of which priests shall bear the blame, and the whole blame; for the reluctant obedience of those who accepted them for the sake of the Lord, whose com

grounds. On the other hand he views the relation upheld, amid all the throes of an imperfect, transitory state, by every created thing, to the Creating Love,-by every human soul, to the Almighty Father of spirits,—with an affectionate hopeful faith, a certain tender believingness-which if it often appeared in the form of sentiment, was by no means merely sentimental. In the depths of weakness and error, under whatever seeming contradiction, he traced a work of atonement going on, and in particular, he recognised an effectual appeal to heaven, in the upward glance, in every suppliant and precatory sigh, however dim the eye, or feeble the utterance. With the deeper thought and clearer insight of the elder Coleridge, he had indeed less acquaintance than might have been expected: he had not fully possessed himself of the reconciling idea which his father spent the latter portion of his life in developing, and setting forth, though he was far indeed from affecting to make light of it. His intellectual vocation was different; and it was very well that he did not adopt a phraseology of which he had not fully mastered the forces but whatever error may lurk in his expressions, or however they may fall short of the truth, his views on the Church, as they appear in the above passage, and throughout his writings, were certainly part and parcel of a sincere, a pious, and a humble mind-early formed, gradually matured, and consistently, but not uncharitably maintained and if this be so, whatever may be the freedom and vivacity of his language, he is not really amenable to the charge of petulance or temerity, in so far as these terms convey a moral reproof.

Both father and son have gone to their rest, and to their account. They live to the world only as thinkers and writers, with equal and independent rights. As such, with whatever perplexity of feeling, they must now be regarded, by a literary executor, while acting in that capacity, however nearly related to both.-D. C.

mission they had forged, shall not lose its reward. He that said that a cup of cold water, given for his sake, should not be given in vain, would take no exception, if for his sake, it were ignorantly given to Judas Iscariot.

We have been induced to sound this "Counterblast" to the "first blast of the Trumpet," because we believe that women, when they do err, err far more frequently from superstition, than from passion, and that their worst errors proceed from too great a distrust of their common sense and instinctive feelings, and too great a reliance on men, or serpents, or priests, who promise to make them wise. Under the name priest, we comprehend all creatures, whether Catholic or Protestant, clerks or laymen, who either pretend to have discovered a byeway to heaven, or give tickets to free the legal toll-gates, or set up toll-gates of their own; or, either explicitly or implicitly discredit the authorised map, and insist upon it, that no one can go the right way, without taking them for guides, and paying them their fees.

We then conclude, that the main disqualification of women to rule, arises from the easiness with which they are ruled, and their proneness to give the reins into dishonest and usurping hands; a fault so nearly allied to the Christian virtues of humility, docility, and obedience, so germane to that gentle, confiding spirit, which is at once their safety and their peril, their strength and their weakness, that we doubt whether the defining power of words can fix the landmark between the good and the evil. It must be "spiritually discerned."

But no good woman wishes to rule. Ambition, a far deadlier sin than the world conceives, and a degrading vice into the bargain, makes worse havoc in a female heart than in a male. For the graces

of womanhood are all womanly,-shy, timid, apt to fly from the most distant approach of harm. In man, many virtues sometimes consort with a giant vice, as we read in the book of Job that there was a meeting of the sons of God, and that Satan came also among them. But in woman, the dominance of any one evil passion is as the " abomination of desolation sitting where it should not;" as the unclean spirit in the empty house that took seven spirits worse than itself, and dwelt with them. There are few instances in which ambitious women have even retained the conservative virtue of their sex. We do not recollect more than one virgin Queen in authentic history. But what is yet more fearful, ambition perverts, where it does not extinguish, the maternal affection, and makes the holiest feelings a mighty incentive to crime. Semiramis, Agrippina, and Catherine de Medici, are not the only instances that might be adduced of women who have not merely scrupled no wickedness for their sons' advancement, but actually corrupted the minds of their offspring, and plunged them into an excess of sensuality, that themselves might govern in their names. But we need not look so high to see the mischief at work. There is no situation on earth more undesirable than that of a portionless beauty with an ambitious mother. The manœuvres, the falsehoods, to which parents who are poor and proud, will sometimes condescend, in order to bring about what is called a great match for a daughter, (that is to say, a connection with a family by whom she will most likely be despised, even now, and in the good old times, might very probably have been poisoned,) far exceed the utmost ingenuity of novelists to devise. And though it is to be hoped that such intrigues and plottings are comparatively rare in the cultivated part of society,

yet how often is the happiness of young hearts sacrificed, and virtuous unions forbidden, on a vague expectation of a higher offer? Nor are the influences of ambitious women on their husbands less injurious. It is a hard thing for a married statesman to be honest, if a coronet may be obtained by tergiversation. If "Nolo episcopari," was ever sincerely uttered, it must have been by a celibate clergyman.

Yet, although the desire of ruling is thus pernicious to feminine goodness, it by no means follows, that when Providence imposes the duty of ruling on a woman, she is to shrink from the responsibility. When the law of succession or the course of events throws dominion into a lady's hands, the same ordaining Power that makes the duty can qualify the person for its performance. There is no intellectual unfitness for sway in the sex: and whatever of moral or physical weakness may pertain to it, may be more than compensated by fineness of tact, purity of inclination, and the strength of good resolve. Indeed, when we consider how few women have attained sovereignty, and how large a proportion of those few have been great sovereigns (we wish more of them had been good women), we might almost conjecture that the politic faculties of the women were greater than those of the men. But the apparent superiority arises from the greater necessity for exertion and circumspection which the sex imposes, and the impossibility of weak women, in dangerous junctures, keeping possession of the seat at all.

Are these reflections irrelevant to biography? We trust not. At least, they were freely suggested by the portrait of that noble lady, whose character we are about to depict. She was one who, with many disadvantages of time and circumstances, after enduring in no slight measure the sufferings to which

her sex is exposed from its dependency, during the long residue of her life, happily combined the graces and charities of the high-born woman, with the sterner qualifications of a ruler; the faith and hope of a Christian crowning and harmonising all. Her sway was little less than regal-we would rather say patriarchal; and long was she remembered in the vales of Westmoreland, and among the cliffs of Craven, as a maternal blessing.

As the name of Clifford has so long been connected with the North Countree," and brings along with it so many historical, poetical, and romantic associations, we shall enter somewhat more than usual into the annals of the family, which, as they must have formed no small part of the education, so are they an important portion of the history of Lady Anne herself, who made a digest of the family records, with the assistance of Sir Matthew Hale. We regret to say, that from the specimen we have seen, the learned judge seems to have contrived to shed a sombre, judicial dulness over the composition. He was much more interested about the tenures, leases, and other legal antiquities, than about the wild adventures, loves, and wars of the ancient house. Some beautiful notices of the Cliffords are to be found in "Southey's Colloquies," a book that ought to be in every gentleman's and clergyman's library in the kingdom. In the happily balanced mind of Mr. Southey, the liveliest fancy serves to stimulate the most accurate research, and to give a vividness and reality to the past, which the mere historian, who is not also a poet, hardly wishes to bestow. For the facts which follow, we are mainly indebted to Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven.

The original seat of the Cliffords seems to have been in the Marches of Wales: they afterwards