our vales among,
Say, shall they be reflected seen
Upon thy heart as long?

4.

"Morn, noon, and eve--bird, beam, and breeze,
Here blent to bless thy day;
May portion of their memories
Be ever round thy way!
Sweet waters for the weary Bark,
Through parching seas that sails;
Friends may grow false and fortune dark,
But NATURE never fails."

COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.[23]

What is the deadest of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever
forward and rash--"a door-nail!" But the world is wrong. There is a
thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.
Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this
upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its
elementary act of respiration; the _systole_ of Vol. I. is absolutely
useless and lost without the _diastole_ of that Vol. II., which is
never to exist. That is one argument, and perhaps this second argument
is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I., deals rashly, unjustly, and
almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet,
until late in this summer, _Anno Domini_ 1844, we--that is, neither
ourselves nor our friends--ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth,
even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character,
will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all
things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have
lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, though the world
was so far right, that people _do_ say, "Dead as a door-nail," yet,
henceforwards, the weakest of these people will see the propriety of
saying--"Dead as Gillman's Coleridge."

The reader of experience, on sliding over the surface of this opening
paragraph, begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air.
No, reader--not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we
protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject,
_Coleridge and Opium-Eating_, Mr Gillman would have been dismissed by
us unnoticed. Indeed, we not only forgive Mr Gillman, but we have a
kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he was
generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor
Coleridge, when thrown upon his hospitality. An excellent thing
_that_, Mr Gillman, and one sufficient to blot out a world of libels
on ourselves! But still, noticing the theme suggested by this unhappy
Vol. I., we are fo