being survivor, the pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, etc.

I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i. e., to have three times as much real time-time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys-their conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling that some good has happened to us.

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON.

April 6, 1825.

My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emancipation, that I have scarce

steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter. I am free, B. B.-free as air!

"The little bird that wings the sky

Knows no such liberty."

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I came home for ever!

I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a long letter, and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly, that for a few days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change; but it is becoming daily more natural to me. I went and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three-years' desk yester morning; and, deuce take me, if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads—at leaving them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me any thing but pleasure. . . .

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

May, 1825.

I write post-haste to ensure a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratulations! I may now date from the sixth week of my "Hegira, or Flight from Leadenhall." I have lived so much in it, that a summer seems already past; and

't is but early May yet with you and other people. How I look down on the slaves and drudges of the world! Its inhabitants are a vast cotton-web of spin-spin-spinners! O the carking cares! O the money-grubbers! Sempiternal muckworms!

Some d-d people are come in, and I must finish abruptly. By d-d I only mean deuced. . . .

CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TO MR. AND MRS. EDWARD MOXON.*

EDMONTON, August, 1833.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon :--Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship dictated. "I am full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes," she says; but you shall see it. . . . I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I got home from Dover Street, by 'eavens, half as sober as a judge. I am turning over a new leaf, as I hope you will now

[The turn of the leaf presented the following from Mary Lamb:]

*Miss Emma Islola, one of the Lambs' dearest friends, had just been married to Mr. Edward Moxon. At the time of the wedding, Mary Lamb was suffering one of the worst of her illnesses.

My Dear Emma and Edward Moxon-Accept my sincere congratulations, and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into good set words. The dreary blank of unanswered questions which I ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the weddingday by Mrs. W. taking a glass of wine, and, with a total change of countenance, begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my eyes, and all care from my heart.

[At the foot of the letter is the following by Charles : ]

Dears, again :-Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which we were having, after walking to Wright's and purchasing shoes. We pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.

C. L.

Never was such a calm or such a recovery. 'T is her own words, undictated.

BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON TO WILLIAM WORDS

WORTH.

LONDON, October 16, 1842.

In the words of our dear departed friend, Charles Lamb, "You good-for-nothing old Lake-poet," what has become of you? Do you remember his saying that at my table in 1819, with "Jerusalem " towering behind us in the painting room, and Keats and your friend Monkhouse of the party? Do you remember Lamb voting me absent, and then making a speech descanting on my excellent port, and proposing a vote of thanks? Do you remember his then voting me present—I had never left my chair-and informing me of what had been done during my retirement, and hoping I was duly sensible of the honor? Do you remember the Commissioner (of Stamps and Taxes) who asked you if you did not think Milton a great genius, and Lamb getting up and asking leave with a candle to examine his phrenological development? Do you remember poor dear Lamb, whenever the Commissioner was equally profound, saying: “My son John went to bed with his breeches on," to the dismay of the learned man? Do you remem