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surrounded; on the other hand the path led below the forge field on to 

 the forge. Oh ! that rough path beside the Greta! how much of my child- 

 hood, of my girlhood, of my youth was spent there ! There was a room," 

 she continues, after describing the arrangement of the house, "which used 

 to be my father's study, called the organ-room, from an old organ which 

 Mr. Jackson placed there." But Coleridge was not much at Greta Hall 

 after the year 1804. He fancied the climate did not suit his health, and 

 went to Malta on a visit. While there he obtained the place as Secretary 

 to the Governor, and received for his services ;^8oo a year. We next 

 hear of him at Syracuse, then at Naples, then at Rome and Leghorn, 

 returning to Keswick in 1806 — though no longer to be much his home, 

 for he was oftener staying at Grasmere with the Wordsworths. 



" How gravely and earnestly used S. T. C.," says his daughter, 

 speaking of these times, "and W. Wordsworth and my uncle Southey, to 

 discuss the affairs of the nation, as if it all came home to their business 

 and bosoms ; as if it were their private concern ! Men do not canvass 

 these matters now-a-days, I think, quite in the same tone. Domestic 

 concerns absorb their deeper feelings ; national ones are treated more as 

 things aloof — the speculative, rather than the practical." She has 

 interesting reminiscences, too, of her father's domestic notions, of this 

 period. " My father had particular feelings and fancies about dress. He 

 could not abide the scarlet socks which Edith and I wore. I remember 

 going to him, when mamma had just dressed me in a new stuff frock : he 

 took me up and set me down again without a caress. I thought he disliked 

 the dress. He much liked everything feminine and domestic, pretty and 

 becoming, but not fine-ladyish. My uncle Southey was all for gay, 

 bright, cheerful colours, and even declared he had a taste for the grand 

 in half jest. Mr. Wordsworth, too, loved all that was rich and picturesque, 

 light and free, in clothing ; he wished that white dresses were banished, 

 and that our peasantry wore blue and scarlet, and other warm colours, 

 instead of sombre dingy black, which converts a crowd that miglit be 

 ornamental in the landscape, into a swarm of magnified ants. My father 

 admired white clothing, because he looked at it in reference to woman, 

 as expressive of her delicacy and purity, not merely as a component part 

 of a general picture." 



