OF

amiable, most upright. For thirty years she | "I have only got your note just now per has been tried by me, and on her behaviour negligentiam periniqui Moxoni.”

It

I would stake my soul. O, if you can recom-
mend her, how would I love you — if I could
love you better! Pray, pray, recommend
her. She is as good a human creature,
next to my sister, perhaps, the most exem-
plary female I ever knew. Moxon tells me
you would like a letter from me; you shall
have one.
any nonsense which you usually olerate from
C. Lamb. Need he add loves to wife, sister,
and all? Poor Mary is ill again, after a
short lucid interval of four or five months.
In short, I may call her half dead to me.
How good you are to me! Yours with fer-
vour of friendship, for ever,

The following little note has a mournful
interest, as Lamb's last scrap of writing.
is dated on the very day on which erysipelas
followed the accident, apparently trifling,
which, five days after, terminated in his
This I cannot mingle up with death. It is addressed to the wife of his
oldest surviving friend: —

C. L.

"If you want references, the Bishop of Carlisle may be one. L's sister (as good as she, she cannot be better though she tries) educated the daughters of the late Earl of Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome annuity on her for life. In short, all the family are a sound rock."

A quiet dinner at the British Museum with Mr. Cary once a month, to which Lamb looked forward with almost boyish eagerness, was now almost his only festival. In a little note to his host about this time, he hints at one of his few physical tastes.—“We are thinking," he says, "of roast shoulder of mutton with onion sauce, but I scorn prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host.". The following, after these festivities had been interrupted by Mr. Cary's visit to the Conti-: nent, is their last memorial:

TO MR. CARY.

to

"Sept. 12, 1834. "By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the grace."

"Dear C.,- We, long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish, and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you have seen, not tasted any of these things.

“Yours, very glad to chain you back again to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecæ, "C. and M. LAMB.

TO MRS. DYER.

"Dec. 22nd, 1834.

"Dear Mrs. Dyer, I am very uneasy about a Book which I either have lost or left at your house on Thursday. It was the book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam's, while the tripe was frying. It is called Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum,' but it is an English book. I think I left it in the parlour. It is Mr. Cary's book, and I would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. I am quite anxious about it. If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again. "With kindest love to Mr. Dyer and all, "Yours truly,

C. LAMB."

CHAPTER THE LAST.

LAMB'S WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMPARED WITH THE
EVENINGS OF HOLLAND HOUSE HIS DEAD COM-
PANIONS, DYER, GODWIN, THELWALL, HAZLITT,
BARNES, HAYDON, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS-
LAST GLIMPSES OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB.

"Gone; all are gone, the old familiar faces!"

Two circles of rare social enjoyment- differing as widely as possible in all external circumstances - but each superior in its kind to all others, during the same period frankly opened to men of letters now existing only in the memories of those who are fast departing from us-may, without offence, be placed side by side in grateful recollection; they are the dinners at Holland House and the suppers of "the Lambs" at the Temple, Great Russell-street, and Islington. Strange, at first, as this juxta-position may seem, a