the spiritual from conscience and reason; thrusts aside the understanding from its necessary office of organizing and evolving the whole mind, and thus brings half truth and confusion into every department of thought? Did he show himself unspiritual in declaring that superstition is not, as some will have it, a bebased form of faith, but a disguised infidelity, since men become superstitious inasmuch as they are sensuous and dark, slaves by their own compulsion;" or heartless because he refused to establish faith on feeling and fancy, apart from reflection, and to adopt the slavish maxim, that forms of doctrine, which have been associated with religious ideas are to be received implicitly, -are not to be examined whether they stifle the truth or convey it rightly? No! it is not from a strict and careful examination of his writings that these notions have arisen, but from a partial view of his life and its bearing upon his character. It has been thought that he led too exclusively a life of contemplation to be thoroughly well qualified for a moral preceptor, that he dwelt too much on the speculative side of philosophy to have, in fullest measure, a true philosopher's wisdom. It has been affirmed that he dealt with " thoughts untried in action, unverified by application, mere exercises of the thinking faculty revolving into itself:” that he "lived a life of thinking for thinking's sake." I can not admit that this is true. Whether or no it would have been better for Mr. Coleridge's own mind and character had he exercised a regular profession, and been less withdrawn from family cares, it is not for me to determine: but this I can affirm, Word and Spirit gave eternal life to our souls; that by miracle the divine Body and Blood were multiplied as the loaves and fishes had been, and retained the phenomena of bread and wine. This ancient sensuous notion of the Real Presence is definite enough; and equally definite is the modern spiritual notion, that by the Body and Blood we are to understand the lifegiving power and influence of the Redeemer upon our whole being, body and soul, and that this power of eternal life is conveyed to us in an especial manner when we receive the appointed symbols in faith. The sensuous tenet has been exchanged for the spiritual doctrine because that sensuous tenet was no mere mystery but a plain absurdity,-a poor, weak, grovelling shallow conception. Yet this low conception preserved the substantial truth: it was a cocoon in which the spiritual idea was contained, as in a tomb-cradle, buried, yet kept alive. The spiritual ideas contained in the doctrine of the Eucharist, and the intellectual statement of the doctrine, are of course different things; the former ought to be positive and certain,the latter intelligible and distinct.

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that to represent him as having spent a life of inaction, or of thinking without reference to practical ends, is an injustice both to him and to the products of his mind. To write and to think were his chief business in life; contemplation was the calling to which his Maker called him; but to think merely for thinking's sake,-merely for the excitement and pastime of the game, is no man's calling; it is an occupation utterly unworthy of a rational and immortal being. Whether or no he deserves such a judgment let men determine by a careful survey of his writings; in connection with all those studies which are necessary in order to make them understood; let them pronounce upon his character afterwards; perhaps they will see it with different eyes, and with clearer ones when they have finished the course. I can not of course attempt here to vindicate his claim to some "gift of genuine insight," as an ethical writer; but in reference to the remarks lately cited I ask, of what sort are the thoughts dealt with in The Friend, the Aids to Reflection, the Lay Sermons, the Church and State, the Literary Remains? May it not be said that, of the thoughts they contain, one large class, that relating to politics, can not, by their nature, “issue out of acts,” -out of the particular acts of an individual life,-or be tried and applied in action by the individual who treats of them, though they tend to acts and are to have practical consequences; seeing that they relate to national movements, interests of bodies, dealings of communities; while another still larger class, which concern the moral and spiritual being of man, are capable of being tried and verified in the life of every Christian, whether he be given to outward action, or whether activities of an inward character, have been his chief occupation upon earth? To deny their author this practical knowledge and experience would be a satire on his personal character rather than a review of his philosophical mind. All the poetry, all the poetical criticism which my Father produced has a practical end; for poetry is a visible creation, the final aim of which is to benefit man by means of delight. As for his moral and religious writings, if practical wisdom is not in them, they are empty indeed, for their whole aim is practical usefulness-the regulation of action, the actions of the heart and mind with their appropriate manifestations-the furtherance of man's well-being here and hereafter. This remark, that my Father lived a life of thinking for thinking's sake is either

the severest of judgments, more severe than his worst and most prejudiced enemies ever passed on him in the heat of conflict, or it is no censure at all, but rather a commendation; inasmuch as the soul is better than the body, and mental activity nobler than corporeal.

It may interest the reader to see, in conclusion, Mr. Coleridge's own opinion of an excessive practicality, or what is commonly so called, for the term is commonly, though I believe incorrectly, applied to a mere outward activity.* Thus he spoke of an excellent man, whom he deeply honored and loved, to his friend Mr. Stutfield :

"I was at first much amused with your clever account of our old and valued friend's occupations-but, after a genial laugh, I read it again and was affected by its truth, and by the judicious view you have taken. My poetical predilections have not, I trust, indisposed me to value utility, or to reverence the benevolence, which leads a man of superior talents to devote himself to the furtherance of the Useful, however coarse or homely a form it may wear, provided, I am convinced that it is, first, actually useful in itself, and secondly, comparatively so, in reference to the objects in which he would or might otherwise employ himself. It seems to me impossible but that this incessant bustle about little things, and earnestness in the removal of stupid impediments, with the irritations arising out of them, must

* Men who are given to outward action think all else idleness or worse, while men of thought can estimate their usefulness and do them honor, when they are consistent and at one with themselves. But thought is the active business of a certain part of mankind. Literary men and teachers who affect to be men of the world and unite a great deal of ordinary practicality with their peculiar vocation, are apt to become low in their aims and superficial in execution. A poet is, in my opinion, far better employed in perfecting an ode, if it be worth writing at all, or conforming a drama to the rules of art, than in directing a farm or regulating a railway or arranging a public spectacle. If his poetry is what poetry ought to be, it is worth the devotion of all his time and energies, save what are required for the charities of life, or for procuring the means of subsistence.

The article in the Quarterly, referred to above, speaks so well and powerfully of Mr. Wordsworth, that I the more regret its containing any thing calculated to strengthen misunderstandings in regard to my Father. They who best understand the Poet and Philosopher best understand the Philosophic Poet his Friend. Let them not be contrasted, but set side by side to throw light and lustre upon each other.

have an undesirable effect on any mind constituted for nobler aims; and this unquiet routine is, in my judgment, the very contrary to what I should deem a salutary alterative to the qualities in our friend's nature, of which the peccant excess is most to be apprehended. It is really grievous, that with a man of such a head and such a heart, of such varied information and in easy circumstances too, the miracle of Aaron should be reversed, a swarm of little snakes eat up the great one, the sacred serpent, symbol of intellect, dedicated to the God of Healing. I could not help thinking, when I last saw him, that he looked more aged than the interval between that and his former visit could account for."

MR. COLERIDGE'S “ REMARKS ON THE PRESENT MODE OF CONDUCTING PUBLIC JOURNALS.'

There is one other subject on which, after going through the present work in order to finish preparing it for the press, I have found it necessary to give some explanation. Throughout this edition I have abstained from interference with the text, as far as the sense was concerned, though the changes wrought in the course of thirty years would probably have led the author to make many alterations in it himself, had he republished the work at all in its present form. In one or two sentences only I have altered or removed a few words affecting the import of them, in order to do away with unquestionable mistakes respecting literary facts of slight importance. But from the end of the last chapter of the critique on Mr. Wordsworth's poetry I have withdrawn a paragraph concerning the detractors from his merits-the mode in which they carried on their critical warfare against him and some others-for the same reason which led the late Editor to suppress a note on the subject in Vol. I.-namely this: that as those passages contain personal remarks, right or wrong, they were anomalies in my Father's writings, unworthy of them and of him, and such as I feel sure he would not himself have reprinted. This reason indeed is so obvious, that no explanation or comment on the subject would have been given, if I had not been told that Lord Jeffrey had of late years republished his reply to those remarks of Mr. Coleridge; this makes me feel it proper to say, that I suppress the passages in question, and should have done so if no contradiction had been offered to

them, simply because they are personal, and now also because I believe that some parts of them, conveying details of fact, are inaccurate as to the letter; but at the same time with an assurance that in spirit they are just and true. They may be inaccurate in the letter: the speeches referred to may never have been uttered just as they were told to my Father and repeated by him; Mr. Jeffrey's language to himself he may not have recalled correctly; and I am quite willing to allow that in the way of hospitality he received more than he gave, the fact of apparent cordiality, however, being equally attested whether Mr. Jeffrey asked Mr. Coleridge to dinner or received a similar invitation from him. By the mention of these particulars my Father injured, as I think, a good cause; a volume of such anecdotes, true or false, would never have convinced men of the party which he had opposed, or brought them to confess, that the criticisms of the E. Review were in great measure dictated by party spirit; to men not of the party, who should take the trouble of referring to them, I have little doubt, that this would be apparent on the face of those writings themselves,—from the manner and from the matter of them. I must repeat that I believe the suppressed passages to be neither mistaken nor untruthful as to their main drift, which I understand to be this: that the E. Reviewers expressed a degree of contempt for the poetical productions of their opponents in politics, which it is scarcely conceivable that they could have really felt, or would have felt had politics been out of the question-more especially with regard to the poems of Mr. Wordsworth, that they imputed a character to them, and as far as in them lay, stamped that character upon them to the eye of the public, which those productions never could have borne to the mind of any unprejudiced, careful, and competent critic-indeed such characters at once of utter imbecility and striking eccentricity as appear at first sight to be the coinage of an ingenious brain, rather than the genuine impression which any actual body of poetry could make upon any human mind, that was not itself either imbecile or highly eccentric. This charge was, indeed, not capable of a precise proof, and Mr. C. acted with his usual incaution in openly declaring what he felt quite certain of, but could not regularly demonstrate. Whether or no he had good reason to feel this certainty-waiving his personal recollections, even those that have not been denied-I willingly