and even bright--

As are the children of yon azure sheen.

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a
sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face
o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful
complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez.
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the
index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done.
It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed
and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into
the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or
compass. So at least I comment on it after the event. Coleridge in his
person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent,
or like Lord Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair (now, alas!
grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth
masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to
enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is
traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the
pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character to all who
preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one of
those!

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who
was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years.
He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and
sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith)
to prepare him for his future destination. It was his mother's
proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister. So if we look back
to past generations (as far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes,
fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in the
human heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising up for
ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human breast!
After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in the
heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the American
war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he was to
spend the last thirty years of his l