er years. My soul has indeed remained in its
original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and
unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay,
has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that
my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length
found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is
not to my purpose.

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch
(nine miles farther on) according to the custom of Dissenting
Ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is
thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is
kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the
fires in the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, placed at different stations,
that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids
the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over to see my
father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's
probable successor; but in the meantime I had gone to hear him preach
the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into
a Unitarian pulpit to preach the Gospel, was a romance in these
degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of
Christianity, which was not to be resisted.

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk
as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.
_Il y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de ma
jeunesse ne 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 mind, 'of one crying in