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A SNUG COTTAGE.

27

our great aim should be to fulfil the ends for which we were created; that is to say, develop to the utmost the nature which God has given us; and I cannot think of Heaven as a place, but as a state of Being. How I long to see you again, my dear friend. I count the days till your return."

Henry Carwardine-Anne Gilchrist's uncle-in one of his numerous letters to James Gillman (Coleridge's friend), tells us something about his niece:

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November, 1847.

My sister (Mrs. Burrows) has been at her old quarters-No. 10, Heathcote Street, for four or five weeks--but since the death of her son, having no object for living in London, and her daughter not liking it, they are both coming to live at a snug cottage of mine, close to the entrance gate of the Priory. I am going to add a bedroom on the ground-floor; for she cannot mount a stair." [Mrs. Burrows suffered from rheumatism for twenty-five years.] "She will be near her own family and many of her early friends, and I shall be able in many ways to render her assistance, and minister to her little comforts and requirements; and I think we can get her into a bath-chair in fine weather, and wheel her about the old Priory grounds-a mode of enjoying air and exercise which she cannot obtain in London. All this cannot take place till after Midsummer next. . . The pleasure with which she [Mrs. Burrows] looks forward to her residence at Colne, is not unmixed with dread of the painful effort of the journey; however, she will make the attempt about August [1848]

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by which time I hope to have everything ready to afford her as much comfort as her sad state admits of."

Annie Burrows writes to Julia Newton from Colne Priory, September 24, 1848:

"Your charming little note, after a journey round Essex, found me at the Priory; and here we shall remain till Friday next, when we enter our new abode.

"So you may fancy what a busy, bustling lady I am just now, making curtains and superintending

carpenters.

"Poor Mamma got through the journey [from 10, Heathcote Street] pretty well, but I grieve to say her rheumatism is worse rather than better: however, I try to persuade myself this is owing to our being near a great deal of water, for there is a large pond a hundred yards from the Priory, and the river close by; and that when we are settled in our little cottage, she will not be so great a sufferer.

"And so at last, you do confess that chimney pots, brick walls, and a sky of smoke, are not so pleasant to look upon as fields and woods, and the azure heavens. I had really begun to think you were as hopeless a case as Dr. Johnson, who said: 'Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all green fields. Sir, I like to look upon men; let us walk up Cheapside.' And yet, now I have left dear old London, I feel great affection for it, but I own I like it best at a distance, and have no

wish to return, if my friends will come to me. How I long for your promised visit! Shall we not walk and talk of things human and divine? Apropos of things human, I agree in what you say of Miss Bremer.

Her

A PROFOUND THINKER.

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truthful simplicity and earnestness of feeling make her a beautiful painter of domestic life. Do read the 'Home;' you will be quite enchanted with it.

"And your remarks on Miss Edgeworth, too, which three or four years ago I should fiercely have disputed, I now cordially assent to. She gives us fine deeds and fine talk, but never a human being. She sees only the outside of life, appearances instead of realities, and is evidently one who observed acutely but neither thought nor felt deeply.

"You ask me what I have been reading lately. To confess the truth, I am in a state of mental starvation. I am afraid all my cares have been devoted to the body, that is to say, to preparing our new home. When we are in it I mean to do great things, but you know I am one who always means to do.' If I ought to judge of the future by the past, it won't end in much.

"Meanwhile, what little reading time I have, has been spent on the writings of the Transcendentalists, such as Emerson, as a sort of balance to my usual studies in Comte.

"Comte and Emerson are the two opposite poles of the present intellectual world. Comte is, I think, essentially a materialist. Emerson's writings are treated with a good deal of contempt and ridicule now, but I think the next generation will call him a great man. If people would have patience to study him, in spite of his apparent affectation and mysticism, they would, perhaps, find him a profound thinker.

"However, after all, eclecticism is a fine thing. Truth is to be found complete in no man's system, but

a portion of it in all systems. It is for the reader to collect it, and reconcile apparent contradictions.

'Just eleven o'clock! and I must rise with the lark to-morrow, and be as industrious as the bee. So goodnight and good-bye, dear friend.”

The announcement of Anne Burrows's engagement to Alexander Gilchrist, is made so prettily by the former, in a letter written in 1848 to Julia Newton, that we are tempted to give the epistle-though in doing so we shall have sold cheap what is most dear':

"I am driven up to the last corner of my note-paper, simply because I could not make up my mind to begin.

"Do you remember Mr. Gilchrist, and a long conversation we once had about him? Perhaps this question will make you guess the rest-guess that your friend is very happy, for she loves and is beloved by one who can fulfil her aspirations, realize her ideal of a true marriage, one who is her friend and helper, as well as her lover. But when I speak of marriage, do not think, dear, that that will come to pass next week, or next month, or within the next four or five years. In the first place, he is at present only a student for the Bar, and cannot afford to have a wife. And in the next place, I should not like to run away from mamma so soon-indeed I do not think I could ever make up my mind to do so-should not bear it unless she promised to live either with me, or next door to me. But this is looking a long way into the future.

"I know not how to describe him to you, dear Julia, except by telling you that he is altogether, both in intellect and heart, great, noble and beautiful.

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"I am still engaged upon my old studies, which, together with general reading, very fully occupy the time that is at my own disposal.

"By the bye, have you read yet 'Modern Painters' by a Graduate of Oxford?

with, and I feel sure you suggestion."

If not, pray do so forth

will thank me for the

Three years later, Annie writes from Earls Colne, 5th Jan., 1851

"Dear Julia little dreamed what sorrow had befallen her friend when her affectionate Christmas greeting reached Colne. The same post brought tidings that Alex. was taken suddenly and dangerously ill, and another hour saw me on the road to London. I found him past the worst. My Christmas was spent in nursing him.

"Dear Julia will understand me, I think, when I tell her it was the sweetest Christmas I have yet passed. I left him on the Saturday after, all fear of relapse being then over, and he rapidly regaining his strength, which the severity of the attack had entirely prostrated. And so I left him, with a heart full of gratitude to God, and renewed happiness. And though, of course, his visit to Colne was entirely relinquished, he would not exchange those few days for months of our usual happy, serene Colne meetings."

One month after this, Anne Burrows and Alexander Gilchrist were married quietly at Colne Church-on Tuesday morning, February 4th, 1851.

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