It is probably a mistake. This disorder often operates like a forcing system, and could it be stopped, and the subject of it be allowed to live on, there would most likely be little further growth. It would seem as if God had, in fatherly kindness, thus early opened to the wonders of his world here the minds of those so diseased, seeing that the days appointed to them on earth are few. Often, too, they are blessed with a clearness and calmness of spirit which make us look upon them as half-celestial creatures, passing by us on their way to a better world. He of whom we have been speaking, in truth, passed quickly, yet not without leaving something meant for our good.

It may be gathered from what we have said, that we think a great religious poem in our language is something still to be desired, rather than something already attained; and that we are yet left to exclaim, with the longing of Cowper, and, we trust, with somewhat of his hope,

“'T were new, indeed, to see a bard all fire,

Touched with a coal from heaven, assume the lyre,
And tell the world, still kindling as he sung,
With more than mortal music on his tongue,
That He who died below, and reigns above,
Inspires the song, and that his name is love."

Yes, we cannot but have the hope, let us say the faith, that from the earth will yet go up strains that shall mingle with the harps of hymning angels in the heavens.

If we are not to look for another poem so appalling, so magnificent, and yet of such paridisiacal loveliness as Milton's, still the Christian must feel that Paradise Lost is not of a character to answer the great religious end in view. One is dead who, furnished by God with

celestial arms, too often, in his bitterness and scorn, turned them against man, and sometimes, in his recklessness, against his Maker too. There still lives one who might build up a temple into which all might enter with wonder and awe;-it is Coleridge.

Whatever he may think of his poetic powers, we believe we are not rash in prophesying, that, with the course of thought which his mind has long held, and with the feelings with which he would enter upon such a work, he would leave behind him a poem worthy of such a cause, and second only poetically to that Epic which he so reverences.

In speaking of Mr. Coleridge's intellect, we are reminded of Mr. Pollok's passage upon the poet; and it is not his only one on that theme.

"Most fit was such a place for musing men, Happiest sometimes when musing without aim. It was, indeed, a wondrous sort of bliss

The lonely bard enjoyed, when forth he walked,
Unpurposed; stood, and knew not why; sat down,
And knew not where; arose, and knew not when;
Had eyes, and saw not; ears, and nothing heard®;
And sought-sought neither heaven nor earth-sought naught,
Nor meant to think; but ran, meantime, through vast

Of visionary things, fairer than aught

That was; and saw the distant tops of thoughts,

Which men of common stature never saw,

Greater than aught the largest worlds could hold,

Or give idea of, to those who read.

He entered into Nature's holy place,

Her inner chamber, and beheld her face,
Unveiled; and heard unutterable things,

And incommunicable visions saw.'

We are not wholly free from hesitation in thus

speaking of Mr. Coleridge. Men of original minds, in stretching off in their flight after truth, have so pleasurable a consciousness of intellectual vigour in the exercise of their higher powers, that they sometimes, unawares, pass by that calm, clear-shining orb, and lose themselves for a season amidst mock suns. If, however, such men sincerely love truth, they are of use to us in the end. They rouse the mind, give it a longer reach of thought, and here and there open to it a scene so glorious, that the light which comes from it detects the very errours to which they themselves had given life, and which shall at last fade and die in that light, while the light itself shall shine on, growing brighter and brighter, and spreading more and more.

We must not be impatient because we cannot make every mind just what we would have it; but should rather reflect upon our own imperfections, and lament, while we consider what it is which gives a certain truth to the words long ago uttered, "Nothing is less in a man's power than his own mind."

It seems to be a law of our fallen natures, that evil should be connected with every great power in man, if in no other way, at least in the very excess of that power; which must needs be, for in whom but in Him who made us are all the powers in even balance? Amongst the great ones of the earth, who, for instance, is there, of all the reformers, who has not carried overthrow beyond the bounds of errour? This should render the great meek; but let it not make the little conceited. Let them remember that they have their weaknesses, too, unnoticed, because they have no grand points in contrast to set them off.

Mr. Coleridge's proneness to deep speculations upon things spiritual, and the character of his philosophical

reading, have led him into some opinions which we cannot think sound. No one will suspect, that, when we desire him to take a religious subject for a poem, we at the same time place him amongst those who make up their minds beforehand as to what the Word of God should mean, and then go to it with little other purpose than to distort it till it takes the shapes of the deformed progeny of their own brains. Mr. Coleridge is too well known to endanger his being numbered with these; but we do apprehend, that, in his fondness for speculating and refining, he sometimes runs off upon a course that leads him away from the simple meaning of the Bible, though he makes that book his starting-point. Other religious men have fallen into like errours through this same propensity.

We believe Mr. Coleridge has so deep a reverence for God's Word, that, could he but catch a glimpse of danger in the path in which, if we do not err, he is sometimes seen wandering, he would shun it as he would the way of death; knowing, as he does, that errour can never be harmless, and, however insignificant in itself, where connected with a great truth, never trifling.

May he, with the full sense of his responsibility in such an undertaking, mature well the plan of a poem, and give these his latter days to the work, having, for the strengthening of his spirit through his labours, the sanctifying dew of which Pollok speaks,

"Coming unseen .

Anew creating all, and yet not heard ;
Compelling, yet not felt."

In his own words to that Mountain made sacred by his noble Hymn, we would call upon him,

Awake,

Voice of sweet song!"

NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.

If we look about us, we find the principal part of mankind made up of those whose pursuits, thoughts, and desires, whose whole moral and intellectual being, move round this material world, and are brought to bear upon the circumstances of life, just as if existence here were our only existence, and our powers were given us for the single purpose of ransacking this physical world, to administer to the comforts and luxuries of our physical nature; as if man's chief advantage over other animals lay in his being more knowing than they, and better able to make more of the world he lives in.

There is another and a smaller class, who lead a sort of speculative existence, who would etherealize this gross world, and its homely concerns, and the eternal relations and forms of being with which they are connected, into a universal spiritualism, of which these are accounted as but so many presentations.

* From The Spirit of the Pilgrims for 1830.

Natural History of Enthusiasm. [BY ISAAC TAYLOR.] Boston: Crocker & Brewster. New York: J. Leavitt. 1830. p. 302.

The reader is referred to the heading of the article on Pollok's Course of Time, p. 344.