dents. This the "reading public" require, and this is the reason that Sir Walter Scott's Poems, though so loosely written, are pleasing, and interest us by their picturesqueness.

If a genial recurrence of the ray divine should occur for a few weeks, I shall certainly attempt it. I had the whole of the two cantos in my mind before I began it; certainly the first canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird spirit than the last. I laughed heartily at the continuation in Blackwood, which I have been told is by Maginn: it is in appearance, and in appearance only, a good imitation; I do not doubt but that it gave more pleasure, and to a greater number, than a continuation by myself in the spirit of the two first cantos.

The "Ancient Mariner" cannot be imitated, nor the poem, "Love." They may be excelled; they are not imitable.

Other-Worldliness.

As there is a worldliness or the too-much of this life, so there is another-worldliness, or rather other-worldliness, equally hateful and selfish with this-worldliness.

Lord Erskine.

Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating to call them brutes, hit upon that happy phrase "the mute creation."

Lord Kenyon.

Lord Kenyon, on the trial of a bookseller, for publishing Paine's "Age of Reason," in his charge to the jury, enumerated many celebrated men who had been sincere Christians; and, after having enforced the example of Locke and Newton,-both of whom were Unitarians, and therefore

1 This continuation appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1819, where it is signed " Morgan O'Doherty ",-a pseudonym of Dr. Maginn. A previous professed continuation of the poem will be found in the European Magazine, April, 1815, at which date Christabel still existed only in manuscript.

not Christians,-proceeded: "Nor, gentlemen, is this belief confined to men of comparative seclusion, since men, the greatest and most distinguished both as philosophers and as monarchs, have enforced this belief, and shown its influence by their conduct. Above all, gentlemen, need I name to you the Emperor Julian, who was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian virtue that he was called Julian the Apostle."

Thought.

One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe.

A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts, as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.

Influence of Mountains.

Wordsworth has remarked (in the Brothers,' I believe), "The thought of death sits light upon the man

That has been bred, and dies among the mountains."

But I fear that this, like some other few of Wordsworth's many striking passages, means less than it seems, or rather promises, to mean. Poets (especially if philosophers too) are apt to represent the effect made upon themselves as general; the geese of Phoebus are all swans; and Wordsworth's shepherds and estates men are Wordsworth's, even (as in old Michael) in the unpoetic traits of character. Whether mountains have any particular effect on the native inhabitants by virtue of being mountains exclusively, and what that effect is, would be a difficult problem.

1 The parenthesis may possibly be Allsop's. The lines in The Brothers

are

"The thought of death sits easy on the man

Who has been born and dies among the mountains.” Coleridge has unconsciously improved the expression.

If independent tribes, mountaineers are robbers of the lowlanders; brave, active, and with all the usual warlike good and bad qualities that result from habits of adventurous robbery. Add clanship and superstitions that are the surviving precipitate of an established religion, both which are common to the uncivilized Celtic tribes, in plain no less than in mountain, and you have the Scottish Highlanders. But where the inhabitants exist as states, or civilized parts of civilized states, they appear to be in mind and character just what their condition and employments would render them in level plain, the same as amid Alpine heights. At least the influence acts indirectly only, as far as the mountains are the causa causæ or occasion of a pastoral life instead of an agricultural; thus combining a lax and common property, possessed by a whole district, with small hereditary estates sacred to each, while the properties in sheep seem to partake of both characters. And truly, to this circumstance, aided by the favourable action of a necessarily scanty population (for man is an oak that wants room, not a plantation tree), we must attribute whatever superiority the mountaineers of Cumberland and Westmoreland and of the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps possess, as the shocking contrast of the Welsh mountaineers too clearly evinces.

Lord Brougham.

I recollect meeting Mr. Brougham well. I met him at Mr. Sharp's with Mr. Horner. They were then aspirants for political adventures. Mr. Horner bore in his conversation and demeanour evidence of that straight-forward and generous frankness which characterized him through life. You saw, or rather you felt, that you could rely upon his integrity. His mind was better fitted to reconcile discrepancies than to discover analogies. He had fine, nay, even high talent, rather than genius. Mr. Brougham, on the contrary, had an apparent restlessness, a consciousness, not of superior powers, but of superior activity, a man whose heart was placed in what should have been his head: you were never sure of him—you always doubted his sincerity.

He was at that time a hanger-on upon Lord Holland, Mr. Horner being under the auspices of Lord Lansdowne.

From that time I lost sight of Mr. Brougham for some time. When we next met, the subject of the parliamentary debates was alluded to, previously to which Mr. Brougham had expressed opinions which were in unison with my own upon a matter at that time of great public interest.

I said, “I could never rely upon what was given for the future in the newspapers, as they had made him say directly the contrary; I was glad to be undeceived."

"Oh," said Brougham, in a tone of voice half confidential and half jocular, “Oh, it was very true I said so in Parliament, where there is a party, but we know better." I said nothing; but I did not forget it.

•

Judaism.

Compared to the Jewish law, given as it was in thunders and in terrible convulsions of the elements, the miracles of the Christian dispensation were devoid of interest.

There can be no doubt that a religion like that of the Jews, a religion of punishments and threatenings only, was incomplete; it must, therefore, be false, or it required to be perfected.

Baxter.

Baxter tried to reconcile the almost irreconcilable tenets of Calvinism and Arminianism. He more than any other man was the cause of the Restoration, and more than any other sectarian was he persecuted by Charles II.

Fox and Pitt, and the French War.

The grand mistake of Mr. Fox was, that he did not separate the causes of the war from the consequences, but acted as though, having espoused the cause of the French revolution, he must in every instance advocate its mea

sures.

This lost him his party, and swelled the ranks of

Mr. Pitt, a man utterly unfitted for the conduct of a war, all his plans being based upon, so called, expediency, and pernicious short-sightedness, which would never allow him to take into his calculation the future.

Political Economy.

It is not uncommon for 100,000 operatives (mark this word, for words in this sense are things) to be out of employment at once in the cotton districts (this was in 1820), and, thrown upon parochial relief, are 2 dependent upon hardhearted taskmasters for food. The Malthusian doctrine would indeed afford a certain means of relief, if this were not a twofold question. If, when you say to a man,-"You have no claim upon me: you have your allotted part to perform in

the world, so have I. In a state of nature, indeed, had I food, I should offer you a share from sympathy, from humanity; but in this advanced and artificial state of society, I cannot afford you relief; you must starve. You came into the world when it could not sustain you.' "What would be this man's answer? He would say, "You disclaim all connection with me; I have no claims upon you? I can then have no duties towards you, and this pistol shall put me in possession of your wealth. You may leave a law behind you which shall hang me, but what man who saw assured starvation before him, ever feared hanging.' It is this accursed practice of ever considering only what seems expedient for the occasion, disjoined from all principle or enlarged systems of action, of never listening to the true and unerring impulses of our better nature, which has led the colder-hearted men to the study of political economy, which has turned our Parliament into a real committee of public safety. In it is all power vested; and in a few years we shall either be governed by an aristocracy, or, what is still more likely, by a contemptible democratical oligarchy of glib economists, compared to which the worst form of aristocracy would be a blessing.

The parenthesis is clearly Allsop's, in this case. 2 For "are" read" to be."