drawing-room, or whatever the reader | very plain-to exercise all the practical chooses to call it. It was not fully seven feet six inches high, and in other respects pretty nearly of the same dimensions as the rustic hall below. There was, however, in a small recess, a library of perhaps 300 volumes, which seemed to consecrate the room as the poet's study and composing-room, and such it occasionally was. But far oftener he both studied, as I found, and composed, on the high-road." De Quincey had travelled with the family of Coleridge (who himself could not then go) to Grasmere, and his picture of the family at Dove Cottage is delightful. While the young man of twenty-two stands trembling, the figure of the "tallish man" emerges to salute him with cordial welcome, and after him came the ladies. "The foremost, a tall young woman, with the most winning expression upon her features that I had ever beheld, made a slight courtesy, and advanced to me, presenting her hand with so frank an air that all embarrassment must have fled in a moment before the native goodness of her manner. This was Mrs. Wordsworth. She was now the mother of two children, a son and a daughter; and she furnished a remarkable proof of how possible it is for a woman neither handsome nor even comely, according to the rigor of criticism-nay, generally pronounced power and fascination of beauty through the more compensatory charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect, and purity of heart speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements. Immediately behind her moved a lady much shorter, much slighter, and perhaps in all other respects as different from her in personal characteristics as could have been wished for the most effective contrast. 'Her face was of Egyptian brown'-rarely in a woman of English birth had I seen a more determinate gypsy tan. The eyes were not soft, as Mrs. Wordsworth's, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried in their nature." But the portrait of Dorothy Wordsworth is too well known for me to make room for its full length. The world has shared in the vision of her busy, thrifty hands making ready the cottage which De Quincey is to enter as the Wordsworths leave it. Dorothy was the "Martha" of all that circle of dreamers, albeit not without that sympathy with the poet which led Wordsworth to attribute to her so much of the influence which humanized his poetry. Then came Coleridge. The Wordsworths were now (1809-10) living at Allan Bank, a mile away, and De Quincey in Dove Cottage. Coleridge lived for a long | great man. One of his friends has spoktime at Allan Bank as a guest, otherwise fed by De Quincey's library. The romance of Mignon is hardly more pathetically beautiful than that which passed in this vale at that time. De Quincey, heart hungry, found in little Kate Wordsworth all that divine beauty and sweetness which Nature was aiming at in her flowers, streamlets, and rosy dawns. To walk these grassy lanes, to watch the growth of her mind, to listen to her lyrical voice-this was his library, his study, his heaven. He had often known what it was to wander all night, cold and nearly starved, along the streets of London, huddling with the wretched of both sexes under any rude shelter from sleet and rain; he had touched, albeit morally unscathed, the very floor of the pit of poverty and every horror; little by little he had toiled upward, and the benediction of his life, the spirit of his dawn after the long black night, was little Kate, nestling in his heart, interpreting for him the meaning of the world in her unconscious grace and joyousness. At sunset on June 4, 1812, she went to bed in good health; at dawn she was dead. "Never," wrote her unhappy friend-"never from the foundations of those mighty hills was there so fierce a convulsion of grief as mastered my faculties on receiving that heart-shattering news." His visits were no longer to Allan Bank, but to the little grave. Many a night of frantic grief did De Quincey pass on that grave. Then she rose again for him, and as he walked the fields her form appeared, but always on the opposite side of the field. "Almost always she carried a basket on her head; and usually the first hint upon which the figure arose commenced in wild plants, such as tall ferns, or the purple flowers of the fox-glove; but whatever might be the colors of the forms, uniformly the same little full-formed figure arose, uniformly dressed in the little blue bed-gown and black skirt of Westmoreland, and uniformly with the air of advancing motion." When this after-glow of a beautiful life episode sank, up rose in its place the dark phantasm which lurked in the drug with which a weary heart and worn body sought to still their pain. Here, too, was passed another life of alternating brilliancy and tragedy-that of Hartley Coleridge. But for the evil habit that preyed upon him he had been a VOL LXII.-No. 368.-12 66 en of him as sometimes like the lofty column which the simoom raises in its mighty breath; the inspiration of great passion ceasing, there remained only the desert sand over which the serpent crawls. Poor Hartley waged unceasing war with his serpent, but never quite conquered it. The cottage where he lived, Nab Scarr, still attracts visitors. Wordsworth loved him. When he heard that Hartley was dead (January 6, 1849), he was profoundly moved. The day following," writes Hartley's brother, "he walked over with me to Grasmere, to the church-yard-a plain inclosure of the olden time, surrounding the old village church, in which lay the remains of his wife's sister, his nephew, and his beloved daughter. Here, having desired the sexton to measure out the ground for his own and for Mrs. Wordsworth's grave, he bade him measure out the space of a third grave for my brother, immediately beyond. When I lifted up my eyes from my daughter's grave,' he exclaimed, he was standing there..... Keep the ground for us: we are old people, and it can not be for long.'" THE FAME OF THE CITY. A GREAT rich city of power and pride, The shops full of skill, and the schools full of teachers. The people were proud of their opulent town; To the profit and praise the people sought, That was wafted at last from distant climes. They had never derided, but praised instead; OLD-TIME LIFE IN A QUAKER TOWN. AME ELIZABETH SHIPLEY had a Dedream. ing of the Society of Friends held in that peninsula that lies between the Delaware and Chesapeake bays. It was in the spring-time, when the meadows were clad with bright green, when the woodlands were soft with tender leaves unfolding timidly in the generous warmth of the sun, when the birds sang, when the cocks crowed lustily, when the wren chattered under the eaves, and all the air was burdened with the sweetness of the apple blossoms, among which the bees swarmed with drowsy hum. So she set forth on her journey, jogging southward along the old King's Road. She passed many streams of sweet water untainted with lime, where the little fish darted here and there as her old gray farm horse went splashing across their pebbly reaches. After a journey of sixteen or eighteen miles she came to a roaring stream that cut through tree-covered highlands, and came raging and rushing down over great rocks and bowlders. The cawing of crows in the woods, and a solitary eagle that went sailing through the air, was all the life that broke the solitude of the place. As she hesitated on the bank before entering the rough-looking ford, marked at each end by a sapling pole to which a red rag was fastened, the whole scene seemed strangely familiar to her. After she had "Friend, what country is this that crossed the stream she began ascending thou hast taken me to ?" She was living at the time-which was in the year of grace 1730-at Ridley Township, near the good town of Philadelphia. Her husband, William, who was of honest, plodding English country folk, was not one that a dream would lie upon; for such natures as his are of hard, dry substance, in which flowers of imagination do not bloom freely, and from which the dews of night pass readily in the open daylight. But Elizabeth's dream lay upon her mind the next day, and she told it to her husband. It was thus: She was travelling on horseback, along a high-road, and after a time she came to a wild and turbulent stream, which she forded with difficulty; beyond this stream she mounted a long and steep hill-side; when she arrived at its summit a great view of surpassing beauty spread out before her. The hill whereon she stood melted away in the distance into a broad savannah, treeless and covered with luxuriant grass. On either side of the hill ran a streamupon one, the wild water-course which she had just crossed; upon the other, a snakelike river that wound sluggishly along in the sunlight. Then for the first time she saw that a guide accompanied her, and she spoke to him. "Elizabeth Shipley," answered he, "beneath thee lieth a new land and a fruitful, and it is the design of Divine Providence that thou shouldst enter in thereto, thou and thy people, and ye shall be enriched even unto the seventh generation. Therefore, leave the place where now thou dwellest, and enter into and take possession of this land, even as the children of Israel took possession of the land of Canaan." He finished speaking, and as she turned to look, he vanished, and she awoke. William Shipley bade his wife think no more of her dreams, for if one pulls up blue beans after they have sprouted, one's pot is like to go empty. So, meeting with no encouragement, after some days the sharpness of her dream became dulled against the hard things of everyday life. A year passed, and Elizabeth received a hill up which the highway led, that feeling strong upon her which one has at times of having lived through such a scene before. At the top of the hill she came to a clearing in the forest where an old Swede had built him a hut, and begun to till the land. Here the woods unfolded like a curtain, and beneath her she saw the hill melt away into level meadows that spread far to a great river sparkling in the sunlight away in the distance. Upon one hand ran a sluggish river curving through the meadows; on the other, the brawling stream she had just crossed. She sat in silence looking at the scene, while the little barefoot Swedish children gathered at the door of the hut, looking with blue-eyed wonder at the stranger; then clasping her hands, she cried aloud, "Behold, it is the land of my vision, and here will I pitch my tent!" Over the wooded hill-sides and across a Divine call to go and preach at a meet- the grassy savannahs which Dame Ship couple of miles, they came to a promontory of fast land, "where was fine anchorage for ships." And here they built a fort of mud and logs, and then erected a few temporary dwellings, calling the place Christianaham. The river they named the Christiana, or Christeen, in honor of their infant queen. ley saw first in her dream and afterward | Delaware, and sailing up the stream for a in the reality, now spreads a busy and populous city, of which she and her husband were the chief founders. The smoke from factory chimneys streaks the air with black ribbons of vapor; on the breeze come the clatter, the rattle, and the hammering of the great ship-yards that now lie along the banks of the slow-running, snake-like river that she saw in her dream; while beside the other brawling stream stand cotton, woollen, paper, flour, and powder mills. Everywhere is the busy excitement and teeming rush of close population. That was the sower, that the seed, and this the fruit that grew from it-the city of Wilmington, the metropolis of Delaware. But there was a settlement older by a hundred years than the one that Elizabeth Shipley and her husband helped to build up. It was the mother of the modern town, and then stood some little distance from the site of the proposed Quaker village. It was a settlement of queer old-fashioned Swedes, a collection of steeproofed little houses, forming the old village of Christianaham. It was in the autumn of the year 1637 when the good ships Key of Calmar and The Griffin sailed from Gottenburg, in Sweden, arriving in the Delaware--then called the South River-in the spring of the following year. The promontory on which they landed they named Paradise Point. The chief of this little expedition bore a name well known in the annals of the New Netherlands-Peter Minuit, first Governor of the Dutch West India Company's Provinces in the Americas, also first Governor of the Swedish colonies in this country; for he had had a disagree ment with the honorable company, and had offered his services to Gustavus Adolphus, which offer had been gladly accepted by the Swedish monarch. Paradise Point was thought to be an unlucky spot for implanting a new colony; for it was here that, some years previously, De Vries and his infant settlement of Dutchmen had been cut off, and had perished to a man by the hands of the Indians. Accordingly, the adventurers directed their course further northward along the broad river that stretched out before them. The next day they came to a tributary river that opened into the The Swedish provinces had but three Governors before they passed under another rule. The one succeeding Peter Minuit was Johan Printz, a lieutenantcolonel in the Swedish army. He was a man of great stature, and was said to weigh nearly five hundred pounds; a fierce man, quick to take a passion, and slow in forgiving. From his mustached lips great military oaths rolled like bullets on a drum-head, much to the terror of his family and the household servants. As his seat of government he took the island of Tinicum, lying in the Delaware River some distance below the settlement of Wicacoe, now a part of the city of Philadelphia, and here he built himself a fine house, with gardens and lawns, which he called Printz Hall." The great, dark, rambling building stood there as late as the year 1823, a nucleus for superstitious stories and thrilling traditions that had accumulated for nearly two hundred years. Him succeeded Johan Claudii Rising, the last of the Swedish rulers, who once more removed the seat of government to the town of Christianaham. Early in the time of the Swedish rule the Dutchmen from New Amsterdam had come intruding with a claim to prior settlement. A message dated Thursday, 6th of May, 1638, came to Peter Minuit, saying, "I, William Kieft, Director-General of the New Netherlands, residing in the island of Manhattan in the Fort Amsterdam, under the government that appertains to the high and mighty States-General of the United Netherlands and to the West India Company privileged by the Senate - Chamber in Amsterdam, make known to thee, Peter Minuit, who stylest thyself Commander in the service of her Majesty the Queen of Sweden, that the whole South River of the New Netherlands, both the upper and the lower, has been our property for many years, occupied by our forts, and sealed by our blood,” etc. (alluding to the massacre of De Vries in 1632). To this protest against the Swe ty. The matter did not rest here, however, and in Johan Printz's time the Dutch built a fort on the South River and victualled it, in spite of the deep oaths of the gigantic Swede. Then came Johan Claudii Rising, bringing with him fierce discord, that raged during all his short rule, and ended only in his defeat by the doughty Peter Stuyvesant. The Dutch, however, did not hold these provinces long. A few years and they, together with the New Netherlands, were taken possession of by England. They were afterward granted to William Penn |