the project of permanent country lodgings; for during the next three years the Lambs continued to alternate between "dear London weariness" in Russell Street, and rest and quiet work at Dalston. Years they were which produced nearly all the most delightful of the Essays of Elia.
The year 1821 closed gloomily;—"I stepped into the Lambs' cottage at Dalston," writes Crabb Robinson in his diary, Nov. 18; "Mary pale and thin, just recovered from one of her attacks. They have lost their brother John, and feel the loss." And the very same week died fine old Captain Burney. He had been made Admiral but a fortnight before his death. These gaps among the old familiar faces struck chill to their hearts. In a letter to Wordsworth of the following spring Lamb says: "We are pretty well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to everything, which I think I may date from poor John's loss, and another accident or two at the same time that have made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more faces than I could wish. Deaths overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in preference to every other; the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone! What fun has whist now? What matters it what you lead if you can no longer fancy him looking over you? One never hears anything, but the image of the particular person occurs with whom alone, almost, you would care to share the intelli-
