next meditated repairing, from the polluted scenes of the old world, to the purer theatre of the new—a visionary conception which withered in the birth—or served only to entangle him in the bands of matrimony with the fair partner who was to have accompanied him to the banks of the Susquehanna, if his project of emigration had taken effect. But it is by no means my intention to attempt to follow him through the whole of his eventful and eccentric course, which would be far from an easy task, although nothing would be easier than to extend this record to a much greater length, by mere quotations from others; but by so doing, I might fairly lay myself open to the charge of too much trifling with so extraordinary a character. Nor should I have presumed to deal with him so freely as I have, if it were not evident, as I have stated in my preface, how great an interest there is abroad respecting him, and that consequently whatever relates to him, will probably be acceptable to the public. He has already received posthumous honours out of number-some of them from the highest literary quarters—and we are led to expect that his memory will be embalmed in a manner still more worthy of his fame. Yet "His System," under whatever denomination it may hereafter appear, can only be expected to exhibit anew, perhaps with greater precision, the principles which he never ceased to diffuse through the medium of his various publica

tions, terminating with his "Aids to Reflection"publications so characteristic of their author, that no one who may have spent a day, I had almost said an hour, in his company, or who has read any essay of his on any subject, would hesitate to declare of them these are the writings of Coleridge. But in his most sustained efforts he is often so profound, that few readers are capable of accompanying him to the full extent of his argument; and in his brighest moments, when he is exhibiting the richest pictures of his imagination, he is apt to flash upon us like a revolving light, which we admire and lose sight of by turns. As a politician, amidst the changing phases of the political world, he professed to maintain a perfect independence and rectitude of principle; but how to render this compatible with a stipendiary engagement with the editor of a newspaper, or with the views of any considerable number of subscribers to a weekly or monthly periodical, was an affair of no small difficulty. Accordingly we find, from his own account, that he frequently disappointed the hopes and expectations of friends, who withdrew from him their subscriptions on finding that he was not exactly doing their work.*

* At the very time when Coleridge was engaged in inculcating principles, in defence of what would now be called the Conservative cause, against the abettors of French ascendancy in this kingdom, who would suppose it possible that to a paper in "The Friend," the avowed object of which was to put Englishmen in good humour with themselves and with the land they live in,

He wished it to be supposed that, like his political idol, Burke, he knew how to interpret the signs of the times, and that, in endeavouring to make them intelligible to others, he had only the general good at heart. In his " Lay Sermon," designated the "Statesman's Manual;" or, "the Bible the best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight;" he manfully asserts the supremacy of the inspired volume, and declares that it contains the only safe rule of conduct for individuals or states. This he illustrates with great learning and variety of argument; but if, passing over some nonsense, contained in a note about the "Reading Fly," of which even Joe Miller might be ashamed, it were required to produce an example of the manner in which a metaphysician is capable of soaring on the wings of the Gospel, into the regions of transcendental

he could have annexed two such epigrams as the following, of which the obvious tendency-and they are perfectly gratuitous-is to bring the aristocracy into contempt ?

"An excellent adage commands that we should
Relate of the dead that alone which is good;
But of the great lord, who here lies in lead,

We know nothing good but that he is dead."

"Here lies the Devil-ask no other name.

Well! but you mean Lord-Hush! we mean the same."

No. xii., November 9, 1809.

The following is inserted here, not more for its real wit, than for its characteristic anti-gallicism:

"For a French house-dog's collar.

"When thieves come, I bark; when gallants, I am still;

So perform both my master's and mistress's will."

All signed

S. T. C.

incomprehensibility, there could scarcely be found one more in point than the following, from this very sermon, where, after some just remarks on that characteristic distinction of the Bible from all other books pretending to inspiration, which arises out of its strong and frequent recommendation of truth, in its highest acceptation of knowledge, he concludes with saying, that "to know God is (by a vital and spiritual act, in which to know and to possess, are one and indivisible) to acknowledge him as the infinite clearness in the incomprehensible fulness, and fulness incomprehensible with infinite clearness."

Nevertheless, after all due abatement shall have been made for much transcendentalism, which, to say the least of it, is utterly incomprehensible to ordinary capacities, it will be found that there is scarcely a doctrine of our Holy Religion which he has not investigated and illumined.

His "Aids to Reflection," and various other expositions of his religious system, can scarcely fail to be of service to individuals in the educated classes, who may be led by them to reflect, possibly for the first time, on religious subjects, and thence to perceive their infinite importance. They may learn from him, not only that there is in religion something worth attending to, but that there is, in fact, nothing that will bear comparison with it in point of worth. Only let us not, in doing him this justice, run into

the extreme of considering him, as some appear to do, an infallible guide in spiritual matters, since there must doubtless be great insecurity connected with every attempt to bring pure reason into conjunction, as it were, with the enunciations of inspiration itself.

However lofty may be the imaginings to which the soul of man is capable of attaining, pure reason is, of itself, inadequate to solve the problem of our immortality.* This Omnipotence alone can do; this

* It must not be forgotten in the solution of this problem, that man consists of a body as well as of a soul. The living soul in him is combined with a material fabric, in connection with which all its operations, as far as they are known to us, proceed, and on which our very individuality seems to depend. The dead shall rise again! Nothing can be more beautiful than Coleridge's allusion, in his " Aids to Reflection," to the fleeting forms of the material creation. With reference to our mortal frames, he observes, "The particles that constitute the size, the visibility of an organic structure, are in perpetual flux. They are to the combining and constitutive power as the pulses of air to the voice of a discourser, or of one who sings a roundelay. The same words may be repeated, but in each second of time the articulated air hath passed away, and each act of articulation appropriates and gives momentary form to a new and other portion. As is the column of blue smoke from a cottage chimney in the breathless summer noon, or the stedfast-seeming cloud on the edge-point of a hill in the driving air-current, which momently condensed and recomposed, is the common phantom of a thousand successors; such is the flesh, which our bodily eyes transmit to us; which our palates taste; which our hands touch."-Aids to Reflection, p. 392, 2d edition.

The perpetual absorption and restitution of the particles of the human frame have fixed the attention of some very distinguished writers of the present day, among others of Lord Brougham, and prior to him, of Dr. Abercrombie, as constituting an irrefragable proof of the distinct and independent nature of the human soul. But there is some danger of carrying the inference from this important physiological fact too far. Our bodies, it is true, are always changing, yet nevertheless they do not lose their identity. And we do but expose ourselves unnecessarily, to the shafts of the A A