I well know the process by which men are led on to this fearful state of constant insincerity in matters of worldly interest, whether of fame, riches, or power, all of which might and yet will, I hope, be estimated at their proper value (whilst they are permitted to have any value at all), as means and not as ends.

LETTER XXXIII.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,

Dec. 26th, 1822.

I might with strict truth assign the not only day after day, but hour after hour employment, if not through the whole period of my waking time, yet through the whole of my writing power, as the cause of my not having written to you with my own hand; but then I ought to add that it was enforced and kept up by the expectation of seeing you. There are two ways of giving you pleasure and comfort; would to God I could have made the one compossible with the other and done both! The first, the having finished the Logic in its three main divisions, as the Canon, or that which prescribes the rule and form of all conclusion or conclusive reasoning; second, as the Criterion, or that which teaches to distinguish truth from falsehood, containing all the sorts, forms, and sources of error, and means of deceiving or being deceived; third, as the Organ, or positive instrument for discovering truth, together with the general introduction to the whole.

The second was to come to town, and pass a week with you and Mrs. Allsop. The latter I could not have done, and yet have been able to send you the present good tidings that with regard to the former we are in sight of land; that Mr. Stutfield will give three days in the week for the next fortnight; and that I have no doubt, notwithstanding Mrs. Coleridge and my little Sarah's expected arrival on Friday next, that by the end of January the whole book will not only have been

finished, for that I expect will be the case next Sunday fortnight, but ready for the press. In reality, I have now little else but to transcribe, and even this would in part only be necessary, but that I must of course dictate the sentences to Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson, and shall therefore avail myself of the opportunity for occasional correction and improvement. When this is done, and can be offered as a whole to Murray or other Publisher, I shall have the Logical Exercises, or the Logic exemplified and applied in a critique on-1. Condillac; 2. Paley; 3. The French Chemistry and Philosophy, with other miscellaneous matters from the present Fashions of the age, moral and political, ready to go to the Press with by the time the other is printed off; and this without interrupting the greater work on Religion, of which the first Half, containing the Philosophy or ideal Truth, possibility, and a priori probability of the articles of Christian Faith, was completed on Sunday last.

Let but these works be once done, and the responsibility off my conscience, and I have no doubt or dread of afterwards obtaining an honourable sufficiency, were it only by school books, and compilations from my own memorandum volumes. The publication of my Shakspeare and other similar lectures, sheet per sheet, in Blackwood, with the aid of Mr. Frere's short-hand copies, and those on the History of Philosophy in one volume, would nearly suffice.

I was unspeakably delighted to see Mrs. Allsop look so charmingly well. My affectionate regards to her, and a heartuttered Happy, Happy, Happy Christmas to you both, one for each, and the third for the little girl, who (Mr. Watson assures me) has now the ground work and necessary pre-condition of thriving, though it may be some time before a notable change in the appearances may take place for the general eye. God bless you, and your friend, S. T. COLERIDGE

T. Allsop, Esq.

"It is good to get and good to spend; but it is not well or seemly to carry the spirit of thrift into kind acts, nor a profuse spirit into thrift.”

"Men are not more generous than women. Men desire the happiness of women apart from themselves, chiefly, if not only, when and where it would be an imputation upon a woman's affections for her to be happy; and women, on their part, seldom cordially carry their wish for their husband's happiness and enjoyment beyond the threshold. Whether it is that women have a passion for nursing, or from whatever cause, they invariably discourage all attempts to seek for health itself, beyond their own abode. When balloons, or these new roads upon which they say it will be possible to travel fifteen miles an hour, for a day together, shall become the common mode of travelling, women will become more locomotive;—the health of all classes will be materially benefited. Women will then spend less time in attiring themselves—will invent some more simple head gear, or dispense with it altogether.

"Thousands of women, attached to their husbands by the most endearing ties, and who would deplore their death for months, would oppose a separation for a few weeks in search of health, or assent so reluctantly, and with so much dissatisfaction as to deprive the remedy of all value-rather make it an evil. I speak of affectionate natures and of the various, but always selfish, guises of self-will.

"Caresses and endearment on this side of sickening fondness, and affectionate interest in all that concerns himself, from a wife freely chosen, are what every man loves, whether he be communicative or reserved, staid or sanguine. But affection, where it exists, will always prompt or discover its own most appropriate manifestation. All men, even the most surly, are influenced by affection, even when little fitted to excite it. I could have been happy with a servant girl had she only in sincerity of heart responded to my affection."

On this matter I could enlarge, but shall defer it for the present, seeing that all the materials are not yet collected upon which to form a correct judgment.

MY DEAR ALLSOP,

LETTER XXXIV,

Grove, Highgate, Dec. 10th, 1823. I shall be alone on Sunday, and shall be happy to spend it with you. Ever since the disappearance of a most unsightly eruption on my Face I have been, with but short intermission, annoyed with the noise as of a distant Forge hammer incessantly sounding, so that for some time I actually supposed it to be an outward sound. To me, who never before knew by any sensation that I had a head upon my shoulders, this you may suppose is extremely harrassing to the spirits and distractive of my attention. Mrs. Gillman, on stepping from my attic, slipt on the first step of a steep flight of nine high stairs, precipitated herself and fell head foremost on the fifth stair; and when at the piercing scream I rushed out, I found her lying on the landing place, her head at the wall. Even now

the Image, and the Terror of the Image, blends with the recollection of the Past a strange expectancy, a fearful sense of a something still to come; and breaks in, and makes stoppages, as it were, in my Thanks to God for her providential escape. For an escape we all must think it, though the small bone of her left arm was broken, and her wrist sprained. She went without a light, though (Oh! the vanity of Prophecies, the truth of which can be established only by the proof of their uselessness) two nights before I had expostulated with her on this account with some warmth, having previously more than once remonstrated against it, on stairs not familiar and without carpeting.

As I shall rely on your spending Sunday here, and with me

alone, I shall defer to that time all but my tenderest regards to Mrs. Allsop, and the superfluous assurance that I am evermore, my dearest Allsop,

Your most cordial, attached, and

T. Allsop, Esq.

Affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P.S.-You will be delighted with my new room.

"The notion, that affections are of less importance than advantages, or that the latter dare even be weighed in the same scales, is less truly described as opposite to my opinion than as alien from my very nature. As to accomplishments, I do not know whether it is right to cherish a positive opinion of an indifferent thing, that is neither good nor evil. If we leave all moral relations out of view, such as vanity, or the disposition to underrate the solidities of the soul, male or female, &c., &c., the question of accomplishments (as they are absurdly called) seems to me to depend on the individual woman, in the same way that dress does. Of two equally amiable and equally beloved women, one looks better in an evening, the other in a morning dress. It is just as it suits, and so with accomplishments. There are two women, to whom, though in different ways, I have been deeply attached in the course of my life. The one had no so-called accomplishments, and not only at the time when I had faith in the return, did I say, " And I love her all the better," but I am still convinced that such would be my opinion of any such woman. Accomplishments (in which nothing good, useful, or estimable, is or can be accomplished) would not suit her. Just as I should say to a daughter, or should have said to the lassy in question, had she been my wife," My dear! I like to see you with bracelets; but your hand and fingers are prettiest without any ornament, they don't suit rings." The other lady, on the contrary, became them; they were indeed so natural for her that they never