disappointment when the round-faced man in black entered, and
dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did
not cease while he stayed; nor has he since.

Of his meeting with Coleridge, and of the soul's awakening that
followed, Hazlitt has left an account (My First Acquaintance with
Poets) that will fascinate so long as English prose is read.
'Somehow that period [the time just after the French Revolution] was
not a time when NOTHING WAS GIVEN FOR NOTHING. The mind opened, and
a softness might be perceived coming over the heart of individuals
beneath "the scales that fence" our self-interest.' As Wordsworth
wrote:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven.

It was in January, 1798, that I was one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another
walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one in the winter of 1798. Il-y-
a des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux tems de ma
jeunesse ne peut renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma
memoire. When I got there the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and
when it was done Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, 'And he
went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out
this text, his voice 'rose like a stream of 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