ge stood on the opposite, or south
side, of the road from Munster House, on the ground immediately beyond
Munster Terrace, which was built a short time prior to its demolition.
This cottage, for it was no more, was a favourite retirement of the late
Duke of York. An affecting story is told by George Colman the younger,
connected with his own feelings while on a visit here. He had lost sight
of an old college friend, the Rev. Robert Lowth, son of the Bishop of
London, from the year 1781 to 1822 (one and forty years!), when Colman
was surprised and pleased by the receipt of the following letter, written
and left upon his table by a gentleman who had called when he was not at
home:--

"_August_ 16, 1822.

"DEAR COLMAN,--It may be some five-and-thirty years since we met, and
I believe as near forty years as may be since I was promoted from my
garret, No. 3 Peckwater, into your _ci-devant_ rooms in the old Quad,
on which occasion I bought your things. Of all your household
furniture I possess but one article, which I removed with myself to
my first house and castle in Essex, as a very befitting parsonage
sideboard, viz., a mahogany table, with two side drawers, and which
still 'does the state some service,' though not of plate. But I have
an article of yours on a smaller scale, a certain little flat
mahogany box, furnished partially, I should say, with cakes of paint,
which probably you over-looked, or undervalued as a _vade-mecum_, and
left. And, as an exemplification of the great vanity of over-anxious
care, and the safe preservation _per contra_, in which an article may
possibly be found without any care at all, that paint-box is still
_in statu quo_, at this present writing, having run the gauntlet, not
merely of my bachelor days, but of the practical cruelties of my
thirteen children, all alive and merry, thank God! albeit as unused
and as little disposed to preserve their own playthings or chattels
from damage as children usually are, yet it survives! 'The reason
why I cannot tell,' unless I kept it 'for the dangers it had passed.'

"Though I have been well acquainted with you publicly nearly ever
since our Christ Church days, our habits, pursuits, and callings,
having cast us into different countries and tracts, we have not, I
think met since the date I speak of.