by ROBERT SOUTHEY. CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: london , paris , new york & melbourne . 1887....

It was in 1824 that Robert Southey, then fifty years old, published “Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society,” a book in two octavo volumes with plates illustrating lake scenery. There were later editions of the book in 1829, and in 1831, and there was an edition in one volume in 1837, at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. These dialogues with a meditative and patriotic ghost form separate dissertations upon various questions that concern the progress o

“ Posso aver certezza , e non paura , Che raccontando quel che m’ è accaduto , Il ver dirò , nè mi sarà creduto .” “Orlando Innamorato,” c. 5. st. 53. It was during that melancholy November when the death of the Princess Charlotte had diffused throughout Great Britain a more general sorrow than had ever before been known in these kingdoms; I was sitting alone at evening in my library, and my thoughts had wandered from the book before me to the circumstances which made this national calamity be f

On the following evening when my spiritual visitor entered the room, that volume of Dr. Wordsworth’s ecclesiastical biography which contains his life was lying on the table beside me. “I perceive,” said he, glancing at the book, “you have been gathering all you can concerning me from my good gossiping chronicler, who tells you that I loved milk and fruit and eggs, preferred beef to young meats, and brown bread to white; was fond of seeing strange birds and beasts, and kept an ape, a fox, a wease

Inclination would lead me to hibernate during half the year in this uncomfortable climate of Great Britain, where few men who have tasted the enjoyments of a better would willingly take up their abode, if it were not for the habits, and still more for the ties and duties which root us to our native soil. I envy the Turks for their sedentary constitutions, which seem no more to require exercise than an oyster does or a toad in a stone. In this respect, I am by disposition as true a Turk as the Gr

The last conversation had left a weight upon me, which was not lessened when I contemplated the question in solitude. I called to mind the melancholy view which Young has taken of the world in his unhappy poem: “A part how small of the terraqueous globe Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste, Rocks, deserts, frozen seas and burning sands, Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death. Such is earth’s melancholy map! But, far More sad, this earth is a true map of man.” Sad as this representat

I had retired to my library as usual after dinner, and while I was wishing for the appearance of my ghostly visitor he became visible. “Behold me to your wish!” said he. “Thank you,” I replied, “for those precious words.” Sir Thomas More .—Wherefore precious? Montesinos .—Because they show that spirits who are in bliss perceive our thoughts;—that that communion with the departed for which the heart yearns in its moods of intensest feeling is in reality attained when it is desired. Sir Thomas Mor

I was in my library, making room upon the shelves for some books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous station others which were of less value and in worse dress, when Sir Thomas entered. You are employed, said he, to your heart’s content. Why, Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant society, what have you to covet or desire? Montesinos .—Nothing, except more books. Sir Thomas More .— “ Crescit , indulgens sibi , dirus hydrops .”

Montesinos .—Here Sir Thomas is the opinion which I have attempted to maintain concerning the progress and tendency of society, placed in a proper position, and inexpugnably entrenched here according to the rules of art, by the ablest of all moral engineers. Sir Thomas More .—Who may this political Achilles be whom you have called in to your assistance? Montesinos .—Whom Fortune rather has sent to my aid, for my reading has never been in such authors. I have endeavoured always to drink from the