e peut
renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire._ When I got there,
the organ was playing the 100th psalm, and, when it was done, Mr.
Coleridge rose and gave out his text, "And he went up into the mountain to
pray, HIMSELF, ALONE." As he gave out this text, his voice "rose like a
steam of rich distilled perfumes," and when he came to the two last words,
which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was
then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human
heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through
the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, "of one crying in
the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts
and wild honey." The preacher then launched into his subject, like an
eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon
church and state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit
of the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as
opposed to one another. He talked of those who had "inscribed the cross of
Christ on banners dripping with human gore." He made a poetical and
pastoral excursion,--and to shew the fatal effects of war, drew a striking
contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team afield, or
sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, "as though he should
never be old," and the same poor country-lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought
into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy,
with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his
back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery of the profession of blood.

"Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung."

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the
music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together, Truth and
Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This
was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was
still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists,
seemed an emblem of the _good cause_; and the cold dank drops of dew that
hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and
refreshing in them; for there was a spirit of hope and youth in all
nature, that turned everything into good. The face of nature had not then
the brand of JUS DIVINUM on it:

"Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe."

On