admonition around them. Even in the present milder time, few cultivated persons willingly think on the special dogmas of distinct theology. They do not deny them, but they live apart from them; they do not disbelieve them, but they are silent when they are stated. They do not question the existence of Kamtchatka, but they have no call to busy themselves with Kamtchatka: they abstain from peculiar tenets. Nor in truth is this, though much aggravated by existing facts, a mere accident of this age, there are some people to whom such a course of conduct is always natural: there are certain persons who do not, as it would seem cannot, feel all that others feel; who have, so to say, no ear for much of religion, who are in some sort out of its reach. -- "It is impossible," says a late divine of the Church of England, "not to observe that innumerable persons-may we not say the majority of mankind?- who have a belief in God and immortality, have nevertheless hardly any consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the gospel. They seem to live aloof from them in the routine of business or of pleasure, the common life of all men;' not without a sense of right and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible" to much which we need not name. "They have never in their whole lives experienced the love of God or the sense of sin or the need of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity of their morals; many of them have strong and disinterested attachments and quick human sympathies, sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness or a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonor. would be a mistake to say they are without religion: they join in its public acts; they are offended at profaneness or impiety; they are thankful for the blessings of life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet us at every turn; they are those whom we know and associate with, --honest in their dealings, respectable in their lives, decent in their conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of two classes, represented by the church and the world, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends and enemies of God: we cannot say in which of these two divisions we should find a place for them."* It "Natural Religion," in Jowett's "Epistles of St. Paul," Vol. ii., following Chap. xvi. of Romans. They believe always a kind of "natural religion." Now, these are what we may call, in the language of the past,* Liberals. Those who can remember or who will reread our delineation of the Whig character may observe its conformity: there is the same purity and delicacy, the same tranquil sense; an equal want of imagination, of impulsive enthusiasm, of shrinking fear. You need not speak, like the above writer, of "peculiar doctrines" the phenomenon is no specialty of a particular creed. Glance over the whole of history as the classical world stood beside the Jewish, as Horace beside St. Paul, like the heavy ark and the buoyant waves, so are men in contrast with one another. You cannot imagine a classical Isaiah; you cannot fancy a Whig St. Dominic; there is no such thing as a Liberal Augustine. The deep sea of mysticism lies opposed to some natures: in some moods it is a sublime wonder, in others an "impious ocean," they will never put forth on it at any time. All this is intelligible, and in a manner beautiful, as a character; but it is not equally excellent as a creed. A certain class of Liberal divines have endeavored to petrify into a theory a pure and placid disposition. In some respects Sydney Smith is one of these: his sermons are the least excellent of his writings; of course they are sensible and well-intentioned, but they have the defect of his school. With misdirected energy, these divines have labored after a plain religion they have forgotten that a quiet and definite mind is confined to a placid and definite word; that religion has its essence in awe, its charm in infinity, its sanction in dread; that its dominion is an inexplicable dominion, that mystery is its power. There is a reluctance in all such writers: they creep away from the unintelligible parts of the subject; they * An evident misprint for "present."— ED. + Probably an allusion to Horace's "impious vessels" on the "sundering ocean," Ode iii., lines 21-24. - ED. always seem to have something behind,-not to like to bring out what they know to be at hand. They are in their nature apologists; and as George III. said, "I did not know the Bible needed an apology.”* As well might the thunder be ashamed to roll as religion hesitate to be too awful for mankind; the invective of Lucretius is truer than the placid patronage of the divine. Let us admire Liberals in life, but let us keep no terms with Paleyans in speculation. And so we must draw to a conclusion. We have in some sort given a description of — with one great exception - the most remarkable men connected at its origin with the Edinburgh Review; and that exception is a man of too fitful, defective, and strange greatness to be spoken of now. Henry Brougham must be left to after times. † Indeed, he would have marred the unity of our article, - he was connected with the Whigs, but he never was one: his impulsive ardor is the opposite of their coolness; his irregular, discursive intellect contrasts with their quiet and perfecting mind. Of those of whom we have. spoken, let us say that if none of them attained to the highest rank of abstract intellect, if the disposition of none of them was ardent or glowing enough to hurry them forward to the extreme point of daring greatness, if only one can be said to have a lasting. place in real literature, it is clear that they vanquished a slavish cohort; that they upheld the name of freemen in a time of bondmen; that they applied themselves to that which was real, and accomplished much which was very difficult; that the very critics who question their inimitable excellence will yet admire their just and scarcely imitable example. - *Referring to Watson's "Apology for the Bible," in reply to Paine. It is hardly necessary to say that the Bishop was a better scholar than the King, and used the word in its original sense of "vindication."- ED. + See Vol. iii. of this series. HARTLEY COLERIDGE.* (1852.) [All the biographical details and quotations in this essay not otherwise credited are from Rev. Derwent Coleridge's Memoir of his brother, prefixed to his edition of the latter's poems. - ED.] HARTLEY COLERIDGE was not like the Duke of Wellington. Children are urged by the example of the great statesman and warrior just departed - not indeed to neglect "their book" as he did, but — to be industrious and thrifty; to "always perform business," to "beware of procrastination," to "NEVER fail to do their best:" good ideas, as may be ascertained by referring to the masterly dispatches on the Mahratta transactions,-"great events," as the preacher continues, "which exemplify the efficacy of diligence even in regions where the very advent of our religion is as yet but partially made known." But "What a wilderness were this sad world, If man were always man and never child !"† And it were almost a worse wilderness if there were not some, to relieve the dull monotony of activity, who are children through life; who act on wayward impulse, and whose will has never come; who toil not and who spin not; who always have "fair Eden's simpleness" and of such was Hartley Coleridge. "Don't you remember," writes Gray to Horace Walpole, "when Lord B and Sir H. C and Viscount D, who are now great statesmen, were little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my part, I do not feel one *Hartley Coleridge's Lives of the Northern Worthies. 3 vols. Moxon. + Hartley Coleridge, "Sonnet to Childhood." + Ibid. A New Edition. bit older or wiser now than I did then."* For as some apply their minds to what is next them, and labor ever, and attain to governing the Tower and entering the Trinity House, to commanding armies and applauding pilots, so there are also some who are ever anxious to-day about what ought only to be considered to-morrow; who never get on; whom the earth neglects, and whom tradesmen little esteem; who are where they were; who cause grief, and are loved; that are at once a by-word and a blessing; who do not live in life, and it seems will not die in death and of such was Hartley Coleridge. : A curious instance of poetic anticipation was in this instance vouchsafed to Wordsworth. When Hartley was six years old, he addressed to him. these verses, t perhaps the best ever written on a real and visible child: "O thou! whose fancies from afar are brought; Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel, And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; In such clear water that thy boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; child! O blessed vision! happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I think of thee with many fears For what may be thy lot in future years. Oh, too industrious folly! Oh, vain and causeless melancholy! Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks." I am From a letter to West (May 27, 1742), not to Walpole; and the correct reading is this:-"There is my lords and , they are statesmen: do not you remember them dirty boys playing at cricket? As for me, never a bit the older nor the bigger nor the wiser than I was then."- ED. +"To H. C." |