unt writes her in a cheerful way. Some of
us with a less keen perception of cheerful situations, or with less
ability to surmount calamities would find it rather difficult to be as
cheerful as Hunt seemed to be.

Hunt's correspondence, both published and unpublished, bears testimony
to his cheerfulness even when the clouds were the darkest. Speaking of
the two volumes of _Correspondence_ edited in 1862 by his son Thornton,
Edmund Ollier, the publisher, thus bears tribute to the man and his
buoyancy of spirit even under very trying circumstances. In these
volumes, he says, "we see him as those who knew him familiarly saw him
in his everyday life. Sometimes overclouded with the shadow of
affliction, but more often bright and hopeful, and at all times taking a
keen delight in beautiful things; in the exhaustless world of books and
art; in the rising genius of young authors; in the immortal language of
music; in trees, and flowers, and old memorial nooks of London and its
suburbs; in the sunlight which came, as he used to say, like a visitor
out of heaven, glorifying humble places; in the genial intercourse of
mind with mind ... A heart and soul so gifted could not but share
largely in the happiness with which the Divine Ruler of the Universe has
compensated our sorrows; and he had loving hearts about him to the last,
to sweeten all."

Hunt's gentleness and cheerfulness are shown in his essays, as well as
in his poetry. Perhaps none of his essays evidences these qualities of
his heart and mind more forcibly than "A Day by the Fire," which was
written for the _Reflector_ in 1812, when he was twenty-eight years of
age. "I am one of those that delight in a fireside," he begins, at once
thereby telling us that he loves kindliness and cheerfulness. For no man
who loves a fire on the hearth, especially a fire made of old wood, can
be a sour old curmudgeon. It is as impossible as it is for one not to
love a sweet little girl.

Hunt would have his fire left quite to itself, without a tea-kettle,
"bubbling and loud-hissing," which "throws up a steamy column," as
Cowper tells it. Such a fire "has full room to breathe and to blaze,"
and he can poke it as he pleases. "Poke it as I please!" he continues.
"Think, benevolent reader, think of the pride and pleasure of having in
your hand that awful, but at the same time artless, weapon, a poker; of
putting it into the proper bar, gently levering up the coals, and seeing
the instant and