'Il y a des
impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent effacer.
Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de majeunesse ne pent
renatre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma memoire.' When I got
there, the organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done,
Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text. "He departed again into a
mountain 'himself alone'." As he gave out this text his voice 'rose like
a stream 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 my mind, of one
crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food
was locusts, and wild honey. The preacher then launched into his
subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace
and war--upon church and state--not their alliance, but their
separation--on the spirit of the world, and the spirit of Christianity,
not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who
had inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.
He made a poetical and pastoral excursion,--and to shew the fatal
effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd
boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to
his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country
lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse,
turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
finery of the profession of blood.
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