not be interpreted as symptoms of brain fever or depraved vision.

And now, my dearest Allsop! why should it be "a melancholy reflection, that the three most affectionate, gentle, and estimable women in world are your the three from whom you have learnt almost to undervalue their sex?" In other words those who in their reasonings have supposed as possible, not even improbable, that women can be unworthy and insincere in their expressions of attachment to men, the frequency of which it is as impossible, living open-eyed, not to have ascertained, as it is with a heart awake to what a woman ought to be, and those of whom you speak substantially* are. Why should this be a melancholy reflection? (Thursday, Nov. 1st. A fatality seems to hang over this letter; I will not, however, defer the continuation for the purpose of explaining its suspension.) Why, dearest friend, a melancholy reflection? Must not those women who have the highest sense of womanhood, who know what their sex may be, and who feel the rightfulness of their own claim to be loved with honour, and honoured with love, have likewise the keenest sense of the contrary? Understand a few foibles as incident to humanity; take as matters of course that need not be mentioned, because we know that in the least imperfect a glance of the womanish will shoot across the womanly, and there are Mirandas and Imogens, a Una, a Desdemona, out of fairy land; rare, no doubt, yet less rare than their counterparts among men in real life. Now can such a woman not be conscious, must she not feel how great the happiness is that a woman is capable of communicating, say rather of being to a man of sense and sensibility, pure of heart, and capable of appreciating, cherishing, and repaying her virtues? Can she feel this, and not shrink from the contemplation of a contrary lot? Can she know this, and not know what a sore evil, fearful in its heart-withering affliction in

* Thus in original letter.

proportion to the capacity of being blessed, a weak, artful, or worthless woman is—perhaps in her own experience has been? And if she happen to know a young Man, know him as the good, and only the good, know each other—if he were precious to her, as a younger brother to a matron sister—and so that she could not dwell on his principles, dispositions, manners, without the thought—“ If I had an only daughter, and she all a mother ever prayed for, one other prayer should I offer—that, freely chosen and choosing, she should enable me to call this man my son!" would you not more than pardon even an excess of anxiety, even an error of judgment, proceeding from a disinterested dread of his taking a step irrevocable, and, if unhappy, miserable beyond all other misery, that of guilt alone excepted? Especially if there were no known particulars to guide her judgment-if that judgment were given avowedly, on the mere unbelieved possibility, on an unsupposed supposition of the

worst.

In Mrs. Gillman I have always admired, what indeed I have found more or less an accompaniment of womanly excellence wherever found, a high opinion of her own sex comparatively, and a partiality for female society. I know that her strongest prejudices against individual men have originated in their professed disbelief of such a thing as female friendship, or in some similar brutish forgetfulness that woman is an immortal soul; and as to all parts of the female character, so chiefly and especially to the best, noblest, and highest-to the germs and yearnings of immortality in the man. I have much to say on this, and shall now say it with comfort, because I can think of it as a pure Question of Thought. But I will not now keep this letter any longer. God bless you, and your friend,

T. Allsop, Esq.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P.S. The morning after our arrival, a card with our address and all our several names was delivered in at the post office

and to the Postmaster; and this morning, Monday, Oct. 29, I received your letter dated 16th, which ought to have been delivered on Wednesday last-lying at the Post-office while I was hour by hour fretting or dreaming about you. And you, too, must have been puzzled with mine, written on my birthday. A neglect of this kind may be forgivable, but it is utterly inexcusable; a Blind-worm sting that has sensibly quickened my circulation, and I have half a mind to write to Mr. Freeling, if my wrath does not subside with my pulse, and I should have nothing better to do.

Earnest, affectionate, and impressive as this letter was to me, and must be to others, I find in it a proof, if such were not upheaped and overflowing in the preceding letters, of the love and abounding sympathy of this wonderful being; the more admirable as his own experience and trials had been of a nature rather to sear and to embitter, than to cherish and extend hope and the sympathetic affections. I may yet undertake a full exposition of this particular question, which, though unsuited to this work, would be of the highest possible value, not merely or chiefly for those to whom it would be addressed, but by reflex to parents and young children. The vice of the present day, a spurious delicacy, which exceeding all propriety is essentially indelicate, prevents the communication of many of the most valuable truths to the gentler sex, and thus tends to perpetuate those evils which are admitted to exist, and of which the removal is felt-known-to be co-existent with the public or open denunciation. Do I regret this delicacy? No; or if so, only as a pseudo-economist, from its rendering necessary a fresh translation of all the treasures of our ancient literature, not one volume of which is in accord with the finical expressions, with the sickly sentimentality of our modern reading public. To what end is this? Are our morals more pure, our conduct more manly, than that of our ancestors?

I fear much, that judged by any fixed standard, it will be found to be the reverse, and that the greater the fastidiousness the greater the real immorality. But this subject I will not farther pursue; it will be more fully discussed in the exposition I contemplate, should it be necessary to prepare it.

The subjoined fragment of an essay printed more than twenty years ago, and given to me with several others about this time, I subjoin, as being, in my opinion, and, what is of more worth, in the opinion of its author, of much value.

"The least reflection convinces us that our sensations, whether of pleasure or of pain, are the incommunicable parts of our nature, such as can be reduced to no universal rule, and in which, therefore, we have no right to expect that others should agree with us, or to blame them for disagreement. That the Greenlander prefers train oil to olive oil, and even to wine, we explain at once by our knowledge of the climate and productions to which he has been habituated. Were the man as enlightened as Plato, his palate would still find that most agreeable to which he had been most accustomed. But when the Iroquois Sachem, after having been led to the most perfect specimens of architecture in Paris, said that he saw nothing so beautiful as the cooks' shops, we attribute this without hesitation to the savagery of intellect, and infer with certainty that the sense of the beautiful was either altogether dormant in his mind, or at best very imperfect. The beautiful, therefore, not originating in the sensations, must belong to the intellect, and therefore we declare an object beautiful and feel an inward right to expect that others should coincide with us. But we feel no right to demand it; and this leads us to that which hitherto we have barely touched upon, and which we shall now attempt to illustrate more fully, namely, to the distinction of the beautiful from the good.

"Let us suppose Milton in company with some stern and prejudiced puritan, contemplating the front of York Cathedral, and at length expressing his admiration of its beauty. We will suppose it too, at that time of his life when his religious opinions, feelings and prejudices more nearly coincided with those of the rigid anti-prelatists. "PURITAN. Beauty! I am sure it is not the beauty of holiness. "MILTON. True: but yet it is beautiful.

"PURITAN. It delights not me. What is it good for? Is it of any use but to be stared at?

"MILTON. Perhaps not: but still it is beautiful.

"PURITAN. But call to mind the pride and wanton vanity of those cruel shavelings that wasted the labour and substance of so many thousand poor creatures in the erection of this haughty pile.

"MILTON. I do. But still it is very beautiful.

“PURITAN. Think how many score of places of worship incomparably better suited both for prayer and preaching, and how many faithful ministers might have been maintained, to the blessing of tens of thousands, to them and their children's children, with the treasures lavished on this worthless mass of stone and cement.

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MILTON. Too true! but nevertheless it is very beautiful.

"PURITAN. And it is not merely useless, but it feeds the pride of the prelates, and keeps alive the popish and carnal spirit amongst the people.

"MILTON. Even so: and I presume not to question the wisdom nor detract from the pious zeal of the first Reformers of Scotland, who for these reasons destroyed so many fabrics, scarce inferior in beauty to this now before our eyes. But I did not call it GOOD, nor have I told thee, brother, that if this were levelled with the ground, and existed only in the works of the modeller or engraver, that I should desire to reconstruct it. The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualise the former, and it is always discursive. The BEAUTIFUL arises from the preconceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutional rules of the judgment and imagination; and it is always intuitive. As light to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind, which cannot but have complacency in whatever is perceived, as pre-configured to its living faculties.

“ Hence the Greeks called a beautiful object καλον, quasi καλουν, i.e., calling on the soul, which receives instantly and welcomes it as something con-natural."