communicable treasure. To know it, we must know what he knows, think his thoughts, refine with him in his subtleties, sink to his depths, and soar with him to his heights. The thoughts of other men serve him only as a stimulus to the more lively action of his own. He is not content with knowing that Moses enunciated the law because God commanded him to do so, nor does it satisfy him to learn that the words of God are established by the experience of many centuries. His spirit yearns towards the original source; and even by the sacrifice of all else, he is ready to purchase the gift of self-seeing, of spiritual intuition. "Know thyself," to him signifies only 'know intuitively, since the seeds and principles of all knowlege lie in thyself.' His ideas are worded in conformity to his own, and to no other, experience; and as that experience is of necessity limited, his system is always defective in its members. But these defects cannot be rectified by an inferior genius; but only by the same order of genius which conceived them, assisted by a superior knowledge. The knowledge of Bacon enables him to correct the errors of Plato, and the scientific advantages of Coleridge carried him beyond both; but by the same law he was himself limited, and the science of our day would doubtless have carried him beyond himself. In the essay entitled "Statesman's Manual," addressed to the educated and professional classes in England, Coleridge has given us the master key of his intellectual system; not in a definition scrupulously worded, or in a category of elements, but in broken expressions, glances of thought, efforts towards a development of ideas too vast for entire comprehension; and seeming vaster and more indistinct as the eye draws nearer to them, until their expansion becomes infinite, and their perception impossible. Thoughts of this order, viewed in the light of distant and inactive meditation, appear to have a form and a color; but as we approach and move into them, they disappear like sunset clouds, just when their tangible presence begins to be perceived. In his efforts to convey at once, by mere discourse, without system, or any of the aids of division and contrast, both the practicable and the meditated form of the idea, he falls often into an almost hopeless obscurity; and the reader is obliged to slide over long passages, or to rush through them with a breathless speed, lest while he considers a part of the meaning, the whole may escape. His exactness in the use of compound words is the exactness of a scholar and logician; not that of one who speaks to the people and adheres rigidly to the conventional sense. His skill in the learned languages gave him a power of using words of Latin or Greek origin, as a Greek or a Latin would have used them, with a perception of their radical force. Yet he often wastes this facility aud power, in which he took a pedantic pride, in cumbrous circumlocutions, and vast shapes of expression, bearing up with the wings of an eagle the weight of a mouse. The brilliancy and clearness of his paragraphs is too often marred by parenthetical flaws; and the melody of their periods lost by complication, and the introduction of accidentals to the leading idea. He annoys the vanity of his reader by refering him to rare or inaccessible works; and supports theories and opinions with other theories and opinions still more in need of support. Having attained a clear intuition, but never made a successful exposition of his great ideas, they persecute his imagination, and press for utterance at unseasonable times; treating of political economy, he is snatched away to Philosophy, and thence to Theology. The passions, too, mingle in the train; until the course of his essay illustrates the return home of a heathen procession, where the images of all the gods, from Typho to the great Ammon, pass before us in a disorderly crowd. He labors under a fear of the opinion of the visible Church. He ducks to the pride of reverend Hierarchs, though hiding at the same time a suffusion of shame. His heart is timid; his intellect vehement and free. He often conjures a dangerous idea into the leaden belly of a prejudice, and clapping on the magic seal of tradition, flings it into the sea. He seems sometimes to be addressing a feeble and timid understanding; and with comparison. His intense devotion to philosophy, and the difficulty he found in expression, is evident from his efforts to compel the theories of physical science into the service of moral dynamics; as when, in opposing English conservatism to the doctrines of progress, he calls them polar extremes, a comparison without value; for in spiritual matters it is the intermediary or reconciling energy which must be known, and not the mere opposition of unlikes. To illustrate a moral by a mechanical idea is to degrade it. The inferior may symbolize, but cannot explain the superior. In a mystical dialogue he declares that nature not merely exists, but also lives a heresy in philosophy; for life is but a phase of existence; and matter, in itself considered, is neither dead nor living, but moves only as it is moved, and on the instant. immense assiduity develops a very simple | to literature; and second, in regard of those ideas and opinions, of which he was the resuscitator and the advocate. That Coleridge, more than any other writer of English, carried the dialect and phrase of philosophy to its height, will hardly be denied by those who are acquainted with our philosophical literature. To appreciate the difficulties which he has overcome, let him be compared with Cudworth, or with Locke, or the translators of German metaphysics; he conveys the dialectic of Plato to a style perfectly pure and original; he throws out in a page, conceptions which have cost Cudworth a chapter or even a volume: he succeeds in uttering thoughts which the meagre Saxon of Locke or Hobbes has wholly failed under; he conveys the refinements of the Germans without that artificial and scholastic phraseology which proves fatal to the duration of their systems. His familiarity with Plato, Plotinus, and their commentators, a class of writers wonderfully copious, and most part tediously diffuse, gave him a flow of philosophical expression, checked, re The science of Coleridge, derived from Blumenbach, Davy, and Hunter, consisted of a few brilliant generalizations. If it were in the nature of scientific ideas to advance beyond their facts, he would pro-fined, and condensed by a feeling for bably have gone farther than his teachers; and had he with sufficient steadinesss devoted himself to science, it is not probable that either Goéthe or Schelling would have excelled him in the detection and arrangement of scientific analogies. In conversation he is said to have "been easily interrupted and discouraged, but among those who could listen with a sustained attention, his monologue was delivered in an impressive strain, and with a richness and copiousness of elocution worthy of the greatest orators; yet, in his writings, the marks of heat, hurry, discouragement, and the fear of contradiction, are often painfully evident. Posterity judges men by the delight which they have afforded, and the services which they have rendered to human society, not only by their acts and the example of their virtues, but by those secondary aids and consolations which virtue has received from their genius or their intelligence. The character of Coleridge has already become historical, his reputation is that of a poet and a philosopher; it is in this latter capacity that we are at present regarding him; first, in view of the more immediate services which he has rendered Saxon simplicity, and a power of brevity which belonged to him as a poet and critic. His prose is never dilute or tumid; though often heated, dry, obscure, and labored; he is passionate and sublime, but never feebly enthusiastic; his use of epithet is excessive, but results from fulness, and never from weakness of conception. He discovers a great power of antithesis and of the rhetorical balance of a sentence, but is too much occupied with the matter to employ any other than instinctive art. Everywhere his language shows the characters of strength and fulness; but except in verse, seems to have been too dry and cumbrous for picturesque description, or the expression of the softer shades of sentiment and social feeling. Next to the services which he rendered to philosophy by inventing for it a dialect equally exact and magnificent, may be considered his services to classical literature, by rescuing Plato and his followers from the obscurity of Oxford pedantry. He added very few "notes and emendations" to the accumulated crust of those crudities, which hides the clear sense of the great classics from the eyes of modern scholars; but by drawing from them a great abundance of thought, which he always made his own, he showed his countrymen that their scholars, since the days of Charles I., had been merely nibbling at Greek; and though, like Porson, nibbling with a surprising keenness and rapidity, yet only nibbling after all. Not less important were his philosophical studies in Scripture, and in the older English divines, which effected his intellectual reconciliation with the Church. Through them, he traced Theology to its original ideas, and learned to distinguish arbitrary emblems from natural symbols. But while he imbibed the profounder faith of the old Church, he did not receive her superstitions; he did not resemble "the Magi of our day, who, like lights in the stern of a vessel, illumine the path only which they have passed over. That he helped to rescue Christian Philosophy from the Materialism of the Atomists, will be understood by those who are equally familiar with the ancient and the modern philosophy. Unable to leave the great doctrines of Christianity to rest upon the mere authority of a council, he sought the perfect meaning of the imperfect images which symbolize them. He urged the learned to a more rational study of the Hebrew Scriptures. "What a new world of undiscovered power and truth," he exclaims, "would the bible present to our future meditation, if at some gracious moment one solitary text should dawn upon us in the brightness of an Idea -that most glorious birth of the God-like within us."† Believing, that "a perfect human intellect, transparent without vacuum, and full without opacity," would perceive all that there is of divinity in the sacred volume, he seems inclined to rest the evidences of its truth rather upon the insight of such a mind, than on the traditions of the learned. He regards Christianity itself as peculiarly favoring this clearness of intellect. "That in it alone," i. e. in Christianity, "the understanding in its utmost power and opulence, culminates in Faith." Of the symbolical language of the Scripture he says: "A symbol," (distinguished from an allegory), "is characterized by a translucence of the special in the indi vidual;" as when "Adam" is put for the whole race, "Israel" for the whole nation; -" of the general in the special;" as when the "chosen people" in Judea stand for God's chosen people in all countries and ages; or when the prophecies, applying to the affairs of Egypt and Syria, apply also to those of other nations and ages:-" of the universal in the general;" as when threatenings of judgment upon Israel, are significant also of God's wrath against all unjust nations: But, "above all, of the eternal through the temporal;" -as when, by the triumph of prophets and martyrs over death, the presence of the Divine image in man is vindicated. "It," says he, (the symbol), "partakes of the reality, which it renders intelligible." For Again, in speaking of the Scripture as the purest source of political knowledge, he says: "The bible differs from the Greek books of philosophy, in that it affirms not a divine nature only, but the living God. Hence, in the Scriptures alone, the jus divinum, or direct relation of the state and its magistracy to the Supreme being, is taught as a vital and indispensable part of all moral and political wisdom."* ourselves, indeed, the above sentence cannot have the meaning which our puritan ancestors might have found in it; our notion, - not idea, - of the most sacred of all institutions, the sole power able to protect the peace and rights of humanity, is that of a "compromise" of contemptible cotton and leather interests, to be dissolved just as soon as leather gets the upper hand of cotton. Or, when he confutes that gross opinion that governments may be constructed like machines, which a dog or an ass can be made to keep in motion, as adroitly as a mant. Or, in the definition of the title, "Word of God," given in Scripture by the Hebrews: He says, "The sacred book is worthily entitled the Word of God; for its contents present us the stream of Time continuous as life and a symbol of eternity, inasmuch as the Past and the Future are virtually contained in the Present." "The histories and political economy of the present and preceding century partake in the general contagion of its mechanic "It is among the miseries of the present age," says Coleridge, "that it recognizes no medium between the literal and meta * Church and State, p. 213. † Ib. p. 255. Ib. p. 247. * Church and State, p. 233. † Ib. p. 234. Ib. p. 229. philosophy, and are the product of an unenlivened generalizing understanding. In the Scriptures they are the living educts of the imagination; of that reconciling and ❘ phorical;"* a natural consequence of the mediatory power, which, incorporating the reason in images of the sense, and organizing as it were the flux of the senses by the permanent and self-circling energies of reason, gives birth to a system of symbols harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truth of which they are the conductors. These are the wheels which Ezekiel beheld; whithersoever the spirit was to go the wheels went, and thither was their spirit to go; for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also. Ez. 1. 20. The truths and the symbols which represent them move in conjunction, and form the living chariot that bears up for us the throne of the Divine Humanity."* * Church and State, p. 228-9. want of philosophical knowledge in the instructors of men, or rather in their confinement to "a hunger-bitten and idealess philosophy, which naturally produces a starveling and comfortless religion."† Hence the growing indifference to the promises of Scripture, which are of such a nature as to need only a lively trust (faith) in them"-not superstitious belief, belief without insight "to be the means, as well as the pledges of eternal welfare :" a sentence which literalists, who kill by the letter, might profit by considering. a a POLITICAL MISCELLANY. CANADA. (Selected from various Papers.) THE Montreal correspondent of the New York Tribune, represents that the entire Lower Canada press, has come out in favor of annexation. The most influential paper, the Brockville Statesman, declares that separation cannot be independence; intimating the absolute necessity for an union with the United States. "Nothing can be more selfishly absurd than to set up as a rival power to you. This every body now sees. According to the best information I can get, and I assure you I am not exaggerating, the strength of the Orange lodges in the two Canadas is about ❘ forty thousand men, all well armed and most of them fairly disciplined. The Irish Roman Catholics have taken a position of entire neutrality, but it is distinctly intimated that they will go with the first party that goes for annexation, and if they and the Orange-men go together, which I think very likely, it will be an unexampled instance of the absorbing predominance of one common feeling." A correspondent, who signs himself Camillus, addresses the editor of the Courier and Enquirer as follows: "Neither do we of the North, want the Canadas as a balance against the Slave States --that would have been important three years ago: but now it matters little. A wonderful work of Providence has changed the whole bearing of things. The placers have made California a Free State. Without any reasonable doubt California will be admitted this winter-and probably the Wilmot Proviso passed and the North win the battle: and gain irrevocable mastery in the Senate. A couple of Canadian States might a little anticipate things but as the result must surely come, why (so far as home politics are concerned) hurry to make an arrangement, while it is necessary to consult the South in the mat ter? But what we do want the Canadas for, is for the sake of safety and peace-peace with England. The almost hostility between the countries from 1783 to the embargo and war, was followed by a pitched commercial battle. Corn Laws and Navigation Laws on the one side, American system on the other. But this has passed by, and now we may hope for peace, (even perhaps more) habitually main tained with England. But while a great military nation holds Fort Erie, Fort Malden, Isle aux Noix, and fortifiable islands in the St. Mary's and has the power of embodying the Canadian militia at its pleasure-with that nation there can be no unsuspicious peace on one side. What would be England's trust either in France or Prussia, if Wales belonged to either of them? and the Canadian is to us a more dangerous frontier, than the Welsh to England. Perhaps we might ght trust England's good faith. I think so myself. But what is to hinder some future Sir Francis, in despite of the opinions of his superiors, from conceiving that the best plan of hindering the "loathsome institutions" of those whom he mysteriously calls "allies," gaining credit, is to get up all possible ill-will to us in Canada, and to make all possible disturbance on the frontier? And what is to hinder some future Canadian financiers from calculating that by keeping up difficulty with us, they can milk England of more money in the way of troops and fortifications, than it may be convenient to raise otherwise? Thus then stands the case. Canada is useless to England, except as a military position of offence-there is always danger of frontier quarrel-our acquisition of it is therefore the best pledge of future peace-especially as the possession thereof, in no wise enables us to act against her with any more effect." ADDRESS OF INFLUENTIAL CITIZENS OF MON- To the People of Canada. The number and magnitude of the evils that afflict our country, and the universal and increasing depression of its material interests, call upon all persons animated by a sincere desire for its welfare, to combine for the purposes of inquiry and preparation, with a view to the adoption of such remedies as a mature and dispassionate investigation may suggest. Belonging to all parties, origins and creeds, but yet agreed upon the advantage of cooperation for the performance of a common duty to ourselves and our country, growing out of a common necessity, we have consented, in view of a brighter and happier future, to merge in oblivion all past differences, of |