lower half of the bowl," for some unexplained reason, "with salt." He
was soon, however, compelled to resign it "in consequence of a
giddiness and distressful feeling" in his eyes, which, as he had drunk
but a single glass of ale, he knew must have been the effect of the
tobacco. Deeming himself recovered after a short interval, he sallied
forth to fulfil the evening's engagement; but the symptoms returned
with the walk and the fresh air, and he had scarcely entered the
minister's drawing-room and opened a packet of letters awaiting him
there than he "sank back on the sofa in a sort of swoon rather than
sleep." Fortunately he had had time to inform his new host of the
confused state of his feelings and of its occasion; for "here and thus
I lay," he continues, "my face like a wall that is whitewashing,
deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it
from my forehead; while one after another there dropped in the
different gentlemen who had been invited to meet and spend the evening
with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the poison of
tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from insensibility
and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by the candles, which
had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my embarrassment
one of the gentlemen began the conversation with: 'Have you seen a
paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?' 'Sir,' I replied, rubbing my eyes, 'I am
far from convinced that a Christian is permitted to read either
newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary
interest.'" The incongruity of this remark, with the purpose for which
the speaker was known to have visited Birmingham, and to assist him in
which the company had assembled, produced, as was natural, "an
involuntary and general burst of laughter," and the party spent, we are
told, a most delightful evening. Both then and afterwards, however,
they all joined in dissuading the young projector from proceeding with
his scheme, assuring him "in the most friendly and yet most flattering