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    any proportionate reality of public utility , and by becoming mere

    pretexts , under which cupidity aggravates every national incongruity . A sense of the majesty of proportion' must , even without much personal participation in the pressure , produce in all pure and generous minds , the passion of renovation . To the Conservative poets , Coleridge , Southey , Wordsworth , apply the observations we have made on Burke . What is Coleridge ' s Idea of an Established Church V a beautiful and noble speculation , the very speculation which makes many of those who are called Ultra-Radicals and Atheists , demand the dissolution of the union

    between Church and State . IN o bonds that have been ever used to hold together the living and the dead , can unite , in men ' s minds , to any considerable extent , that conception and the English hierarchy . In the corruptions of that body , no such soul can be compelled to inhabit . It must cease to be a sectarian

    corporation , rich in national endowments , and sacrificing even the comparatively better qualities of a sect to political subserviency and aristocratical patronage , before it can possibly become the means of spiritual culture to the entire population . The Sycorax of our hierarchy must be indeed re-formed before the pure Ariel of Coleridge ' s vision will do her bidding , and receive from her the mission of national religion . It is

    * too pure a spirit , To act her earthly and abhorred commands . ' But Coleridge is witness of the intellectual movement towards this regeneration . Nor need we point out to those who watch , with a mixture of complacency and melancholy , the superficial yet perennial luxuriance of Southey ; or to those , before whom the majestic soul of Wordsworth has stood unveiled , to what an extent , in them , the same truth is manifested . Glancing , for an instant , at a very different form of intellect , we might ask what has

    become of the ( originally ) Tory speculations of Malthus ? what is the actual influence of talent , which was first put forth to shame man ' s brightest hopes , and bow his spirit to the oppressions and plunderings of his feUow-creatures in authority , as if they were the decrees of eternal Providence ? The philosophy which was evoked , oVrmastered the Toryism it was raised to serve , and

    became another agent of improvement . And so might we show , whenever intelligence has been evinced in the party , from the orations of Canning , or the fictions of Disraeli , to the scribes of Blackwood and Fraser , how every devil of Toryism confesses , however unconsciously , the presence of the Divinity of Reform , in its divinest character , that of the progressiveneas of society and of man .

    We may assume Lytton Bulwer to be the prince of living writers of fiction ; and he is also an illustration of the affinity between that species of imagination which realizes both the external indications and inward feelings of human character , and the aspiration after a nobler developement of humanity itself .

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    The True Spirit of Reform . 5

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1835, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2641/page/5/