listen to that; but he could not catch a word about politics. Once he had joined me on the road; (this occurred as I was returning home alone from my friend's house, which was about three miles from my own cottage,) and passing himself off as a traveller, he had entered into conversation with me, and talked, of purpose, in a democrat way, in order to draw me out. The result, it appears, not only convinced him that I was no friend of jacobinism, but (he added) I had "plainly made it out to be such a silly as well as wicked thing, that he felt ashamed, though he had only put it on." I distinctly remembered the occurrence, and had mentioned it immediately on my return, repeating what the traveller with his Bardolph nose had said, with my own answer; and so little did I suspect the true object of my "tempter ere accuser," that I expressed, with no small pleasure, my hope and belief that the conversation had been of some service to the poor misled malcontent. This incident, therefore, prevented all doubt as to the truth of the report, which, through a friendly medium, came to me from the master of the village inn, who had been ordered to entertain the government gentleman in his best manner, but, above all, to be silent concerning such a person being in his house. At length he received Sir Dogberry's commands to accompany his guest at the final interview; and after the absolving suffrage of the gentleman honoured with the confidence of ministers, answered, as follows, to the following queries: D. Well, landlord! and what do you know of the person in question? L. I see him often pass by with maister -, my landlord, (i. e. the owner of the house,) and sometimes with the new-comers at Holford; but I never said a word to him, or he to me. D. But do you not know that he has distributed papers and hand-bills of a seditious nature among the common people? L. No, your honour! I never heard of such a thing. D. Have you not seen this Mr. Coleridge, or heard of his haranguing and talking to knots, and clusters of the inhabitants ?—What are you grinning at, Sir? L. Beg your honour's pardon! but I was only thinking how they'd have stared at him. If what I have heard be true, your honour! they would not have understood a word he said. When our vicar was here, Dr. L., the master of the great school, and canon of Windsor, there was a great dinner party at maister and one of the farmers, that was there, told us that he and the doctor talked real Hebrew Greek at each other for an hour together

's;

after dinner. D. Answer the question, Sir!

Does he ever harangue the people? L. I hope your honour a'nt angry with me. I can say no more than I know. I never saw him talking with any one but my landlord, and our curate, and the strange gentleman. D. Has he not been seen wandering on the hills towards the channel, and along the shore, with books and papers in his hand, taking charts and maps of the country? L. Why, as to that, your honour! I own, I have heard; I am sure I would not wish to say ill of any body; but it is certain that I have heard-D. Speak out, man! don't be afraid, you are doing your duty to your king and government. What have you heard? L. Why, folks do say, your honour! as how that he is a poet, and that he is going to put Quantock and all about here in print; and as they be so much together, I suppose that the strange gentleman has some consarn in the business. So ended this formidable inquisition, the latter part of which alone requires explanation, and, at the same time, entitles the anecdote to a place in my literary life. I had considered it as a defect in the admirable poem of the TASK, that the subject, which gives the title to the work, was not, and indeed could not be, carried on beyond the three or four first pages, and that throughout the poem the connexions are frequently aukward, and the transitions abrupt and arbitrary. I sought for a subject that should give equal room and freedom for description, incident, and impassioned reflections on men, nature, and society, yet supply, in itself, a natural connexion to the parts, and unity to the whole. Such a subject I conceived myself to have found in a stream, traced from its source in the hills among the yellow-red moss and conical glass-shaped tufts of Bent, to the first break or fall, where its drops became audible, and it begins to form a channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark squares as it sheltered; to the sheep-fold, to the first cultivated plot of ground, to the lonely cottage and its bleak garden won from the heath; to the hamlet, the villages, the market-town, the manufactories, and the sea-port. My walks, therefore, were almost daily on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping coombs. With my pencil and memorandum book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call them, and often moulding my thoughts into verse, with the objects and imagery immediately before my senses. Many circumstances, evil and good, intervened to prevent the completion of the poem,

which was to have been entitled "THE BROOK."

Had I finished

the work, it was my purpose, in the heat of the moment, to have dedicated it to our then committee of public safety, as containing the charts and maps, with which I was to have supplied the French government in aid of their plans of invasion. And these, too, for a tract of coast that, from Clevedon to Minehead, scarcely permits the approach of a fishing boat!

All my experience, from my first entrance into life to the present hour, is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in toto the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy, than he who differs from them in one or two points, or, perhaps, only in degree. By that transfer of the feelings of private life into the discussion of public questions, which is the queen bee in the hive of party fanaticism, the partizan has more sympathy with an intemperate opposite than with a moderate friend. We now enjoy an intermission, and long may it continue! In addition to far higher and more important merits, our present bible societies, and other numerous associations for national or charitable objects, may serve perhaps to carry off the superfluous activity, and fervour of stirring minds in innocent hyperboles and the bustle of management. But the poison-tree is not dead, though the sap may, for a season, have subsided to its roots. At least, let us not be lulled into such a notion of our entire security, as not to keep watch and ward, even on our best feelings. I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of toleration; sectarian antipathy most obtrusively displayed in the promotion of an undistinguishing comprehension of sects; and acts of cruelty, (I had almost said of treachery,) committed in furtherance of an object vitally important to the cause of humanity; and all this by men, too, of naturally kind dispositions and exemplary conduct.

The magic rod of fanaticism is preserved in the very adyta of human nature; and needs only the re-exciting warmth of a master hand to bud forth afresh, and produce the old fruits. The horror of the peasant's war in Germany, and the direful effects of the Anabaptist's tenets, (which differed only from those of jacobinism by the substitution of theological for philosophical jargon,) struck all Europe for a time with affright. Yet little more than a century was sufficient to obliterate all effective memory of these events. The same principles, with similar, though less dreadful consequen

ces, were again at work, from the imprisonment of the first Charles to the restoration of his son. The fanatic maxim of extirpating fanaticism by persecution, produced a civil war. The war ended in the victory of the insurgents; but the temper survived, and Milton had abundant grounds for asserting that "Presbyter was but OLD PRIEST writ large!" One good result, thank heaven! of this zealotry was the re-establishment of the church. And now it might have been hoped, that the mischievous spirit would have been bound for a season, "and a seal set upon him that he might deceive the nation no more." But no! The ball of persecution was taken up with undiminished vigour by the persecuted. The same fanatic principle, that under the solemn oath and covenant had turned cathedrals into stables, destroyed the rarest trophies of art and ancestral piety, and hunted the brightest ornaments of learning and religion into holes and corners, now marched under episcopal banners; and having first crowded the prisons of England, emptied its whole vial of wrath on the miserable covenanters of Scotland. (Laing's History of Scotland.-Walter Scott's Bard's Ballads, &c.) A merciful Providence at length constrained both parties to join against a common enemy. A wise government followed; and the established church became, and now is, not only the brightest example, but our best and only sure bulwark, of toleration! The true and indispensable bank against a new inundation of persecuting zeal-ESTO PERPETUA!

A long interval of quiet succeeded; or, rather, the exhaustion. had produced a cold fit of the ague, which was symptomatized by indifference among the many, and a tendency to infidelity or scepticism in the educated classes. At length those feelings of disgust and hatred which, for a brief while, the multitude had attached to the crimes and absurdities of sectarian and democratic fanaticisin, were transferred to the oppressive privileges of the noblesse, and the luxury, intrigues, and favoritism of the continental courts. The same principles, dressed in the ostentatious garb of a fashionable philosophy, once more rose triumphant, and effected the French revolution. And have we not, within the last three or four years, had reason to apprehend, that the detestable maxims and correspondent measures of the late French despotism had already bedimmed the public recollections of democratic phrenzy ; had drawn off, to other objects, the electric force of the feelings which had

massed and upheld those recollections; and that a favourable concurrence of occasions was alone wanting to awaken the thunder, and precipitate the lightning, from the opposite quarter of the political heaven? (See THE FRIEND, p. 110.)

In part from constitutional indolence, which, in the very hey-dey of hope, I had kept my enthusiasm in check, but still more from the habits and influences of a classical education and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year elapsed from the commencement of my literary and political adventures, before my mind sunk into a state of thorough disgust and despondency, both with regard to the disputes and the parties disputant. With more than poetic feeling I exclaimed:

“The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,

Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
They break their manacles, to wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain.

O liberty! with profitless endeavour,
Have I pursued thee many a weary hour;

But thou nor swell'st the victor's pomp, nor ever
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power!

Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee

(Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee)

From superstition's harpy minions

And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves,

Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions,

The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!"

FRANCE, a Palinodia.

I retired to a cottage in Somersetshire at the foot of Quantock, and devoted my thoughts and studies to the foundations of religion and morals. Here I found myself all afloat. Doubts rushed in; broke upon me "from the fountains of the great deep," and fell "from the windows of heaven." The fontal truths of natural religion, and the books of Revelation, alike contributed to the flood; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ararat, and rested. The idea of the Supreme Being appeared to me to be as necessarily implied in all particular modes of being, as the idea of infinite space in all the geometrical figures by which space is limited. I was pleased with the Cartesian opinion, that the idea of God is distinguished from all other ideas by involving its reality; but I was not wholly satisfied. I began then to ask myself, what proof I had of