SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born in 1772, at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, of which parish his father was vicar. He received his education at Christ's Hospital, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he addicted himself to the study of poetry and metaphysics. His opinions not being at this time of the most orthodox kind, he fled from the university to London, where he enlisted as a trooper in the 15th Regiment, Elliot's Light Dragoons. He was discovered, in spite of a euphonious alias which he had adopted, whilst the troop to which he belonged was quartered at Reading, and sent back to Cambridge, which he left, however, without a degree. His "Religious Musings" were written in a tap-room, at Reading, on Christmas Eve, 1794. Coleridge associated himself with Southey and Lovel in the projection of a state of pure freedom, to be established under the title of a Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehannah, and only the want of funds prevented. the magnificent scheme from being carried out. During a considerable portion of his life, Coleridge was a slave to the practice of taking opium, against which habit conscience and religion seemed alike powerless. In 1816 he placed himself under the charge of Mr. Gilman (who afterwards became one of his biographers) at Highgate. Here his conversational powers were a marvel and a delight to crowds of auditors, and here he regained

equability of mind and orthodoxy of religious opinion. He died in 1834. Most of his works are of a fragmentary nature; they are "The Friend;" "Lay Sermons ;" "Biographia Literaria;" "Aids to Reflection," and others. Amongst his poetry, with some drawbacks, stands pre-eminent his " Ancient Mariner," and the hymn to Mount Blanc, which is quoted below.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF
CHAMOUNI.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought; entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliff's, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual springs?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?

God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element !

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Once more, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous Mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud
To rise before me-Rise, oh! ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

ROBERT SOUTHEY was born at Bristol in 1774. He was early a friend of Coleridge, and shared with him and Lovel, the dream of a Pantisocracy, which he relinquished upon the occasion of his marriage. After successive residences in Lisbon, London, and Dublin, he settled down, on the banks of the Greta, near Keswick, to a laborious literary life, which some time before his death in 1843, had the effect of prostrating his intellectual energies.

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Southey was made poet laureate in 1813. His chief poetical works are "Joan of Arc; Thalaba;"" Madoc;" the "Curse of Kehama," from which the stanzas en

titled "Love are extracted; and innumerable ballads. The fire of Southey has generally been kept in check by his precision; his spontaneity suffered from his varied. scholarship.

LOVE.

They sin who tell us love can die,
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.

In heaven ambition cannot dwell,
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions of the earth,
They perish where they have their birth;

But love is indestructible.

Its holy flame for ever burneth,

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth;
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,

At times deceived, at times opprest,
It here is tried and purified,

Then hath in heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of Love is there.
Oh! when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,

Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?

THE HOLLY TREE.

Oh, Reader! hast thou ever stood to sec

The Holly Tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives

Its glossy leaves,

Ordered by an intelligence so wise

As might confound the Atheist's sophistrics.