e now lived was to him a very
solemn one. Religious ideas were so sacred to him that he never referred
to them lightly, and seldom at all. When he did mention them, it was
with peculiar impressiveness. No one can read the account of his share
in a conversation on "persons one would like to have seen," without
admiring the energy and pathos with which he alluded to one Person,
whose name, however, he did not utter. Discussions on religious subjects
he never tolerated in anybody but Coleridge. One evening, after he and
Leigh Hunt had returned from a visit to Coleridge, Hunt began to express
his surprise that a man of so much genius as the Highgate sage should
entertain such religious opinions as he did, and mentioned one of his
doctrines for especial reprobation. Lamb, who was preparing the second
bowl of punch, answered, hesitatingly, with a gentle smile,--"Never mind
what Coleridge believes; he is full of fun." He was an humble, sinful
worshipper, and while he bowed his head tremblingly before Heaven, he
poured out the stream of his affections to his sister and his friends.

The religious character of Sydney Smith was less peculiar than that of
Elia. An earnest Christian, with a will too resolute to allow the aid
of the punch-bowl in vanquishing trouble, professionally wielding the
religious and moral ideas, and habitually obeying them, he stood erect
and looked at the life to come with a firm eye. "The beauty of the
Christian religion," he says, "is that it carries the order and
discipline of heaven into our very fancies and conceptions, and, by
hallowing the first shadowy notions of our minds, from which actions
spring, makes our actions themselves good and holy." This central and
vital beauty he had cultivated in a very diversified life, and he looked
with confidence for the prize which is laid up for the well-doer.

Probably, if any successful life were examined, it would be found to
consist of a series of hairbreadth escapes. Every movement would be the
crossing of the Rubicon. That man is of little account who at every step
that he has taken has not been weighing matters as nicely as if he were
matching diamonds. How narrowly did Coleridge escape being the greatest
preacher, philosopher, poet, or author of his time! Almost everything
was possible to him; and one can but marvel how he went through life
avoiding in turn each of his highest possibilities. It is the glory of
Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith, that, as far