on them, than all the eyes, blue as heaven, or black as-what shall I say?—dare I say-hell, that ever illumined the pages of an orthodox three-volume novel. And then, her cheeks were neither roses nor lilies, but common flesh and blood, and a harsh critic might have said that the lilies were fading, and the red had an appearance which might rather have been called brown. Her teeth were not quite ivory, and her lips had not the bright red of the ocean coral, and her form had not that "faultless symmetry" which generally distinguishes heroines. And yet she was loved, I might rather say, worshipped, and her lover would not have exchanged her for all the perfections of mind and body he had read or heard of. To him she was perfection enough, for her faults he loved more than he did others' virtues, and she in return idolized him—the abstraction, in her mind, of all that was good and great among men. Men he was but a boy, scarcely escaped from school restraints, and school encumbrances,-a careless (careless, except for one) visionary, inexperienced boy! Inexperienced! if he can be said to be inexperienced who has seen so many phases of existence, who has experienced so many entire revolutions of feelings as a youth, an ordinary youth of twenty has done as our hero had experienced. He had been a baby, a helpless infant, and in that unconscious state, he had wept by anticipation, for a sinful world, and felt sorely the miseries-the sorrows the troublousness of this bounded and bounding existence; he had also had those cherub-visitations which bring smiles and pour laughter over the faces of sleeping children, and for a season rock their woes to sleep in a paradisian cradle. He had grown out of infancy, and become a child. He had received the first rudiments of education, had learnt of the existence of a God, of his own responsibility; he had been told of virtue and of vice; he had been enjoined to practise the one and avoid the other; he had seen those around him, those who taught him, do otherwise than they taught, and by example counteract precept, and his childish mind had been filled with wonderment at man's folly and man's inconsistency. Again a change had come over the spirit of his dream, (for is not life a long dream, from which death is the waking?) he had commenced his school career. He had forgotten the pure God of heaven, and his Saviour-Son, in the whirlpool of heathen deities and pagan fables. He saw in his school-that miniature of life, fraud and violence ever the conquerors, the strong oppressing the weak, and his faith in humanity had been shaken to the foundations. But, again his dream had changed-he had found that gentleness, that loveableness, that something which he had not himself, yet felt that he wanted, in the fair girl that now stood beside him; and his whole being had thenceforth been changed. She had again restored to his troubled and weary breast the balcyon of religion, and he again remembered his Creator in the days of his youth. And now armed with this true feeling of religion-this love and charity to all men and things;-fortified by his abiding love, from all the temptations around, he was about to seek for the means of supporting her whom he so loved. He had experienced all this, and who shall now call him inexperienced? And she,her experiences had been fewer :-a tender flower, nursed carefully by an anxious mother, protected from all the chill blasts of earth,

N. S.-VOL. II.

she had but lately learnt that such chill blasts did blow, and nip too often the flower in the bud. She felt that she needed an earthly protector, and she had found one; she had found one in whom she placed all her confidence, for whom, and with whom, she treasured all her hopes and all her fears; to whom she applied for all solutions of her doubts, and by whose decision she ever abided. Religion's child herself, she shed religious feelings around her, and though she knew it not, the rain of piety fell upon him-a withering flower, and revived him and he blest her, and loved her for it. Such was the tale of their love ;-simple, reader, is it not? and yet, true. The history of millions. It was no rapid passion, no transitory emotion, but the fixed assurance of each, that they were in need of qualities which the other possessed, and consequently the happiness of the one depended on the alliance with the other. Come, let me use again the magician's wand, and reveal to you the thoughts, past, present, and future, of the youthful pair. And first, as man is the lord of creation, and independently of this, does more often think at all than the fairer sex, let us behold, young man, the secrets of thy heart, let us know, and the information shall not go beyond the pages of "The Monthly," thy hopes and joys if thou hast any, thy fears and sorrows, which thou needs must have. Of his past career, there is little left except dreams of unalloyed happiness, visions of golden times and uninterrupted sunshine :-times when he did not know that all acted upon one great principle, from the king upon his throne, to the beggar on the dunghill-from the mitred archbishop, the pontifex maximus of religion, to the reprobate infidel the avatar of atheism-on one great principle, and that principle-self, carelessness for others, care only for themselves. He had heard professions of friendship, and he believed them true; he had received the caresses of relatives and friends, and he had not seen that the eye which to him seemed all intent on himself, glanced askant at a more profitable object; he had drunk sweet poison, and tasted only the sweetness, for youth had provided an antidote to the poison. Happy times of unsuspecting childhood! ye are gone, and can never return; and even your memory is now bitter. The golden age of life had passed, and the silver one had come :-the innocent child became the burly schoolboy, by turns oppressor and oppressed; thoughtless, careless of all around, except the game at marbles or much loved prisoner's base, he scarcely ever thought of life, and when he did, it was to him a confused scene, where love and war, religion and infidelity, selfishness and benevolence were blended in inextricable confusion. And now he had again changed; it was not the iron age, but-(shade of Hesiod, excuse the barbarism), the mosaic-gold age was now come. He saw before him the path of life,-along which he had to support not only himself, for that he recked not of, but another being, frailer, and to him, far dearer than himself,-rough, gloomy, wretched; something he saw everywhere to thwart him his knee had not learnt to be supple, he could not yet bow and cringe to those whose only claim was possession of that dross which society has made the standard of humanity; for now, alas for us, the rich profligate is preferred far above the poor christian, Dives, in spite of Christ, is held far above Lazarus. Charity, says St. Paul, covereth a multitude of sins; but in this world,

a gilded chariot and a well-filled purse cover a vast number more. This he had not yet learned to consider right, though he knew that it was needful. His mind still possessed untainted that nice sense of honour which breaks before it bends, and already the storms of life had beat hard against it. Honour called him on one side, but the cry of social laws was loud upon the other, and terrible was the conflict between them. It is still raging, but it must soon have an end. Victory is wavering; but honour still preponderates, and he has almost determined to give up his lovely companion for ever, rather than sacrifice his honour to support her. Hard choice it is, but it seems inevitable, and he has almost determined. And soon it must be determined, for this very evening is the last he may pass with her for months, perhaps for years for he goes now to mix with the world, to share its pomps and vanities, its joys and miseries. He goes to earn his livelihood, to fulfil God's everlasting decree, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat." The conflict is strong and agonizing, and honour has at last won:—it has won, and he will resign love rather than virtue :-is it so? Alas! No! He turns and gazes on his lady's loved face, she presses his hand, and looks up to him as if asking the cause of his abstraction: that glance has triumphed. He is a slave for ever to earth and mammon. From the high-spirited noble youth, that glance has changed him into the dull plodding man of business and love, that highest of human emotions, intended for man's greatest good has become his greatest bane. She has triumphed, unconsciously triumphed over lofty principles and high virtue, but the thing she has obtained is not the highminded youth she first loved. O! no, there is a painful revolution to be gone through in her feelings-the beloved of her early youth is gone, as the summer cloud passes from heaven, to her he is dead and gone, to himself lost and wretched. Her thoughts need now no magician's wand to reveal; the ingenuousness of girlish simplicity has written them on her face. She has, poor girl, but one thought now-devotion, unlimited, unmixed devotion towards him who stands beside her: she knows not what she has done, what misery she has caused, but she will one day discover it to her cost. Over that day, over those times of sorrow and vexation and disappointment let us draw the veil; it would shock the young prematurely to behold the picture and not benefit the old: therefore let it pass.

"Well what next?" What next, kind reader, I have no more to say. I have told you the tale of all men with scarce one exception, the history of the primitive innocence, the temptation and consequent fall of every man, interspersed with no romance, no poetic embellishment or ornament; for it needed no ornament: so tragic as to draw tears from those whose tear-fountain is not yet dried: so comic as to cause laughterto nearly all, at man's folly and man's presumption. What I have narrated to you is a romance of real life. God send that it may profit, if it be but one, some being not drawn into the vortex of love and life, and keep him from it, for if once in, he is lost-and for ever. "Where then is your moral, or can you draw one from your boasted romance? Is love wrong? Must we shun it? Has the Deity planted a feeling that must lead to evil, if indulged in us?" God forbid! My moral is short and very true. Love as well as all the higher faculties the Deity

has given us would lead to nought but good, had not our frame of society poisoned every well of true happiness. This is the evil - this the bane. Attend to this Lord John Russell-mark this, Sir Robert Peel, for it is more important than cabinet squabbles of whatever kind, whether it be about the wording of a question or the appointment of a Lady of the Bedchamber. L. J. B.

REVIEW.

The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; collected und Edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq., M. A. Vol. IV. London: Pickering. 1839.

We need not say that we share the triumph with which this marvellous publication proceeds. The philosophy to which Coleridge was martyr, presents him in new life to us season after season. That for which none sometime cared, is now patronised by many, and the fame of the author is seen to be placed on an imperishable basis. We have lived to witness these things, and to render testimony to the greatness and ultimate prevalence of truth. That in this scientific age, Providence should also have raised up a positive philosophy in harmony with itself, and opposing no fact or theory, and itself opposed only by erroneous statements and insufficient conclusions, is an evidence of Divine interposition in human affairs that cannot be too much regarded.

The value of these Remains consists in the manner in which they bring the philosophical principles of Coleridge to experimental test, by the successful application of them to the works of meditative writers both old and modern. Every author becomes thus, as it were, in turns, the means of an experimentum crucis; and the judicious reader capable of weighing the force of the evidence, must be satisfied with the result.

The two first volumes of the work were occupied with Coleridge's Lectures on such general subjects as the literature of the middle ages, Shakspere, the Elizabethan poets in general, and on early writers both in prose and verse, together with certain Omniana, many of which have been previously published in Southey's volumes under that title. These things were of an elegant quality, and may be called milk for babes. But the third and fourth volumes contain a sterner pabulum-were meat for men. They consist mainly of the marginalia and the notes left on the blank spaces of books and pamphlets, through which the poet-sage was wont to " deliver his mind of the thoughts and aspirations suggested by the text under perusal. His books," continues his nephew," that is, any body's books, even those from a circulating library, were to him, whilst reading them, as dear friends; he conversed with them as with their authors, praising, or censuring, or qualifying, as the open page seemed to give him cause; little solicitous, in so doing, to draw summaries, or to strike balances of literary merit, but seeking rather to detect and appropriate the moving principle or moral life, ever one and single, of the work in reference to absolute truth."

In relation to religious sentiment, it is needful that the ground occupied by Coleridge, should be well understood. “He distinguishes,' says his editor, "so strongly between that internal faith which lies at the base of, and supports the whole moral and religious being of man, and the belief as historically true, of several incidents and relations found, or supposed to be found, in the text of the Scriptures, that he habitually exercised a liberty of criticism, with respect to the latter, which will probably seem objectionable to many of his readers in this country."

Objectionable! Let it be so, for even such a counteracting influence is needed for the religious mind of our native land. See, for instance, how the Orielites seek to reduce the divinest verities to a merely historical level. In his notes on LUTHER'S Table Talk, Coleridge thus delivers himself on the subject of apostolic succession:

"One argument strikes me in favour of the tenet of apostolic succession, in the ordination of Bishops and Presbyters, as taught by the Church of Rome, and by the large part of the earlier divines of the Church of England, which I have not seen in any of the books on this subject; namely, that in strict analogy with other parts of christian history, the miracle itself contained a check upon the inconvenient consequences necessarily attached to all miracles, as miracles; narrowing the possible claims to any rights not provable at the bar of universal reason and experience. Every man among the Sectaries, however ignorant, may justify himself in scattering stones and fire-squibs by an alleged unction of the Spirit. The miracle becomes perpetual, still beginning, never ending. Now, on the church doctrine, the original miracle provides for the future recurrence to the ordinary and calculable laws of the human understanding and moral sense, instead of leaving every man a judge of his own gifts, and of his right to act publicly on that judgment. The initiation alone is supernatural; but all beginning is necessarily miraculous, that is, hath either no antecedent, or one irɛpov yevovs, which, therefore, is not its, but merely an antecedent-or an incausative alien co-incident in time; as if, for instance, Jack's shout was followed by a flash of lightning, which should strike and precipitate the ball on St. Paul's Cathedral. This would be a miracle as long as no causative nerus was conceivable between the antecedent, -the noise of the shout, and the consequent-the atmospheric discharge."

We quote this passage in fairness, that the Oxford divines may place it parallel with the argument maintained by ourselves on the Tracts for the Times. It tells in their favour; yet we are afraid that it will not pass for much: nor would our dear Coleridge have resorted to it at all; had he not thought that on all the usual grounds, and whatever catena of authorities might be found in its favour, the doctrine, as an historical fact, was untenable. This is provable by inference from his truly transcendental definition of the term Gospel ;-as the spiritual Revelation rather than the Record. The definition is consequent on the following passage from Luther's Table Talk.

"This argument (said Luther) concludeth so much as nothing; for although they had been angels from heaven, yet that troubleth me nothing at all; we are now dealing about God's word, and with the truth of the gospel, that is a matter of far greater weight to have the same kept and preserved pure and clear; therefore we (said Luther) neither care nor trouble ourselves for, and about, the greatness of St. Peter and the other apostles, or how many and