled grace.
We since that time not unfamiliarly

Have seen her-her discretion have observed,
Her just opinions, delicate reserve,

Her patience and humility of mind,
Unspoil'd by commendation and th' excess
Of public notice-an offensive light

To a meek spirit suffering inwardly."

The "distant friend" here apostrophized is Coleridge, then at Malta. But it is fair to record this memorial of the fair mountaineer-going perhaps as much beyond the public estimate of her pretensions as my own was below it. It should be added, that William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (to whom the writer appeals, as in general sympathy with himself) had seen Mary more frequently, and had conversed with her much more freely than myself.