more religious will demand some stricter religion than that of the generality of men; if you do not gratify this desire religiously and soberly, they will gratify it themselves at the expense of unity. I wish this were better understood than it is. You may build new churches, without stint, in every part of the land, but you will not approximate towards the extinction of methodism and dissent till you consult for this feeling; till then the sectaries will deprive you of numbers, and those the best of your flock, whom you can least afford to lose, and who will be the greatest ornaments to them. This is an occurrence which happens daily. Say that one out of a number of sisters in a family takes a religious turn; is not her natural impulse to join either the Wesleyans or the irregulars within doors? And why? all because the church does not provide innocent outlets for the sober relief of feeling and excitement: she would fain devote herself immediately to God's service-to prayer, almsgiving, attendance on the sick. You not only decline her services yourself, you drive her to the dissenters: and why? all because the Religious Life, though sanctioned by apostles and illustrated by the early saints, has before now given scope to moroseness, tyranny, and presumption."

"I will tell you," interrupted B., " an advantage which has often struck me as likely to result from the institution (under sober regulations) of religious sisterhoods-viz., the education of the female portion of the community in church principles. It is plain we need schools for females: so great is the inconvenience, that persons in the higher ranks contrive to educate their daughters at home, from want of confidence in those seminaries in which alone they can place them. It is speaking temperately of these to say, that (with honourable exceptions, of course, such as will be found to every rule) they teach little beyond mere accomplishments, present no antidotes to the frivolity of young minds, and instruct in no definite views of religious truth at all. On the other hand, what an incalculable gain would it be to the church were the daughters, and future mothers, of England educated in a zealous and affectionate adherence to it, taught reverence for its authority, and delight in its ordinances and services! What, again, if they had instructors invested with even more than the respectability which collegiate foundations give to education in the case of the other sex, instructors placed above the hopes and fears of the world, and impressing the thought of the church on their pupils' minds, in association with their own refinement and heavenly serenity! But, alas! so ingrained are our unfortunate prejudices on this head, that I fear nothing but serious national afflictions will give an opening to the accomplishment of so blessed a design."

"For myself," said I, "I confess my hopes do not extend beyond the vision of the rise of this Religious Life among us; not that even this will have any success, as you well observe, till loss of property turns the thoughts of the clergy and others from this world to the next. As to the rise of a high episcopal system, that is, again to use your notion, a dream of A.D. 2500. We can but desire in our day to keep alive the lamp of truth in the sepulchre of this world till a brighter era and surely the ancient system I speak of is the provi

dentially designed instrument of this service. When Arianism triumphed in the sees of the eastern church, the Associated Brethren of Egypt and Syria were the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth against it. So it may be again. When the day of trial comes, we shall be driven from the established system of the church, from livings and professorships, fellowships and stalls; we shall (so be it) muster amid dishonour, poverty, and destitution, for higher purposes; we shall bear to be severed from possessions and connexions of this world; we shall turn our thoughts to the education of the middling classes, the children of farmers and tradesmen, whom the church has hitherto neglected; we shall educate a certain number, for the purpose of transmitting to posterity our principles and our manner of life; we shall turn ourselves to the wants of the great towns, and attempt to be evangelists in a population almost heathen.

"Till then, I scarcely expect that anything will be devised of a nature to meet the peculiar evils existing in a densely peopled city. Benevolent persons hope, by increasing our present instruments of usefulness, to relieve them. Doubtless they may so relieve them; and no charitable effort can fail of a blessing. New churches and lay co-operation will do something; but, I confess, I think that some instrument different in kind is required for the emergency: great towns will never be evangelized merely by the parochial system. They are beyond the sphere of the parish priest, burdened as he is with the endearments and anxieties of a family, and the secular restraints and engagements of the establishment. The unstable multitude cannot be influenced and ruled except by uncommon means, by the evident sight of disinterested and self-denying love, and elevated firmness; the show of domestic comfort, the decencies of furniture and apparel, the bright hearth and the comfortable table, (good and innocent as they are in their place,) are as ill-suited to the missionary of a town population as to an apostle. Heathens, and quasi heathens, (such as the miserable rabble of a large town,) were not converted in the beginning of the gospel, nor now, as it would appear, by the sight of domestic virtues or domestic comforts in a missionary. Surely Providence has his various means adapted to different ends. I think that Religious Institutions, over and above their intrinsic

The excellent writer seems hardly to consider the extraordinary difference which would be caused at once, by having a body of parochial clergy equal in number to the services required at their hands. Where extraordinary exertions are to be made, doubtless ordinary habits of life will not answer. But there is nothing, in fact, extraordinary in the condition of great cities but their overwhelming numbers, as far as regards the exertions required from their teachers. If a parish clergyman, in London, had only the same number of poor to attend to as in the country-although his task might be somewhat harder, from the greater temptations to vice-yet it cannot be said, that it is so different as to require a different order of men, or a different way of living. The heathenism and vice now so deplorably exhibited, arise, in great measure, from the total inadequacy of the number of teachers to the numbers to be taught. It may be chimerical to suppose, that the number requisite will ever be provided by a country so dead to its responsibilities as this. But were not that so, there does not seem any adequate reason for thinking that a parochial clergy would not be equal to the emergency.-ED.

recommendations, are the legitimate instruments of working upon a populace, just as argument may be accounted the medium of conversion in the case of the educated, or parental authority in the case of the young."

"I have been watching with some interest," said A., who had been silent all this while, "how near, with all your protestations against popery, you would advance towards it in the course of your speculations. I am now happy to see that you go the full length of what you yourselves seem to admit is considered one of its most remarkable characteristics,-monachism."

"I know," answered I," that is at present the popular notion; but our generation has not yet learned the distinction between Popery and Catholicism. But, be of good heart; it will learn many things in time."

The other laughed; and the day being now someway advanced into the afternoon, we left the garden, and separated.

ON "LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS, AND RECOLLECTIONS OF S. T. COLERIDGE."

MY DEAR SIR,-In a review in the last Quarterly of "Walker's Original," &c.—the wit of which perhaps outstrips the wisdom-there is this note upon a work lately issued from the press, entitled "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge :"

"A book of considerable interest; but it is a pity the compiler could not express his own indiscriminating admiration of Coleridge, without insinuating charges against distinguished members of the family, for which there is not the shadow of foundation in the facts. Indeed, everything in the shape of editorial observation had much better have been omitted throughout."

Permit me to call the attention of your readers to a few extracts from this work, by way of illustration of this opinion of the reviewer. The work is dedicated, and the preface addressed, to the compiler's children; and, in the close of it, is the following passage:

"You will find-and this it is which I wish to impress upon your minds-that a spirit of pure and intense humanity,-a spirit of love and kindness, to which nothing is too large, for which nothing is too small,-will be to you, as it has ever been to me, its own exceeding great reward.' This, my dear children-and I would fain speak to, and, on this point at least, could wish to be heard by, all young and confiding minds-has been to me a solace in sorrow, an unspeakable reliance and support when all outward has been lowering and overcast. In this is the purest source of mental self-reliance, of self-dependence, and thence INDEPENDENCE, under all circumstances."

...

In letter iv., p. 13, Coleridge strongly recommends the study of "biblical theology, the philosophy of religion, the religion of philosophy;" to which the editor appends the following note:

"Leaving out the particular expression of biblical theology, (!!) liable to be interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, by every believer in belief, according to his own particular faith or delusion, and keeping constantly in mind what the writer intended to convey-viz., the philosophy of humanity, the humanity of philosophy, &c. &c."

Leaving out, i. e., Coleridge's reference to the Bible and to God, in; this recommendation, then we shall not find him refer at all to the Bible or to God. Q. e. d.

In letter vi., p. 25, Coleridge speaks of his having introduced a note to a passage in vol. iii. of the " Friend," from an anxiety to shew that "true philosophy, so far from having any tendency to unsettle the principles of faith, that may, and ought to be, common to all men, does itself actually require them as its premises, nay, that it supposes them as its ground."

The editor calls this, in a note, "a modification of opinion, to suit conventional influences."

In page 31, we have a note again from the editor to this effect:

"I may as well state here, that the writer, possessing confessedly great and extraordinary powers, has been wholly and entirely misconceived, and by none more so than those who fondly deemed him of their belief. His belief was so capacious, that it contained not only theirs, and a hundred others, but also their opposites (!!) and existed in equipoise, or equilibrium. Thus, in speaking, as was his wont, of Peter, towards whom he felt an especial distaste, he was accustomed to refer to the passage in Matthew, chap. xix., v. 27, where the Janitor asks, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?' and, in a humorous strain of contemptuous remark, exhibit the selfishness of the (in mind) vulgar fisherman, who, &c. &c."

·

To believe this, is to believe that Coleridge was as ignorant of St. Peter's character as the editor plainly is. No infidel, with the character of St. Peter fully before him, and not knowing him to have been an apostle of our Lord, could ever do him such injustice, as it is here said it was Coleridge's wont to do.

To a passage in letter viii. we have this note :

"The allusion to the Socinians may need some explanation. In early life, Coleridge had opportunities of free and unrestrained intercourse and communion with the more influential and distinguished of this sect; and the result was, a conviction of the insincerity, (conscious or otherwise,) selfishness, or, as he expressed it, self-centering, and want of moral courage, produced by this faith, or, as he again termed it, this want of faith. That this was the fact at the time, I am willing to admit; but my own experience, my own knowledge, of many who delight in, or endure, this name, leads me to the conclusion, that a change has come over their spirit.

It would be more in unison with that universal progression, which we see in every other sect or party, to find them casting away the small remnant of superstition which they have hitherto retained, out of consideration, as it should seem, to the fouler superstitions and mental degradation by which they are still surrounded."

The small remnants of superstition that the Socinian still retains!What can it be? Will the words put into Coleridge's mouth, in p. 230, where he is made to speak of "infidels who honour God by rejecting Christ," serve for an explanation here?

In p. 63 we have an extract from the "Friend," of which the following is a part:-" Vice is the effect of error, and the offspring of surrounding circumstances-the object, therefore, of condolence, not of anger;" an observation we need not dispute the truth of, especially when taken in connexion with the conclusion drawn from it. But is this the case with the proposition retailed for it by the editor-" Opinion is always the result of previous circumstances and influences, not the consequence of any choice or will of the individual mind"? or of

the conclusion he would draw from it-viz., that man cannot be responsible for his opinions or actions?

In p. 85, he makes Coleridge speak of

"The hollow pretences, the false reasonings, and absurdities of the rogues and fools with which all establishments, and all creeds seeking to become established, abound. He makes him describe Lamb's faith as that of one neither hoping much nor fearing anything—as being in a state of suspended animation; and Lamb, as having, in this state, more of the essentials of Christianity than ninety-nine out of a hundred professing Christians; and he then in a note tells us, how Leigh Hunt once expressed his surprise that such a man as Coleridge should, when speaking of Christ, always call him our Saviour, and how Lamb said in answer-'He-he!-never mind what Coleridge says; he is full of fun."

And, in p. 97, upon Coleridge's observing of his friend Mr. Green, "that he had been able to believe in a spiritual first cause, and a presiding free will," the editor adds-"It is to be hoped Mr. Green will favour the world with the process by which he has arrived at these conclusions."

I think, Sir, these extracts will have given your readers some insight into the compiler's object in this work, and will incline them to agree with me, that the "Quarterly" reviewer did not overstep the modesty of truth when he said, that everything in the shape of editorial remark had much better have been omitted altogether.

I shall neither take up my own time nor that of your readers in extracting objectionable passages from the "Recollections of Coleridge's Conversations." In the works published during his lifetime, and in his "Table Talk," all that can be wanted to put Coleridge's character, as a Christian, and attached member of the church of England, in the right light, will be found.

But I may, perhaps, be permitted to make the following observations:-Supposing, for a moment, that the observations attributed to Coleridge in these volumes have been given us, word for word, as they fell from his lips,-I no more admit this to be the fact, than I admit that the spring-water that finds its way into the Thames through the sewers of London is as pure at its issue as it was at its source,but, supposing it to be so for a moment, they would yet be without weight, as any index of Coleridge's deliberate opinions, for this plain reason--that either they are inconsistent with the opinions to which he has set his seal in his published works, or they are contradicted by them. They must thus, for the most part, be classed among those expressions of thoughts which are rejected by the mind that gives them birth, almost as soon as they are clothed in language, and only have an unnatural existence and strange importance extended to them by an abuse, or misunderstanding, of the confidence supposed to be placed in every friendly hearer. The fact, however, being, that the sentiments here attributed to Coleridge have had to pass through an infidel mind before they are presented to us, it follows, that no credit can be attached to them as reflections of Coleridge's mind: to say nothing of the bias notoriously always influencing sceptical writers when they are concerned with revelation and the believers in it, a single word ignorantly added or omitted, or the careless substitution of