Now for something which, I would fain believe, is still more important, namely, the propriety of your future philosophical speculations. Your second objection, derived from the present "ebb" of opinion, will be best answered by the fact that Mackintosh and his followers have the "flow". This is greatly in your favour, for mankind are at present gross reasoners. They reason in a perpetual antithesis; Mackintosh is an oracle, and Godwin therefore a fool. Now it is morally impossible that Mackintosh and the sophists of his school can retain this opinion. You may well exclaim with Job, "O that my adversary would write a book!" When he publishes, it will be all over with him, and then the minds of men will incline strongly to those who would point out in intellectual perceptions a source of moral progressiveness. Every man in his heart is in favour of your general principles. A party of dough-baked democrats of fortune were weary of being dissevered from their fellow rich men. They want to say something in defence of turning round. Mackintosh puts that something into their mouths, and for awhile they will admire and be-praise him. In a little while these men will have fallen back into the ranks from which they had stepped out, and life is too melancholy a thing for men in general for the doctrine of unprogressiveness to remain popular. Men cannot long retain their faith in the Heaven "above" the blue sky, but a Heaven they will have, and he who reasons best on the side of the universal wish will be the most popular philosopher. As to your first objection, that you are a logician, let me say that your habits are analytic, but that you have not read enough of travels, voyages, and biography--especially men's lives of themselves--and you have too soon submitted your notions to other men's censures in conversation. A man should nurse his opinions in privacy and self-fondness for a long time, and seek for sympathy and love, not for detection or censure. Dismiss, my dear fellow, your theory of Collision of Ideas, and take up that of Mutual Propulsion. I wish to write more, and state to you a lucrative job, which would, I think, be eminently serviceable to your own mind, and which you would have every opportunity of doing here. I now express a serious wish that you would come and look out for a house. Did Stuart remit you £10. on my account? S. T. COLERIDGE. I would gladly write any verses, but to a prologue or epilogue I am absolutely incompetent. Coleridge was a tremendous walker and hill climber. The following letter narrates a curious adventure in a storm among the mountains. LETTER 98. TO DAVY October 18, 1800. My dear Davy,