join in the same good cause. For a good while past I have quite neglected any other composition; and probably shall do so now till quite into the fine days of spring, which, spite of Johnson, is far more favorable to original thinking, and the rich play of imagination, than this chill and dreary season, with its fogs, snows, and endless nights. The authorship will be all the better, when I set to it in earnest, from this diversified exercise, in which I continually am made to feel a humiliating debility, and a prodigious ignorance. Often I am perhaps too willing to impute the former to the latter. Both will lessen by the continuance of discipline. The removal to Bourton will rather harden than slacken this discipline. Our plan is that of a mutually very hard life. My Maria rejoices in this prospect, and will be an estimable companion and prompter, and participator of improvement. She regrets the indolence and mental lassitude of her past life as much as I do of mine; and, for conscience' sake, for pleasure's sake, for utility's sake, and for each other's sake, we shall adopt a plan by which we shall hope to make the improvement of our united life equal to its tenderness.

LXVI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Frome, February 15, 1808.

Coleridge was lately in Bristol, and Cottle wrote to me to say they two had been on the point of visiting me at Frome, but that Cottle's lameness had decided them rather to ask me to go to Bristol. It was impossible for me to do this at the time, without putting off the review of Scott Waring to a later number of the Eclectic, which P. had earnestly deprecated, and for what were obviously good reasons. I was compelled therefore to decline it, and wrote to Cottle to express my highest respect to Coleridge, and my hope that I might some time perhaps better deserve to be acquainted with the great genius.

Coleridge has some project of a new review, it seems, on which Cottle says he wished to talk with me, having heard, I suppose, that I am a decent journeyman, as the business in general goes. Have you attended any of his lectures at the Royal Institution? Cottle says he is very greatly improved as to the religious part of the character of his mind, and that really he is even substantially orthodox, as well as a believer in Christianity in the general. I do not suppose he will have the requisite perseverance for giving full effect to a review, if it should ever be commenced.

.... Once more I tell you to become a reviewer; it will fling your diction abroad into variety and freedom. It is the best writing discipline in the world. If that Coleridge should really begin, we will now and then get to be of his gang. . . . . You must not think of leaving this dusty planet without first writing a valuable and a fine book or two; but in order to this you must get more freedom of diction, and this reviewing is the very thing.

....

LXVII. TO MISS B

Frome, February 15, 1808.

I shall always recollect with most grateful pleasure the very large contribution to the interest and felicity of my life, which has been derived from your family during a number of years past, and which I trust will, at successive times, be derived again; for I should leave this place with a melancholy feeling if I did not promise myself that I shall sometimes, wherever I may be placed, see you in visits of not a short duration to me and my Maria. . . . . I do not regard it as likely that we shall continue, if life is prolonged, any very long time at Bourton. It is very much too far from any grand scene of human society and knowledge, to be adapted to the kind of life to which I am necessarily and permanently devoted. It is not, as you well know, that I want to be very much in various society, but I want the means of knowing and seeing with facility many things which are to be known and seen only in, or in the neighborhood of, very large towns. The neighborhood of Bristol would please me better than almost any other place; and if we should become residents there, it would be a thing of perfect ease to see you, even frequently. Meanwhile, you must endeavor to think it worth while to visit Bourton. Our residence there for a short time-say for two or three years-if life should continue, may very well suit for the kind of improvement and attainment which I am most defective in, and most determined to endeavor to acquire.

I am glad you have met with so many things and persons that have given you pleasure or improvement. In Coleridge you saw one of the highest class of human beings, with respect to combination of talents, and I am exceedingly glad to learn from Mr. C. that he is much more firmly established in the principles of religion than at any former period of his life; he is, as Mr. C. tells me, in a very great degree even orthodox. If this were previous to his being exposed to all the causes which contribute to pervert human genius, one should be less assured of its value; but it is very gratifying when this is the state of such a mind after travelling over Europe, associating with wits and infidel philosophers, and being exposed to the influence of a thousand things tending to lead such a mind into an oblivion or rejection of Christian truth. I wonder he should have maintained a theory on the subject of taste, which, as you observe, there are such a multitude of facts to confute. I shall be very glad to hear you personally tell all that you observed, heard, or thought, in attending his lecture.

The friend to whom you refer has been, since you saw her, transferred by a greater Friend to a happier region, from which affection could not for one moment wish to recall her to a life of suffering. That suffering no doubt was intended, and has conduced, to qualify her for the sublime scene and society to which she has been called. It will be very consolatory to you in reflection to have seen her, to have soothed her afflic

tion, and to have witnessed her preparation for the superior abodes. You will combine the two ideas, of what she was, and what she is, in a more affecting manner, and when some of the pensiveness of thought is removed by time, in a more pleasing manner, than you would have been able to do if you had not seen her once more before the change. I earnestly hope that whoever shall be appointed to precede us, or to follow us, in the transition to another life, we shall exercise incessant solicitude and diligence, that we may not fail to be added in due time to the best and happiest beings in the universe.

When you return hither you will probably find the generality of persons and things much in the same state as when you left them. As to myself, I am solitary still, with the exception of the interesting hours which I pass at your house, and a very occasional visit to a few other houses. Sometimes, from a species of absolute force, I am very industrious for a week or two, and then I relapse into musing indolence, or the most desultory and useless kind of reading. Reviewing has been the chief part of anything I could call labor for a good while past, and 1 find it an extremely advantageous mode of literary exertion, as to its effect in strengthening the power of comprehension and vigorous expression. In this respect I am sensible of a gradual, though slow improvement of the intellectual powers and operation. I most sincerely promise myself to improve much faster in a given space of time when I have an interesting domestic associate, whose congenial taste and solicitude not to live in vain will often inspire a degree of animation into important pursuits, which it is impossible almost to maintain in the cold listlessness of habitual solitude. My estimable associate expects a very hard life, in regard to mental exertion, and she loves to expect it, both as forming a dignified basis of social interest, and as strongly adapted to her own improvement, not to mention that such an occupation of social time will materially contribute to facilitate the prosecution of a business which is to be in part the source of competence, and also obtain a little for beneficence, and may effect a little for public utility.

may

. . I cannot, my dear friend, have lived so long in this world, without acquiring the painful knowledge that all human hopes are subject to a degree of disappointment; for this, to some certain extent, both myself and M. are pensively prepared; but we do uniformly think, that if Providence shall be benign, we have a rational prospect of a greater measure of felicity (but it seems almost presumption for an inhabitant of the earth to use such a word) than we generally see in married life, and that this felicity will be of a finer quality. We do not forget, that in some way or other it is the inevitable lot of mortality to experience sorrow, but we do hope we cannot be fated to regard each other as the cause of it.

I have just received Mr. Cottle's new poem, "The Fall of Cambria," in two duodecimos, and have read a little, from which I think it must be a pleasing work; you can mention it, if any one asks you to name a new book for a reading society.

LXVIII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Frome, March 3, 1808.

Yes, the spring does open upon me with a fascination which I have not felt before, notwithstanding that I have often felt a kind of worship of nature, on the return of that delightful season, with its flowers, birds, and genial gales. This once I certainly do feel in its first indications a deeper charm than I did even in my youth, when I was as full of fancy and sentiment as any poet. For several years I have been much less susceptible of the vernal impressions, and have considered myself as advancing fast toward the state of feeling which I recollect P. a few years since described himself to me as having reached, the state of feeling no impression at all. And no doubt it is from the new and adventitious cause, that I have felt such luxury in the beautiful days, which we have had for a week past.

I am glad of your concurrence in opinion as to the high value for domestic interest, of associated intellectual enjoyments. This is both to me and M. supremely gratifying, as furnishing at all events, a perfect security against ennui, and the waste of time,— —as involving and even necessitating, the improvement of both our minds,-as improving them in the same direction, so as to make the individual attainments interchangeable, and so to speak mutually recognizable,-as tending to promote our highest interests, as giving scope for great diversification in the indulgence of tenderness, and as essentially conducing to our ordinary temporal means;—to a certain extent, I may perhaps add, as tending to effect a little public usefulness. . . . We are most powerfully convinced, that no mistake could be more fatal than that of the uncalculating persons who, in forming such an union, place their hole reliance on affection and its indulgences. This is the wretched mistake commonly made by very young persons, and which I myself was not incapable of having made at that age. For many years past, however, I have been too wise.

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, FACTS, SUGGESTIONS, ETC., WRITTEN DURING MR. FOSTER'S RESIDENCE AT FROME.

1. A long, admonitory, and cogent conversation with Mr. and Mrs. about education. Insisted on the indispensable law of habitual, prompt, and absolute obedience of young children. In observing on the mode of obtaining this obedience, represented strongly the wretchedness of the plan which does not maintain authority as a necessary and habitual thing in so uniform a manner that the child scarcely even thinks of resistance, any more than of thrusting its hand into the fire; but by a succession of violent efforts each of which is of the nature of a battle, and a trial of strength and of rights with the child, in which the success (when success, even of any kind, is gained) is just a bare effect of

physical force. Strongly represented that acts of authority and correction should be done without bustle, in a short, calm, decisive manner. 2. How transcendently ridiculous is the excess of the passion of love, when the object is demonstrably a very insignificant one. A young newly-married pair have just been in this neighborhood; the young man was opposed for a while by the girl's father; but, after some time, even the old fellow thought the young one would die, if he were prevented from attaining the object. I could not help asking contemptuously, "And what are the illustrious qualities of this girl? (I had been well informed she was very insignificant.) What is she to be to him, or to do for him? Has she angelic virtue, or extraordinary sense, or vast stores of knowledge, or any other rare, inestimable resources for creating the happiness of an associate?" I could perceive that some of the persons (young ones) before whom I ridiculed this passion, understood me to scorn, and therefore not to comprehend, and to be incapable of feeling, ardent sentimentalism unconditionally. I therefore observed that this ridicule is absolutely warranted and rational, when the object of passion does really not possess any of the high and rare qualities; but that on the very same principles a deep passion is dignified and rational, to a certain extent, when the object actually does, in the estimate of sober intelligence, possess distinctions of extraordinary value. It would not have been a desertion of reason, and a ridiculous thing, to have felt an enthusiastic passion for Lady Jane Grey. Certainly the excess of feeling which regards a human being as a kind of divinity, is in all possible cases absurd, and therefore either ridiculous or criminal; still this does not prevent that a great degree of passion is in some definable cases rational.

3. Walked with a gentleman into a very singular and very beautiful rural scene; was disgusted and amused by his inappropriate and extravagant expressions of admiration ;-" glorious," "incomparable,” “why this is heaven itself," &c. I could not ascertain whether he really felt any considerable degree of interest, but I thought he did. I could perceive he had not the smallest perception of the distinct kinds and gradations of beauty, nor of any of the principles and laws of observation. A manufactory is going to be built in this solitary scene; he thought this would be a great improvement to it.

4. Mr. C., a preach er, told me how very tiresome and useless he felt the long visits which he seemed under the necessity of making,-visits including, perhaps, dinner, tea, and supper. I suppose there are hundreds of preachers, and thousands of other reflective persons, who would join in this complaint. It is high time they should be advised to adopt, according to their own convictions of the value and use of time, a decisive time-saving plan, and that the people should be taught the propriety of not censuring such a plan and resolution.

5. Struck exceedingly with the thought, how completely men, for the most part, are and must be confined to their own little spot of this earth,