his poem Musgrave
asked Longfellow to dine at Edenhall, and "picked a crow" with him on
the conclusion of the poem, which represents the "Luck" to have been
broken, which Sir George considered a flight of imagination quite
transcending all permissible poetical licence.]

After what I have written of Sir George and the holy well, which we so
unfortunately moved from its proper site, it will be readily imagined
that he attached no small importance to the safe keeping of the
"Luck;" and truly he did so. But instead of simply locking it up,
where he might feel sure it could neither break nor fall, he would
show it to all visitors, and not content with that, would insist
on their taking it into their hands to examine and handle it. He
maintained that otherwise there was no fair submission to the test of
luck, which was intended by the inscription. It would have been mere
cowardly prevarication to lock it away under circumstances which took
the matter out of the dominion of "luck" altogether. I wonder
that under such circumstances it has not fallen, for the nervous
trepidation of the folks who were made to handle it may be imagined!

I made another friend at Penrith in the person of a man as strongly
contrasted with Sir George Musgrave as two north-country Englishmen
could well be. This was a Dr. Nicholson, who has died within the last
few months, to my great regret, for I had promised myself the great
pleasure of taking him by the hand yet once again before starting on
the journey on which we may, or may not meet. He was my senior by a
few years, but not by many. Nicholson was a man of very extensive
reading and of profound Biblical learning. It may be deemed surprising
by others, as it was, and is, to me, that such a man should have been
an earnest and thoroughly convinced Swedenborgian--but such was the
case. And I can conscientiously give this testimony to the excellence
of that creed--that it produced in the person of its learned
north-country disciple at least one truly good and amiable man. Dr.
Nicholson was emphatically such in all the relations of life. He was
the good and loving husband of a very charming wife, the unremittingly
careful and affectionate father of a large family, a delightful host
at his own table, an excellent and instructive companion over a cigar
(hardly correctly alluded to in the singular number!) and a most
_jucundus comes_ in a tramp over the hills.

Amusing to me still is the contrast bet