autumn. And when the wizard took up his pen to write in the prose of daily intercourse, the inspiration that touched his lips failed to guide his hand, and we search in vain for anything supreme. Here and there perhaps in his writings a diligent search may reveal a passage that seems faintly to reflect something of the beauty that pervaded his speech, but the gorgeous imagery and the vision of splendour do not emerge. Here is a piece of his work that rises above the general level: "That in its obvious sense and literal interpretation the great book of nature declares the being and attributes of the Almighty Father, none but the fool in heart has ever dared gainsay. 66 'But it has been the music of gentle and pious minds in all ages, it is the poetry of all human nature, to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspondencies and symbols of the spiritual world. I have at this moment before me, in the flowery meadow, on which my eye is now reposing, one of its most soothing chapters, in which there is no lamenting word, no one character of guilt or anguish. 66 For never can I look and meditate on the vegetable creation without a feeling similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant that has fed itself asleep at its mother's bosom, and smiles in its strange dream of obscure yet happy sensations. "The same tender and genial pleasure takes possession of me, and this pleasure is checked and drawn inward by the like aching melancholy, by the same whispered remonstrance, and made restless by a similar impulse of aspiration. 66 It seems as if the soul said to herself: From this state hast thou fallen! Such should'st thou still become, thyself all permeable to a holier power ! " The gift of surpassing eloquence of speech is, I suppose, detrimental to the slower labour of penmanship. The reward is reaped on the instant from the spell-bound listeners, and tempts a man away from the uncertain and postponed harvest of fame garnered from the written word. Hazlitt said: "If Mr Coleridge had not been the most impressive talker of his age; he would probably have been the finest writer but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler.' And he says of him : "He walks abroad in the majesty of an universal understanding, eyeing the 'rich strand' or golden sky above him, and goes sounding on his way in eloquent accents, uncompelled and free! "As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, you would think you heard the voice of the Man hated by the Gods, contending with the wild winds as they roar; and his eye glitters with the spirit of Antiquity!" As a stripling at Christ's Hospital he had already astonished his schoolfellows with his talk, and Charles Lamb writes in Elia thus of him: "Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee the dark pillar not yet turned-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-logician, metaphysician, bard! "How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula, to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Iamblichus or Plotinus, for even in those years thou waxed'st not pale at such philosophic draughts, or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy." All this learning, all this eloquence, all this philosophy, all this profoundest thought, and visionary outlook upon things mortal and immortal, was poured out upon the empty air, and, like "the silver palaces built about the horizon," was gone for ever in the selfsame hour that it was created! CHAPTER XXXIV ROBERT HALL THE name of Robert Hall seldom finds a place in modern literature, though perhaps it would be an exaggeration to say that it has sunk entirely into oblivion. I know not what are the forces in this mutable world that preserve the reputation of one writer and consign that of another to the vast congregation of the forgotten, though an unbiassed consideration of their works would often reverse their fates. Much of Robert Hall's fine prose lies concealed in volumes of sermons, which are generally regarded as a precinct uninviting to the general reader. But both within and without that precinct there may be found many animated outbursts of moving eloquence. One such I will here cite, and leave the reader to decide whether its hortations to the Englishmen of his day may not merit our present attention : 66 Between the period of national honour and complete degeneracy, there is usually an interval of national vanity, during which examples of virtue are recounted and admired without being imitated. "The Romans were never more proud of their ancestors than when they ceased to resemble them. From being the freest and most high-spirited people in the world, they suddenly fell into the tamest and most abject submission. Let not the name of Briton, my countrymen, too much elate you; nor even think yourselves safe while you abate one jot of that holy jealousy by which your liberties have hitherto been secured. "The richer the inheritance bequeathed you, the more it merits your care for its preservation. "The possession must be continued by that spirit with which it was first acquired; and as it was gained by vigilance, it will be lost by supineness. 66 A degenerate race repose on the merits of their forefathers; the virtuous create a fund of their own. 66 The former look back to their ancestors to hide their shame; the latter look forward to posterity to levy a tribute of admiration. In vain will you confide in the forms of a free constitution. Unless you re-animate these forms with fresh vigour, they will be melancholy memorials of what you once were, and haunt you with the shade of departed liberty. 66 A silent stream of corruption poured over the whole land, has tainted every branch of the administration with decay. On your temperate but manly exertions depend the happiness and freedom of the latest posterity. "That assembly which sits by right of representation will be little inclined to oppose your will expressed in a firm decisive manner. "You may be deafened by clamour, misled by sophistry, or weakened by diversion, but you cannot be despised with impunity." As long as in England there are found men of eloquence and probity who will lift up their voices to denounce corruption when it creeps into public life, so long and no longer shall we remain, and deserve to remain, a great people. The pulpit has immense powers of immediate influence which in the nature of things is not possessed by those who write books. A congregation of hundreds, and on occasion of thousands, can be roused, moved, and exhorted to right action and feeling in a day and an hour, where a book may take weeks and months to reach an audience of as many, and there is no voice nor gesture in the printed page, nor the indefinable appeal of a great manner. Tradition credits Robert Hall with all the attributes of a born orator, and it is difficult to overestimate the effect upon his audience of such a flight of eloquence as I shall now cite, delivered as it was in the midst of the war with Napoleon to soldiers about to set out for the Peninsula : "By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually extinguished; the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and the free towns of Germany, has completed that catastrophe; and we are the only people in the Eastern Hemisphere who are in possession of equal laws and a free constitution. Freedom, driven from every spot on the Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she always chose for her favourite abode; but she is pursued even here, and threatened with destruction. The inundations of lawless power, after covering the whole earth, threaten to follow us here, and we are most exactly, most critically placed in the only aperture where it can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopyla of the universe. "As far as the interests of freedom are concerned, the most important by far of sublunary interests, you, my countrymen, stand in the capacity of the federal representatives of the human race; for with you it is to determine (under God) in what condition the latest posterity shall be born; their fortunes are entrusted to your care, and on your conduct at this moment depends the colour and complexion of their destiny. If liberty, after being extinguished on the Continent, is suffered to expire here, whence is it ever to emerge in the midst of that thick night that will invest it? "It remains with you, then, to decide whether that freedom, at whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep of ages to run a career of virtuous emulation in everything great and good; the freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition and invited the nations to behold their God; whose magic touch kindled the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence; the freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and |