August 4. 1833.

SCOTT AND COLERIDGE.

DEAR Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious, opposites in this; that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations, — just as a bright pan of brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarming bees; whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of similar features. Yet I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of the battle, in Herodotus, as any one can. Charles Lamb wrote an essay* on a man who lived in

* I know not when or where; but are not all the writings of this exquisite genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past time? The place which Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature seems less liable to interruption than that of any other writer of our day. - Ed.

past time: I thought of adding another to

it on one who lived not in time at all, past, present, or future but beside or colla

A PERSON, nervously weak, has a sensation of weakness which is as bad to him as muscular weakness. The only difference lies in the better chance of removal.

The fact, that Hooker and Bull in their two palmary works respectively are read in the Jesuit Colleges, is a curious instance of the power of mind over the most profound of all prejudices.

There are permitted moments of exultation through faith, when we cease to feel our own emptiness save as a capacity for our Redeemer's fulness.

August 14. 1833.

QUAKERS. PHILANTHROPISTS.-JEWS.

A QUAKER is made up of ice and flame. He has no composition, no mean temperature. Hence he is rarely interested about any public measure but he becomes a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective zeal, every decency and every right opposed to his course.

I have never known a trader in philanthrophy, who was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their family relations,

men not benevolent or beneficent to individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet

lavishing money and labour and time on the race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten growth.

When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans to that fine old man Mr. at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew of sensibility must be deeply impressed by them.

The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended under one term, are, I think, Isaiah

* I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous passages in the English version :—

"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken,

"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!" -and Levi of Holywell Street - "Old clothes!"-both of them Jews, you'll observe. Immane quantum discrepant!

THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

I CONSIDER the two works of Sallust which have come down to us entire, as romances founded on facts; no adequate causes are stated, and there is no real continuity of action. In Thucydides, you are aware from

I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's

crib:

But Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."- Ed.