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affection for rather the contrary; medicine was the present publication, and the most interesting out of the question. Mr. Carlyle thinks that "the circumstance in it or connected with it; Mr. career likeliest for Sterling, in his and the world's Carlyle's book is consequent on Mr. Hare's. In circumstances, would have been what is called order the better to explain this, we have reserved public life: some secretarial, diplomatic or other to this point one feature of Sterling's career-his official training, to issue, if possible, in Parliament, entering the Church. In 1834 he caused himself as the true field for him." This opinion is founded to be ordained deacon at Chichester-a sudden upon Sterling's abilities as an orator. "In any resolution, accomplished with but small preparaarena where eloquence and argument was the tion-and entered upon his duties with a fervency point, this man was calculated to have borne the most noble. He, indeed, would be a new Paul bell from all competitors. In lucid, ingenious talk" translated into detail"-travelling not from city and logic, in all manner of brilliant utterance and to city but from house to house, and bending all tongue-fence, I have hardly known his fellow . . . his energies, "head, heart, knowledge, time, body, he was a match for any man in argument before a possessions"-all, to pastoral works. Carlyle atcrowd of men." We may suggest, however, that tributes this resolution of Sterling's to Coleridge such qualifications are by no means essential to (whose disciple he was), and observes with conthe honourable performance of secretarial or diplo-siderable bitterness, "To such length can tranmatic functions, but, on the contrary, inimical to it; scendental moonshine, cast by some morbidlywhile those which are essential, viz., business-radiating Coleridge into the chaos of fermenting habits, tact, and quiet perseverance in pursuit of life, act magically there, and produce convulsions, any given object, are just those the want of which divulsions, and diseased developments. . . . We is apparent in almost every act of Sterling's life-the do clearly think that if there had been no Colefundamental premise, in fact, in estimating his cha-ridge neither would this have been-nor had racter. And if Mr. Carlyle meant that, having got English Puseyism or some other strange portents into Parliament, he would have proved a first-rate talker, an eloquent, even invincible prattler of the Disraeli kind, it is no compliment, as no one knows better than Carlyle. The palpable tendency of Sterling's mind was to literature; he was eminently a literary man; and in that sphere he ultimately landed and became a labourer, with very small reward either of coin or honours.

been." This "clerical aberration," however, lasted not long; eight months of curate life, and Sterling gave it up on the ground of ill health (which plea he frequently brought in aid of his wishes), and henceforward became a simply literary man.

Now Mr. Hare, in his Life, dwells almost entirely on this period of Sterling's existence. "In writing a work not free from ecclesiastical heresies, and especially in writing a life very full of such," Mr. Hare has been naturally led "to dwell with preponderating emphasis on that part of his subject;

To say that, in conjunction with Maurice, Sterling received the Athenæum lifeless from the hands of its parent, Mr. Silk Buckingham, and though compelled to abandon it for commercial... carefully searching into it, with the view of reasons, first imbued it with animation; that he af- excusing and explaining it; dwelling on it, preterwards, and to the close of his existence, wrote senting all the documents of it, and as it were excellent magazine-articles for "Blackwood" and spreading it over the whole field of his delineation; other serials, and some volumes of poetry which as if religious heterodoxy had been the grand fact appear to have no excellence at all, is to write his of Sterling's life, which even to the Archdeacon's literary history. To say that he married in 1830, mind it could by no means seem to be. Hine and immediately after "fell into dangerous pul- ille lachrymæ. For the religious newspapers and monary illness" from which he never recovered; periodical heresy-hunters, getting very lively in that, pursued and scourged by Death, he fled those years, were prompt to seize the cue, and hither and thither for very life-to the West Indies, have prosecuted it and perhaps still prosecute it, Madeira, Italy, Clifton and elsewhere; that at one in their sad way, to all lengths and breadths. John time he bore a too-conspicuous part in a now for- Sterling's character and writings, which had little gotten Spanish invasion very similar to the late business to be spoken of in any Church court, have Cuban invasion, and afterwards had his house hereby been carried thither as if for an exclusive blown down in St. Vincent, is to write his personal trial; and the mounfullest set of pleadings, out of history; though to this might be added the death which nothing but misjudgment can be formed, of his wife and mother-the intelligence of the prevail there ever since. The noble Sterling.... latter loss reaching him when the former seemed what is he doing here in inquisitorial sanbenito, far off, but proving only two hours off. This is with nothing but ghastly spectralities prowling beautifully told by Carlyle, with that almost scrip-round him, and inarticulately screeching and gibbertural simplicity and strength which characterise his descriptions of human sorrows. "Twice in one morning, so to speak, has a mighty wind smitten the corners of his house, and much lies in dismal ruins around him."

From the above the reader must perceive how little in the life of John Sterling needed chronicling, how much less twice chronicling; for Archdeacon Hare had already published his biography. But herein lies the actual wherefore of

ing what they call their judgment on him!... A pale sickly shadow is presented to us here [in Mr. Hare's book] weltering bewildered amid heaps of what you call 'Hebrew old clothes,' wrestling, with impotent impetuosity, to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would recognise the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations; with his frank affections,

inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and general radiant vivacity of heart and intelligence, which made the presence of him an illumination and inspiration wherever he went? It is too bad! Let a man be honestly forgotten when his life ends, but let him not be mis-remembered in this way." Amen!

Now here we have the purpose of the book-to redeem Sterling from the inquisitorial sanbenitos and ghastly spectralities; to apologise for "the superlative of errors," earnestly begging the public to remember it was an error of short continuance, to bo pitied rather than blamed; and to exhibit the delinquent undisgraced by cassock or surplice. Thus Carlyle speaks of this era of Sterling's life: "Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment in such manner, there will at present be many opinions and mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it as a rash, false, unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his time to poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst. Alas, if we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures never did before, should we, durst we in our most audacious moments think of wedding it to the world's untruth, which is also, like all untruths, the Devil's? Only in the world's last lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious! The time, then, with its deliriums, has done its worst for poor Sterling. Into deeper aberration it cannot lead him: this is the crowning error"-though as beseems it, almost a momentary one, "the rest of his life being, in great part, a laborious effort of detail to pick the fragments of it off him, and be free of it in soul as well as in title."

...

Thus we have given the reader a particular account of all that is worth knowing in Sterling's life and rendered Carlyle's object in chronicling it tolerably obvious. On the former no more need be said; it is the old, too-frequent story of a brilliant mind set in a weak frame, of a powerful engine supported, or rather unsupported, in a flimsy, ricketty fabric, that gets more ricketty and disjointed as the engine roars within, plying its ponderous arms, conscious only of the work it ought to do, but does not do; because, with no firm basis, it, too, gets ricketty and disjointed, creaks painfully as it labours; moves slowly, stops altogether awhile; flies off again much too fast, in mad determination, and so brings the whole fabric down upon it. Concerning the spirit, however, in which the book is written and to which the above extracts furnish a clue, a few words must be said.

Romance, not entirely pledged to love and war, has now and then descended to slower friendship, given us a Pylades and an Orestes, and some others, who have bought life each for his particular friend at the price of life, and rescued him in infernal regions from infernal horrors. Carlyle has eclipsed them all. Any man reading this book, and knowing that, whatever may be the author's faults, not Calumny herself can call him hypocrite, will be

struck with the tender, almost womanly affection he bears to the departed Sterling. This rugged, mountainous kind of man, hard and occasionally obstinate, always yielding what treasure God has implanted in him more as a volcano might than as the fields do, it is as delightful as surprising to find how often in his writings one comes suddenly upon bright, soft green places, brooklets of most noble tears, grain-fields of most noble love. Nothing, if we except the unfortunate "Latter-day Pamphlets," has passed from his hands without bearing this characteristic in its pages; his Essays, the Life of Schiller, "Past and Present," all, even the Life of Cromwell may be instanced; while that wild and bountiful phantasmagoria, "Sartor Resartus," a book wherein you shall find something new and worthy another niche in memory after twenty perusals, is most rich in it. Here again in the present work we might quote a page of terse sentences, always more suggestive than expressive of the writer's feelings in proof. Let us take this one. It is apropos of a very brief and affecting note he received from Sterling, one of the last, when the certainty of death was upon him; and concluding, "Towards me it is still more true than towards England, that no man has been and done like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a hand when THERE, that will not be wanting. It is all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as it seems to the standers by."

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'It was a bright Sunday morning (says Carlyle) when this letter came to me. If in the great Cathedral of Immensity I did no worship that day the fault was surely my own. Sterling affectionately refused to see me, which was also kind and wise. And four days before his death there are some stanzas of verse for me, written as if in starfire and immortal tears, which are among my sacred possessions, to be kept for myself alone."

It will do the reader good to sit back in his chair and ponder on these passages, not between youthful lovers, but men arrived at an age of maturity. Let him bring before his mind that bright Sunday morning at Ventnor and Chelsea, and the worshipping in the Cathedral of Immensity all day! Then, again, imagine the survivor, with his grand doctrine of actual cautery, still, on sad occasions, drooping his shaggy brows over the stanzas of verse kept sacred from the harlotry of print-kept for himself alone!

But without any practical proof of friendship, beyond that which words express, our comparison of Carlyle with the fraternal heroes of old were ill-established. Here, however, it is amply displayed, and will be well understood when one comes to consider the character of that" inquisitorial sanbenito" into which Carlyle has dared to penetrate, to rescue, as he says, Sterling's reputation from profanity, and what contempt, what naked detestation, he expresses by the way. A man who gives his life for another is indeed a very meritorious man; making this abatement from his merit, that in all probability such an one doesn't know distinctly what better to do with his life-has not got an infant family certainly; and that death on such conditions is the easiest way for a vain and

weak man, having the opportunity, to obtain al
great reputation. But for him who (not by simple
dying, which thousands have voluntarily under-
taken for very trivial things, but) by an earnest,
unquailing, sleepless labour in behalf of Heaven
and humanity, has reaped golden opinions from
more than one nation-for such a man to gather
together these well-earned trophies and risk them
all in behalf of the reputation of a dead man, who
cannot thank him—at least not yet—is noble indeed.
This may cause some surprise. Indeed, we
have, perhaps, rather over-stated the case; but how
little, very superficial consideration will show.
Let us recur to the object, the professed excuse
for the second appearance of a Life of Sterling. It
may be inadequately expressed as indignation that
his friend should be considered as at all appertain-
ing to a false, hypocritical Church, because he
happened to be lured into it for a brief period by
the "transcendental moonshine" of Coleridge;
which indignation is too great to be contained in
a pamphlet or a magazine-article, he needs must
write a book, do the whole work over again, and
leave it as a visible testimony against a dead
Church and “Hebrew Old Clothes." True, it is no
new thing for Carlyle to protest in strong terms
against the English and other Churches, as they
now exist; true, also, that these keen gusts
of satire have not a tithe of the force wielded by
this little book. For not alone the few pages,
scarcely a dozen in all, which explain the author's
views and motives, but the very existence, the
fact of the book, its paper and binding, is an in-
dignant denunciation of lifeless Church formulas.
And if Sterling, a friend of the Church, has thus
fallen among the spectralities in "inquisitorial
sanbenito," what fate can Carlyle expect, who
bears himself towards them in this way? "Re-
ligious newspapers and periodical heresy-hunters"
are "lively" in these years also; if not so lively
as at the death of Sterling, it is because they now
carry heavier metal. Mr. Carlyle must see clearly
enough that a period of re-action-short and
feverish, no doubt-is commencing in the English
and other Churches; reaction from that dark,
miserable period when Hume and Voltaire were
the apostles of public opinion, to a time when
nothing would please public opinion more than to
catch an author who would even pass for a Hume
or Voltaire, and burk him: a most excellent state
of things, by the way, and some little distance on
the only road to the milennium, if it were but
based on Christianity according to St. Paul, and
not on Christianity according to Dr. Herbert Jen-
ner Fust.

Thus awkwardly have we endeavoured to ex plain what we meant by Carlyle's risking his reputation in behalf of his friend's; though the entire case is not yet stated. First, let not the risk be underrated; let it not be supposed that a man of mark like Carlyle, spite of his skill or strength, can venture into these regions on such an errand and return scatheless: it cannot be. At this period of history, when so many instances are on record, and so many more in the knowledge of living men, it were superfluous to point out how easy a thing it is to blast the name, the influence of any man, by a whisper of irreligion. At all times that is and has been proved to be a sure and deadly weapon. The shrug, the sigh, the shaking of the head, the pitying expression of countenance when such a man is mentioned, the deep regrets for intellect misused-such trifles as these, well propagated, will infallibly blast a reputation worthy of a world's remembrance.

Now before the publication of the present work awoke to action Church press prejudices, these whispers and melancholy shakings of the head were not infrequently directed against Carlyle wherever he might be the subject of conversation. You see, it is necessary in such cases to say something. Well, his oddities, his mysticism, his influence, his barbarous language, are stale topics; they are agreed upon. The profundity of his mind, the power of his pen spite of its barbarity, his vehement earnestness in urging truth or what he conceives to be truth, and his irreproachable life-all this is established beyond the reach of gossip. Suppose, then, rather than be dull and uncritical, we inquire into his ir-religion! Now there is probably no living writer whose language on such subjects is so capable of distortion as Carlyle's. His language on all subjects, indeed, (when, growing too earnest, he falls into the sad Latter-day Pamphlet style,) is bewildering enough, but when on religious topics it is really to be deplored. A bright, unfilmed eye fitfully detects the meaning the author intends to picture forth, and that it is good; at the same time, however, it sees how little sophistry and pleading by counsel are necessary to prove the direct contrary of what he designs to convey. Hence is it that while of late years the praise due to his eminent services in the cause of literature and humanity has been more universally and enthusiastically accorded, hesitating “buts" and "we fears" have grown more frequent and more loud.

It will be satisfactory, perhaps, to give here an illustration of the feeling of almost affectionate reverence, mingled with painful doubt, which seems to be gaining ground among Mr. Carlyle's critics. We quote from a late article in the "Eclectic Review," which, to do the writer justice, seems to be written in an eminently unprejudiced spirit; and though the reader will detect here two mere "windbags" of sentences, which explode the moment they are steadily looked at, the general meaning is not to be mistaken; and that is always sufficient for honest men. Thus eloquently, on both sides of the question, the Eclectic Reviewer writes:

Now these periodical heresy-hunters and ecclesiastical "spectralities" redivivi Mr. Carlyle has grievously offended. The sin will not be forgiven; and we shall be glad if, in consequence, he be not at length handed over to odium-as far as it can be done by misrepresentation, special pleading, false, damnatory pity, and that sneering eloquence of which too many sectarian publications are capable as a masked Voltaire or Hume at least; for to attack Herbert Jenner is something more than to In his hands and on his eloquent tongue, it [liteattack mere Christianity, in the eyes of not a few.rature] appears no idle toy for the amusement of the

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love-sick or the trifling-no mere excitement, but a | tuously indignant when the power of remedy has profound as well as beautiful reality, to be attested, passed away. It is a serious thing, then, we say, to if necessary, by a martyr's tears and blood, and at all events by the life and conversation of an honest and virtuous man. . . . . Carlyle has held his genius as a trust-has sought to unite it to his religion (whatever that may be), has expressed it in the language of a determined life. [Here reverse the shield.]. ... If the young minds of the age are beginning to crave something better than a creed with no articles, a gospel of negations, a faith with no forms, a hope without foundation," &c., "the fault lies in the system and not in the author of it..... He has tried to form his own sincere love and prosecution of it [still literature] into a religion, and has failed." He has, we fear, become "a worshipper without a God, a devotee with the object of devotion"-not false or absurd, but-" extinct!"

rob any man, in one day, of his honours and of his God. We glow with anger, we read with clenched fists and burning eyes, when, in pocsy or in actions for defamation, we see how some individual wretch has sworn away the virtue of a good woman or the credit of an honest man—the anguish it has entailed. But what is this anguish, which always has its remedy, in the last canto of the poem or in damages amid the acclamations of a crowded court, how is it to be compared to the anguish caused by the aggregate wretch Coterie, when it simpers away the God, the salvation of a man, there being no damages and the execrations of a crowded court for him in this world, whatever damages may be awarded him hereafter? Of all martyrdom this is the most exquisite. For Heaven's sake, for selfishness' sake, let us endeavour to avoid it. Nor do Here the case ends, to our infinite relief. We we speak here merely of Carlyle's case; for though esteem it not very unfortunate, in fact, that we have it be certainly true that he is already blown upon no space here to argue it out, so reluctant are we at by these consuming winds in a measure that calls all times to trespass upon that ground where men for notice, still we have not seen the end of him; meet oftenest in enmity, but where they should and since he has found strength to turn the tide of meet oftenest in love. We conceive it to be an popular opinion with regard to another man's chaimperative duty, however, considering the circum-racter, he may yet prevent it from entirely runstances of the question, the present time, and the ning in false channels as respects his own. But nature of the book under review, to say at least so against the iniquity in general, as here instanced, much; and that duty, after all, will be but imper-we protest; it is a most contemptible iniquity; fectly concluded in briefly reading over the various hypocrisy, calumny and ignorance mixed. items contained in what is above written, and by in- Here we must conclude these remarks, condicating those conclusions which should properly scious that we have not done justice to our readers, be drawn from them: herein, too, we hope to find Carlyle, or ourselves. But let it be understood our excuse in trespassing ever so little on religious that we have said so much in behalf of the present matters. We have seen, then, (it needed no demon-author because we are convinced that he is vastly stration,) that nothing is so fatal to reputations never misunderstood; because we believe, from a careful so hardly won and well deserved, as religious con- study of almost all he has written, and in full controversy, as sectarian denunciation. We have also sciousness of many faults, that Carlyle is, in fact, seen in the above example from the "Eclectic Re-an eminently religious man. This, indeed, is the view," and know from conversation, that of Carlyle great secret of his success; it is this that has given it is already the mode to say that he is a Godless him that influence on the public mind which, like man, a sort of good-natured, atheistical, moonstruck his Christianity, is a hundredfold greater than is Titan. Then, with this weapon within its reach generally surmised. Were it otherwise, he would and already exercised, though more in play than in find no support, no approval in this magazine. earnest, our author, by this book, hurls the most Set dead against the Doctrine of Constructive Emindignant and justifiable contempt at the Church of bezzlement, and with no faith in the judgments of England, its Hebrew Old Clothes and "new sur-H. J. Fust, Kt., as a means of salvation; with little plice at Allhallow-tide;" this, too, at a time when the Church is afflicted with a "revival"-afflicted with a revival, we say, because, unless it speedily get rid of the Doctrine of Constructive Embezzlement, and some others, it will prove to be only the precursor of something different. From these premises, then, we arrive at this: that society having learned much of him and been served well by him, is on the verge of ingratitude to this man; that he is in great danger of falling into more ghastly sanbenitos than those from which he seeks to withdraw his friend. To protest against this is the object of the foregoing remarks; and our warning has the virtue, at least, of being well-timed. It is of little use regretting episodes of this character after they are accomplished, or to grow vir

*The shoe pinches, it seems-don't fit at all, in fact; but then that's the fault not of the shoe-maker, but of the leather: possibly

of the cow whose hide it once was.

respect for the easy-slippered religion of Little Bethels or the subtle expediency of Romanism we always joyfully honour the thousands of noble Christians who leaven all the Churches. For by them alone is the world to be regenerated; by their help we trust it will finally be understood that Doctors' Commons, though well enough in its way, is not the same thing as Christianity.

So much for that. There are other and more satisfactory things presented to us by the "Life of John Sterling," little notices of well-known men, brief sketches of character, which are valuable. Of these by far the most lengthy and interesting are those of Coleridge and Captain Sterling, the father of John-the Thunderer of the Times; in which is exemplified the amazing power Carlyle possesinharmonious sentences, with a stroke of the pen, ses in portraiture. In a few sometimes crude and the character, the entire individuality of a man is

brought before you, and you recognise it at once as | corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy

truth: instance Abbot Sampson, Cromwell, Schiller and Richter as Diogenes Teufelsdröck; instance also the extracts we give below. Coleridge is first canvassed: and the testimony of Carlyle as to his character is far too valuable to be omitted.

"Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innummerable brave souls still engaged there He was thought to hold, he alone in England, the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by 'the reason what the understanding' had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and say and print to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Esto perpetua..... The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character, and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house, at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon.

"Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all conceivable or inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or, failing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world, and to some small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent."

We have already seen what were the effects of Coleridge's talk upon Sterling, and we know its influence upon the unfortunate Edward Irving, between whom, by the way, there were many points of resemblance. To what length, however, his talk has influenced the present tone of society can never be properly estimated. Here Carlyle furnishes the world with a masterly account of the conversation of this "kind of Magus," preceded by a description of his personal appearance which will bring him at once before the reader's eyes.

laden, Ingh-aspiring and surely much-suffering man. "His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song: he spoke as if preaching-you would have said, preaching carnestly, and also hopelessly, the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and 'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sung and snuffled them into om-m-inject' and 'sum-m-mject,' with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. . . . Nothing could be more copious than his talk; and furthermore it was always, virtually or literally, of the nature of a monologue; suffering no interruption, however reverent; hastily putting aside all foreign additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing anywhither like a river, but spreading everywhither in inextricable currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea.

"I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers-certain of whom, I for one, still kept eagerly listening in hope; the most had long before given up, and formed (if the room were large enough) secondary humming groups of their own. He began anywhere: you put some question to him, made some suggestive observation; instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out towards answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers, and other precautionary and vehiculatory gear, for setting out; perhaps did at last get under weigh, but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or that, into new courses; and ever into new; and before long into all the universe, where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any.

"His talk, alas! was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution; it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite fulfilments-loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for itself! He had knowledge about many things and topics, much curious read"The good man, he was now getting old, towards ing; but generally all topics led him, after a pass sixty perhaps; and gave you the idea of a life that or two, into the high seas of theosophic philosophy, had been full of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, the hazy infinitude of Kantean transcendentalism, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas with its sum-m-mjects' and 'om-m-mjects,' sad of manifold physical and other bewilderment. enough; for with such indolent impatience of the Brow and head were round and of massive weight, claims and ignorances of others, he had not the but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep least talent for explaining this or anything uneyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of known to them; and you swam and fluttered in inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from the mistiest wide unintelligible deluge of things, them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The for most part in a rather profitless, uncomfortable whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, manner. Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of the haze; but they were few, and soon swallowed of weakness under possibility of strength. He in the general element again. Balmy, sunny islets, hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent and stooping attitude. In walking, he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, in

islets of the blest and the intelligible-on which occasions those secondary humming groups would all cease humming, and hang breathless upon the eloquent words, till once your islet got wrapt in the mist again, and they could recommence humming."

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