nite and apprehensible; Sterling in after-times did not complain of
his unintelligibility, or imputed it only to the abtruse high nature of
the topics handled. Let us hope so, let us try to believe so! There
is no doubt but Coleridge could speak plain words on things plain: his
observations and responses on the trivial matters that occurred were as
simple as the commonest man's, or were even distinguished by superior
simplicity as well as pertinency. "Ah, your tea is too cold, Mr.
Coleridge!" mourned the good Mrs. Gilman once, in her kind, reverential
and yet protective manner, handing him a very tolerable though belated
cup.--"It's better than I deserve!" snuffled he, in a low hoarse murmur,
partly courteous, chiefly pious, the tone of which still abides with me:
"It's better than I deserve!"

But indeed, to the young ardent mind, instinct with pious nobleness, yet
driven to the grim deserts of Radicalism for a faith, his speculations
had a charm much more than literary, a charm almost religious and
prophetic. The constant gist of his discourse was lamentation over
the sunk condition of the world; which he recognized to be given up to
Atheism and Materialism, full of mere sordid misbeliefs, mispursuits and
misresults. All Science had become mechanical; the science not of men,
but of a kind of human beavers. Churches themselves had died away into a
godless mechanical condition; and stood there as mere Cases of Articles,
mere Forms of Churches; like the dried carcasses of once swift
camels, which you find left withering in the thirst of the universal
desert,--ghastly portents for the present, beneficent ships of the
desert no more. Men's souls were blinded, hebetated; and sunk under the
influence of Atheism and Materialism, and Hume and Voltaire: the world
for the present was as an extinct world, deserted of God, and incapable
of well-doing till it changed its heart and spirit. This, expressed
I think with less of indignation and with more of long-drawn
querulousness, was always recognizable as the ground-tone:--in which
truly a pious young heart, driven into Radicalism and the opposition
party, could not but recognize a too sorrowful truth; and ask of the
Oracle, with all earnestness, What remedy, then?

The remedy, though Coleridge himself professed to see it as in sunbeams,
could not, except by processes unspeakably difficult, be described to
you at all. On the whole, those dead Churches, this dead English Church
esp