d august periods of Milton to the sweet beauty of
Jeremy Taylor is as the passing from out the austere halls of Justice to
lovely fields full of flowers.

Your and my great kinsman, Coleridge, pronounced Jeremy Taylor to be
the most eloquent of all divines; and Coleridge was a great critic.

Indeed, there seems to dwell permanently in Jeremy Taylor's mind a
compelling sweetness and serenity.

His parables, though sometimes perhaps almost of set purpose fanciful,
are always full of beauty.

How can anyone withhold sympathy and affection from the writer of
such a passage as this:--

"But as, when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning,
he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits
of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to
matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over
the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those
which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil
because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man
tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face
and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud
often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets
quickly, so is a man's reason and his life."

Again:--

"No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many
delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty
conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their
stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their
imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of
joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society;
but he that loves not his wife and children, feeds a lioness at
home, and broods a nest of sorrows; and blessing itself cannot
make him happy; so that all the commandments of God enjoining a
man to 'love his wife' are nothing but so many necessities and
capacities of joy. 'She that is loved, is safe; and he that loves,
is joyful,' Love is a union of all things excellent; it contains
in it proportion and satisfaction, and rest and confidence."

Again:--

"So have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring
upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and
climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the
loud sighings of an e