Lord of the Treasury, too dear to be parted with; it was the grand pillar raised on the ruins of the constitution, by which he held his situation.'

"This man, William Pitt, did not then know that he should be a minister, compared with whom Lord North might be canonized; and that with unheard-of artifices, and oppressions that may not be named, he should carry on a causeless war against a patriot people, more fertile in horrors even than the Americans." In conclusion, after summing up in long array the shocking excesses of that most frightful period of the Revolution, when Robespierre presided over the guillotine, he asks "Who, my brethren ! was the cause of this guilt, if not HE, who supplied the occasion and the motive? Heaven hath bestowed on that man a portion of its ubiquity, and given him an actual presence in the sacraments of hell, whenever administered, in all the bread of bitterness, in all the cups of blood."-Con. ad Pop. p. 67.

If the above is not to be taken as decisive evidence of the animus of the poet, when he wrote his War Eclogue, yclept Fire-Famine-and Slaughter, I know not what stronger evidence could be adduced; but the gravamen of the charge against Coleridge, after all, is not so much that he entertained sentiments which so many political visionaries entertained in common with him at the breaking out of the French Revolution, or that, in common with them, he

hated the mighty genius whom it pleased Providence to raise up in defence of our civil and religious institutions at that awful crisis; but that subsequently, when he saw his error, and repudiated the tenets and projects of his earlier years, he never appears to have made the amende honorable with that becoming contrition which would have been the best pledge of his sincerity, and which truth and wisdom, and the best interests of society, alike required of him. Even if it were true that he had merely said bitter things in sport-yet they were things bitter enough-and I need not repeat that it was a great aggravation of his offence, that he should have attempted to palliate them by dint of sophistry, and have even presumed to affront by such a compound of metaphysical jargon and fictitious philanthropy, a company of whom no less men than Scott and Davy formed part.

There is no reason to fear (even judging from the tone of the scattered fragments which have already appeared respecting him) that ample justice will not be done to his memory; and it surely is of importance that a portrait, which will be contemplated with so much admiration, should be rendered as faithful as possible.

As a gift to posterity, it would be comparatively worthless without the spots observable on the living counterpart.

H 3

So much are these my impressions, that I even think it should be known that he, who became the strenuous defender of the Protestant Church generally, and of the Church of England in particular, was at one period of his life its most virulent detractor. Yes, he who in 1817 could write as follows :-"We can say, that our church, apostolical in its faith, primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical forms; that our church, which has kindled and displayed more bright and burning lights of genius and learning, than all other Protestant Churches since the Reformation, was (with the single exception of the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, when all Christians unhappily deemed a species of intolerance their religious duty; that bishops of our church were among the first that contended against this error; and finally, that since the Reformation, when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of England, in a tolerating age, has shown herself eminently tolerant, and far more so, both in spirit and in fact, than many of her most bitter opponents, who profess to deem toleration itself an insult on the rights of mankind? As to myself, who not only know the Church Establishment to be tolerant, but who see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe bulwark of toleration, I feel no necessity of defending or palliating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order to exclaim with a full and fervent heart, Esto perpetua !"

Yes, he who in 1817 could thus write, and as we verily believe "with a full and fervent heart," in 1795 expressed himself as follows:

"It is recorded in the shuddering hearts of Christians, that while Europe is reeking with blood, and smoking with unextinguished fires, in a contest of unexampled crimes and unexampled calamities, every bishop but one voted for the continuance of the war. They deemed the fate of their religion to be involved in the contest! Not the religion of peace, my brethren, not the religion of the meek and lowly Jesus, which forbids to his disciples all alliance with the powers of this world—but the religion of mitres and mysteries, the religion of pluralities and persecution, the eighteenthousand-pound-a-year religion of episcopacy. Instead of the ministers of the gospel, a Roman might recognize in these dignitaries the high-priests of Marswith this difference, that the ancients fatted their victims for the altar, we prepare ours for sacrifice by leanness..... .Wherever men's temporal interests depend on the general belief of disputed tenets, we must expect to find hypocrisy and a persecuting spirit, a jealousy of investigation, and an endeavour to hold the minds of the people in submissive ignorance. That pattern of Christian meekness, Bishop Horsley, has declared it to be the vice of the age and government that it has suffered a free and general investigation of the most solemn truths that regard society-and there

is a remark in the last charge of the disinterested Bishop Pretyman, that the same busy spirit which inclines men to be Unitarians in religion, drives them into republicanism in politics. And truly, the most exalted forms of society are cemented and preserved by the purest notions of religion. But whatever I may deem of the justice of their lordships' observations, the prudence and policy of them have gained my immediate assent. Alas! what room would there be for bishops or priests in a religion where Deity is the only object of reverence, and our immortality the only article of faith immortality made probable to us by the light of nature, and proved to us by the resurrection of Jesus. Him the high priests crucified; but he has left us a religion, which shall prove fatal to every high priest; a religion, of which every true Christian is the priest, his own heart the altar, the universe its temple, and errors and vices its only sacrifices. Ride on, mighty Jesus! because of thy words of truth, of love, and equality! The age of priesthood will soon be no more-that of philosophers and of Christians will succeed, and the torch of superstition be extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank, which is prodigal of its own virtue and its own happiness to invest a few with unholy splendours; that subordination of the heart, which keeps alive the spirit of servitude amid the