Few men have exerted a greater influence upon the thinking mind of the nineteenth century than Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whether we regard his poetry or his prose writings. He wrote, however, for the scholastic few rather than for the reading many. Hence he has never become what may be called a popular writer, and never will be. But if he exerted not so great an influence upon the popular mind directly, he did indirectly through those who have studied and admired his works, and have themselves popularized his own recondite conceptions. Ilis "Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character," is a book full of wisdom, of sound Christian morality, and of the most just observations on life and duty; and from his "Series of Essays-the Friend," might be culled gems of rich, and beautiful, and profound thought that would make a volume of priceless worth. His poetry unites great vividness of fancy to a lofty elevation of moral feeling and unsurpassed melody of versification; but then much of it must be said to be obscure. He himself, in fact, admits this, when he says, in a later edition of one of his poems, that where he appears unintelligible, “the deficiency is in the reader." Still, there is enough that is clear left to delight, instruct, and exalt the mind; and few authors have left to the world, both in prose and poetry, so much delicious and invigorating food on which the worn spirit may feed with pleasure and profit, and gain renewed strength for the conflicts of the world, as this philosophic poet and poetic philosopher.2

In conversation, Coleridge particularly shone. Here, probably, he never had his equal, so that he gained the title of the "Great Conversationalist." "It is deeply to be regretted," says an admiring critic, "that his noble genius was, to a great extent, frittered away in conversation, which he could pour forth, unpremeditatedly, for hours, in uninterrupted streams of vivid, dazzling, original thinking." "Did you ever hear me preach?" said Coleridge to Lamb. "I never heard you do any thing else," was his friend's reply. Certainly through this medium he watered with his instructions a large circle of discipleship; but what treasures of thought has the world lost by his unwillingness to make his pen the mouthpiece of his mind! 3

In reference to that singularly wild and striking poem. "The Ancient Mariner," he is said to have written the following epigram, addressed to himself:

"Your poem must eternal be,
Dear sir! it cannot fail;
For 'tis incomprehensible,
And without head or tail."

"I think, with all his faults, old Sam was more of a great man than any one who has lived within the four seas, in my memory. It is refreshing to see such a union of the highest philosophy and poetry, with so full a knowledge, in so many points at least, of particular facts."-ARNOLD; Letter to W. W. Hull, Esq.

The following is the testimony of Dr. Dibdin to Coleridge's conversational powers: “I shall never forget the effect his conversation made upon me at the first meeting, at a dinner party. It struck me as something not only quite out of the ordinary course of things, bat an intellectual exhibition altogether matchless. The viands were unusually costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied; but there seemed to be no dish like Coleridge's conver sation to feed upon-and no information so instructive as his own. The orator rolled himself up, as it were, in his chair, and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to his speech; and how fraught with acuteness and originality was that speech, and in what copious and eloquent periods did it flow. The auditors seemed to be wrapt in wonder and delight, as one conversation, more profound or clothed in more forcible language than another, fell from his tongue. He spoke nearly for two hours with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. As I returned homeward to Kensington, I thought a second Johnson had visited the earth to

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNY.

[Besides the rivers Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides: and within a few paces of the glaciers the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its "flowers of loveliest blue."]

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipp'd the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swell'd vast to heaven.
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole Sovran of the Vale!
Oh struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's ROSY STAR,' and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, oh wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who call'd you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,

make wise the sons of men; and regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell to record the wisdom and the eloquence that fell from the orator's lips."

Read Edinburgh Review, xxvii. 58, xxviii. 418, lxi. 129; London Quarterly, xi. 173, lii. 1,

liii. 79, lix. 1; and American Quarterly, xix. 1.

'The glaciers assume in the sunshine all manner of colors.

For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet!
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing, ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that vail thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow-travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me-rise, oh ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.'

TO MY INFANT.

Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

"The structure of this hymn is extremely noble: it commences and concludes with the idea of the mount in its oneness, while the mind is allowed in its intervening strains to mingle with the individualities of its scenery: it constitutes a picture as unique in its grandeur as any that poetry presents."--SCRYMGEOUR.

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was rear'd
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags; so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and, by giving, make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the evedrops fall,
Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

DOMESTIC PEACE.

Tell me on what holy ground
May Domestic Peace be found?
Haleyon daughter of the skies,
Far on fearful wing she flies,
From the pomp of sceptred state,
From the rebel's noisy hate:
In a cottaged vale she dwells,
Listening to the Sabbath bells!
Still around her steps are seen
Spotless Honor's meeker mien,
Love, the sire of pleasing fears,
Sorrow smiling through her tears,
And, conscious of the past employ,
Memory, bosom-spring of joy!

QUALITIES ESSENTIAL TO THE TEACHER.

O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule, And sun thee in the light of happy faces; Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces, And in thine own heart let them first keep school.

For as old Atlas on his broad neck places
Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it, so
Do these upbear the little world below
Of education-Patience, Love, and Hope.
Methinks I see them group'd in secmly show,
The straiten'd arms upraised, the palms aslope,
And robes that touching as adown they flow,
Distinctly blend, like snow emboss'd in snow.
Oh part them never! If Hope prostrate lie,
Love too will sink and die.

But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive
From her own life that Hope is yet alive;
And bending o'er, with soul-transfusing eyes,

And the soft murmurs of the mother dove,

Woos back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies;

Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love. Yet haply there will come a weary day,

When overtask'd at length

Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength,
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loath,
And both supporting, does the work of both.

TO AN INFANT.

Ah, cease thy tears and sobs, my little life!
I did but snatch away the unclasp'd knife:
Some safer toy will soon arrest thine eye,
And to quick laughter change this peevish cry.
Poor stumbler on the rocky coast of wo,
Tutor'd by pain each source of pain to know!
Alike the foodful fruit and scorching fire
Awake thy eager grasp and young desire;
Alike the good, the ill offend thy sight,
And rouse the stormy sense of shrill affright!
Untaught, yet wise, 'mid all thy brief alarms
Thou closely clingest to thy mother's arms,
Nestling thy little face in that fond breast
Whose anxious heavings lull thee to thy rest!
Man's breathing miniature! thou mak'st me sigh-
A babe art thou-and such a thing am I!

To anger rapid, and as soon appeased

For trifles mourning, and by trifles pleased-
Break friendship's mirror with a tetchy blow,

Yet snatch what coals of fire on pleasure's altar glow!
O Thou that rearest, with celestial aim,

The future seraph in my mortal frame,
Thrice holy faith! whatever thorns I meet,
As on I totter with unpractised feet,

Still let me stretch my arms and cling to thee,
Meck nurse of souls through their long infancy!