that now interest the human mind.  All those among modern authors who combine deep learning with an enlarged wisdom, a vivid and poetical imagination with an acute perception of the practical and the true, have evidently educated themselves in the school of Coleridge.  He well deserves the name of the Christian Plato, erecting as he does, upon the ancient and long-tried foundation of that philosopher’s beautiful system of intuitive truths, the various details of minor but still valuable knowledge with which the accumulated studies of four thousand intervening years have furnished us, at the same time harmonizing the whole by the all-pervading spirit of Christianity.

Coleridge is truly a Christian philosopher:  at the same time, however, though it may seem a paradox, I must warn you against taking him for your guide and instructor in theology.  A Socinian during all the years in which vivid and never-to-be-obliterated impressions are received, he could not entirely free himself from those rationalistic tendencies which had insensibly incorporated themselves with all his religious opinions.  He afterwards became the powerful and successful defender of the saving truths which he had long denied; but it was only in cases where Arianism was openly displayed, and was to be directly opposed.  He seems to have been entirely unconscious that its subtle evil tendencies, its exaltation of the understanding above the reason, its questioning, disobedient spirit, might all in his own case have insinuated themselves into his judgments on theological and ecclesiastical questions.  The prejudices which are in early youth wrought into the very essence of our being are likely to be unsuspected in exact proportion to the degree of intimacy with which they are assimilated with the forms of our mind.  However this may be, you will not fail to observe that, in all branches of philosophy that do not directly refer to religion, Coleridge’s system of teaching is opposed to the general character of his own theological views, and that he has himself furnished the opponents of these peculiar views with the most powerful arms that can be wielded against them.

Every one of Coleridge’s writings should be carefully perused more than once, more than twice; in fact, they cannot be read too often; and the only danger of such continued study would be, that in the enjoyment of finding every important subject so beautifully thought out for you, natural indolence might deter you from the comparatively laborious exercise of thinking them out for yourself.  The three volumes of his “Friend,” his “Church and State,” his “Lay Sermons,” and “Statesman’s Manual,” will each of them furnish you with most important present information and with inexhaustible materials for future thought.

Reid’s “Inquiry into the Human Mind,” and Dugald Stewart’s “Philosophy of the Mind,” are also books that you must carefully study.  Brown’s “Lectures on Philosophy” are feelingly and gracefully written; but unless you find a peculiar charm and interest in the style, there will not be sufficient compensation for the sacrifice of time so voluminous a work would involve.  Those early chapters which give an account of the leading systems of Philosophy, and some very ingenious chapters on Memory, are perhaps as much of the book as will be necessary for you to study carefully.