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till 1802, when Mr. Barbauld accepted an invitation to become pastor of the congregation (formerly Dr. Price's) at Newington Green; and quitting Hampstead, they took up their abode in the village of Stoke Newington. The sole motive for this removal, which separated them from a residence which they liked and friends to whom they were cordially attached, was the mutual desire of Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld to pass the closing period of their lives in that near neighbourhood which admits of the daily and almost hourly intercourses of affection, a desire which was thus affectingly expressed by the former in an epistle addressed to his sister during her visit to Geneva in 1785:—

"Yet one dear wish still struggles in my breast,
And points one darling object unpossest:—
How many years have whirled their rapid course,
Since we, sole streamlets from one honoured source,
In fond affection as in blood allied,
Have wandered devious from each other's side;