the priests, if they can, may replant
them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never
make them grow." But Wordsworth to-day is reverenced by the nation that
could barb no arrow sharp enough to shoot at him. The evening sky that
bends above Warsaw is red with the watch-fires of her old warfare
bursting anew from their smouldering ashes. And the oaks that doughty
Paine fancied himself to have levelled show not so much as a scratch
upon their sturdy trunks. Nay, I do not forget that even Charles Lamb
was fiercely belabored by his own generation. So, when upon me you pass
sentence of speedy death, I assure you that I shall live a thousand
years, and there is nobody in the world who can demonstrate that I am in
the wrong. Even if after a while I disappear, it proves nothing; you
cannot tell whether I am really submerged, or only lying in the trough
of the sea to mount the crest of the coming wave. Till the thousandth
year proves me moribund, I shall stoutly maintain that I am immortal.

Concerning Charles Lamb the less you say the better. It is easy to build
up a reputation for sagacity by offering incense to the gods who are
already shrined. Of course there is a difference between us. A pretty
rout you would make, if there were not. But, for all your adoration of
Charles Lamb, I dare say he would have liked me a great deal better than
he would you. Would? Why should I intrench myself in hypothesis? _Does_
he not? When I knock at the door of the Inner Temple, does he not fling
it wide open, and does not his face welcome me? When the red fire glows
on the hearth, have I not sat far into the night, Bridget sitting beside
me with heaven's own light shining in her beautiful eyes, and above her
dear head the white gleam of guardian angels hovering tenderly? And when
Elia arches his brows, and lowers at me his storm-clouds, which I do not
mind for the sunshine that will not be hidden behind them,--when in the
sweet, play of June lights and shadows, and the golden haze of
Indian-summer, I forget even the kingly words that go ringing through
the land, waking the mountain-echo,--when I look out upon this gray
afternoon, and see no leaden skies, no pinched and sullen fields, but
green paths, gem-bestrewn from autumn's jewelled hand, and warm light
glinting through the apple-trees under which he stood that soft October
day, till

"Conscious seems the frozen sod
And beechen slope whereon he trod,"--

O