half-witty, yet most appreciative conceit which should first come
stammering from his lips. He would have advanced slowly, and only after
much delay would have ventured to stand before the great masters, and
to look up eye to eye at the spirit of the Louvre. After taking his
departure, he would never have thought familiarly of the scene, but it
would have remained in his mind as terrible and sacred an episode as was
the descent into Hades to Virgil's hero.

Not only in the Louvre, but in the world, Charles Lamb was the more
timid worshipper. The whole character of his mind, the intensity of his
thought within a narrow sphere, made him reverent of the Infinite. The
thought of departure from the life which he now lived was to him a very
solemn one. Religious ideas were so sacred to him that he never referred
to them lightly, and seldom at all. When he did mention them, it was
with peculiar impressiveness. No one can read the account of his share
in a conversation on "persons one would like to have seen," without
admiring the energy and pathos with which he alluded to one Person,
whose name, however, he did not utter. Discussions on religious subjects
he never tolerated in anybody but Coleridge. One evening, after he and
Leigh Hunt had returned from a visit to Coleridge, Hunt began to express
his surprise that a man of so much genius as the Highgate sage should
entertain such religious opinions as he did, and mentioned one of his
doctrines for especial reprobation. Lamb, who was preparing the second
bowl of punch, answered, hesitatingly, with a gentle smile,--"Never mind
what Coleridge believes; he is full of fun." He was an humble, sinful
worshipper, and while he bowed his head tremblingly before Heaven, he
poured out the stream of his affections to his sister and his friends.

The religious character of Sydney Smith was less peculiar than that of
Elia. An earnest Christian, with a will too resolute to allow the aid