THE BUST OF COLERIDGE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR "1 Silt,—I shall be glad if you will allow me to supplement with some additional information what has been already announced with regard to the gift of Coleridge's bust to Westminster Abbey. The bust owes its origin to a desire and intention on the part of a deceased American clergyman of the Episcopal Church, Dr. Mercer, of Newport, Rhode Island. Dr. Mercer in his latter years had given up regular clerical work, and was a good deal in England. He was unmarried, and had considerable property. During his visits to London, two things had especially struck him,—the absence of any memorial of Coleridge in the Temple which is increasingly an object of interest to Americans and to the whole English-speaking world ; and the extreme poverty of a part of the London population, a poverty not equalled in America. It was his wish to present a memorial of Coleridge to the Abbey ; and he desired also to devote some part of his property to the relief of distress in London. About this latter object he wrote to me. After his death (on November 3rd, 1882), I received a letter from his executrix, Mrs. Duncan Pell, the widow of a former Governor of Rhode Island, informing me that Dr. Mercer had not altered his will so as to carry out what he designed, but that by means of an unopposed suit she was obtaining powers which would enable her to repair the omission. With the assistance of Mr. Ernest Coleridge, a grandson of the poet, Mrs. Pell, as your readers are aware, has now placed a bust of Coleridge in the Abbey ; and she has also assigned a considerable sum of money to the relief of the sufferings of the poor in London. This money will not become available till after the lapse of certain lives ; but in the course of some twenty or thirty years the London Hospital will probably benefit to the amount of 230,000, and the New Hospital for Women to the amount of 210,000.
In further pious care for the memory of Dr. Mercer, Mrs. Pell has just issued a volume which is a beautiful specimen of American printing and binding,—" Bible Characters, being Selections from Sermons of Alexander Gardiner Mercer, D.D. (1817-1882), with a brief memoir of him by Manton Marble, and a portrait. Published by C. P. Patnam's Sons." The sermons have a tone of thought which might be expected in an admirer of Coleridge, and they are characterised by a freshness, breadth, and delicacy of treatment which place them far above the average of sermons.—Lam, Sir,4c., J. LLEWELYN DAvrEs.
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