science than with any sanguine hope of doing good," but "earnestly desiring to speak to the people the words of truth and soberness-to tell them plainly the evils that exist, and lead them, if I can, to their causes and their remedies." He was the proprietor, though not the sole editor, and he contributed the chief articles in it (signed A.), consisting chiefly of explanations of Scripture, and of comments on the political events of the day. It died a natural death in a few weeks, partly from his want of leisure to control it properly, and from the great expenses which it entailed upon him-partly from the want of cordial sympathy in any of the existing parties of the country. Finding, however, that some of his articles had been copied into the Sheffield Courant by its editor, Mr. Platt, he opened a communication with him in July, 1831, which he maintained ever afterwards, and commenced writing a series of Letters in that paper, which, to the number of thirteen, were afterwards published separately, and constitute the best exposition of his views on the main causes of social distress in England.

It was now that, with "the thirst for a lodge in some vast wilderness, which, in these times of excitement," he writes to a friend," is almost irresistible," he began to turn his thoughts to what ultimately became his home in Westmoreland. It was now, also, that as he came more into contact with public affairs, he began to feel the want of sympathy and opposition which he subsequently experienced on a larger scale. "I have no man like-minded with me," he writes to Archbishop Whately,-" none with whom I can cordially sympathize; there are many good men to be

found, and many clever men, some too, who are both good and clever; but yet there is a want of some greatness of mind, or singleness of purpose, or delicacy of feeling, which makes them grate against the edge of one's inner man." This was the period when he felt most keenly his differences with the so-called Evangelical party, to which, on the one hand, he naturally looked for co-operation, as the body which at that time was placed at the head of the religious convictions of the country, but from which, on the other hand, he was constantly repelled by his strong sense of the obstacles which (as he thought,) their narrow views and technical phraseology, were for ever opposing to the real and practical application of the Old and New Testament, as the remedy of the great wants of the age, social, moral, and intellectual.

It was his own conviction of these wants which now more than ever awakened his desire for a commentary on the Scriptures, which should explain their true reference to the present state of England and of the world, as well as remove some of the intellectual difficulties, especially in the Old Testament, to which men's minds seemed to be growing more and more awake. And this, for the time, he endeavoured to accomplish by the statement of some of his general principles of interpretation in the Essay on that subject, which he affixed to his second volume of sermons published in December, 1831. The objections which this Essay excited at the time in various quarters were very great, and according to his own belief it exposed him to more misunderstanding than any other of his writings. But he never wavered in the conviction that its publication had been an im

perative duty—it was written, as he said, "professionally, from his having had so much to do with young men, and from knowing what they wanted;" even in the last year of his life, he said that he looked upon it as the most important thing he had ever written; and at the time he thought it "likely, with God's blessing, to be so beneficial, that I published it at the end of this volume, rather than wait for another opportunity, because, under that sense of the great uncertainty of human life which the present state of things brings especially home to my mind, I should be sorry to die without having circulated what I believe will be to many most useful and most satisfactory;" and the objections which it had roused only made him more and more anxious to go on with the subject, feeling "that the more it was considered, men would find that they had been afraid of a groundless danger," and that "the further I follow up my own views, the more they appear to me to harmonize with the whole system of God's revelations, and not only absolutely to do away with all the difficulties of the Scriptures, but to turn many of them into valuable instructions."

XVI. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

Rugby, November 1, 1830. It is quite high time that I should write to you, for weeks and months go by, and it is quite startling to think how little communication I hold with many of those whom I love most dearly. And yet these are times, when I am least of all disposed to loosen the links which bind me to my oldest and dearest friends, for I imagine we shall all want the union of all the good men we can get together;

and the want of sympathy which I cannot but feel towards so many of those whom I meet with, makes me think how delightful it would be to have daily intercourse with those with whom I ever feel it thoroughly. What men do in middle life, without a wife and children to turn to, I cannot imagine; for I think the affections must be sadly checked and chilled, even in the best men, by their intercourse with people, such as one usually finds them in the world. I do not mean that one does not meet with good and sensible people; but then their minds are set, and our minds are set, and they will not, in mature age, grow into each other. But with a home filled with those whom we entirely love and sympathize with, and with some old friends, to whom one can open one's heart fully from time to time, the world's society has rather a bracing influence to make one shake off mere dreams of delight. You must not think me bilious or low-spirited;-I never felt better or more inclined to work;-but one gets pathetic with thinking of the present and the past, and of the days and the people that you and I have seen together, and of the progress which we have all made towards eternity; for I, who am nearly the youngest of our old set, have completed half my threescore and ten years. Besides, the aspect of the times is really to my mind awful:on one side a party profaning the holiest names by the lowest principles, and the grossest selfishness and ignorance, on the other, a party who seem likely nanòv xan lãobai, who disclaim and renounce even the very name of that, whose spirit their adversaries have long renounced equally. If I had two necks I should think, that I had a very good chance of being hanged by both sides, as I think I shall now by whichever gets the better, if it really does come to a fight. I read now, with the deepest sympathy, those magnificent lines of your Uncle's, on the departed year, and am myself, in fact, experiencing some portion of the abuse which he met with from the same party; while, like him, I feel utterly unable to shelter

VOL. I.

S

myself in the opposite party, whose hopes and principles are such as I shrink from with abhorrence. So what Thucydides says of τὰ μέσα τῶν πολίτων often rises upon my mind as a promising augury of my future exaltation, ἤ που πρὸ Νεαπύλης ἀιωρηθέντος, ἢ ἐμοῦγε πρὸ Ρουγβεῖας.

November 3rd.-I wrote these two sides in school on Monday, and I hope to finish the rest of my letter this evening, while my boys are translating into Latin from my English that magnificent part in the De Oratore, about the death of Crassus. I see I have given you enough of discourse on things in general-I will only add one thing more; that I know there are reports in Oxford of my teaching the boys my politics, and setting revolutionary themes. If you hear these reports, will you contradict them flatly? I never disguise or suppress my opinions, but I have been and am most religiously careful not to influence my boys with them; and I have just now made them begin Russell's Modern Europe again, because we were come to the period of the French Revolution, and I did not choose to enter upon that subject with them. As to the revolutionary themes, I cannot even imagine the origin of so absurd a falsehood, except it be that one of my subjects last half year was "the particular evils which civilized society is exposed to, as opposed to savage life,” which I gave for the purpose of clearing their notions about luxury, and the old declamations about Scythian simplicity, &c.; but I suppose that I am thought to have a longing for the woods, and an impatience of the restraint of breeches. It is really too great a folly to be talked of as a revolutionist, with a family of seven young children, and a house and income that I should be rather puzzled to match in America, if I were obliged to change my quarters. My quarrel with the anti-liberal party is, that they are going the way to force my children to America, and to deprive me and every one else of property, station, and all the inestimable benefits of society in England. There is nothing so revolutionary, because