lly Mrs. Maurice the kind sister, faithfully
endeavoring to be as a mother to her poor little nieces,--were
occasionally with him. All hours available for labor on his literary
tasks, he employed, almost exclusively I believe, on _Coeur-de-Lion_;
with what energy, the progress he had made in that Work, and in the art
of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best
testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it
had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;--indeed the very
solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes,
must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or
ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of wild gayety
break through. He works steadily at his task, with all the strength left
him; endures the past as he may, and makes gallant front against the
world. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," writes he to
his friend Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness,
but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of
my life. My children, however, are doing well; and the place is cheerful
and mild."

From Letters of this period I might select some melancholy enough; but
will prefer to give the following one (nearly the last I can give), as
indicative of a less usual temper:--

"_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_.
"VENTNOR, 7th December, 1843.

"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--My Irish Newspaper was _not_ meant as a hint that
I wanted a Letter. It contained an absurd long Advertisement,--some
project for regenerating human knowledge, &c. &c.; to which I prefixed
my private mark (a blot), thinking that you might be pleased to know of
a fellow-laborer somewhere in Tipperary.

"Your Letter, like the Scriptural oil,--(they had no patent lamps then,
and used the best oil, 7s. per gallon),--has made my face to shine.
There is but one person in the world, I shall not tell you who, from
whom a Letter would give me so much pleasure. It would be nearly as good
at Pekin, in the centre of the most enlightened Mandarins; but here at
Ventnor, where there are few Mandarins and no enlightenment,--fountains
in the wilderness, even were they miraculous, are nothing compared with
your handwriting. Yet it is sad that you should be so melancholy. I
often think that though Mercury was the pleasanter fellow, and probably