other inducement to look on your existing appointment with complacency. Every improvement in knowledge, and the moral power of wielding and directing it, will _tell for more_,--have a wider and more benignant influence,--than the same accomplishment would in a man who belonged to one of the learned professions. Both your information and your example will fall where they are most wanted, like the noiseless dews in Malta, where rain comes seldom and no regular streams are to be met with. As to your present studies, for such portions of your time as you can prudently appropriate to reading, without wrong to the claims of health and _social_ relaxation, there is one department of knowledge, which, like an ample palace, contains within itself mansions for every other knowledge; which deepens and extends the interest of every other, gives it new charms and additional purpose; the study of which, rightly and _liberally_ pursued, is beyond any other _entertaining_, beyond all others tends at once to tranquillize and enliven, to keep the mind elevated and steadfast, the heart humbler and tender: it is _biblical theology_--the philosophy of religion, the religion of philosophy. I would that I could refer you to any _book_ in which such a plan of reading had been sketched out, in detail or even but generally. Alas! I know of none. But most gladly will I make the attempt to supply this desideratum by conversation, and then by letter. But of this when I have next the pleasure of seeing you at Highgate. You have perhaps heard that my publisher is a bankrupt. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * All the profits from the sale of my writings, which I should have had, and which, in spite of the accumulated disadvantages under which the works were published, would have been considerable, I have lost; and not only so, but have been obliged, at a sum larger than all the profits made by my lectures, to purchase myself my own books and the half copyrights. Well, I am now _sole_ proprietor, and representing my works by cyphers, and the author by _I_, my emblem might be 00001. I have withdrawn them from sale. This is rather hard, but perhaps my comet may some time or other have its perihelion of popularity, and then the _tail_, you know, whisks round to the other end; and for 00001, lo! and behold, 10,000. Meantime, enough for me to thank God that, relatively to my fellow men at least, I have been "sinned against, not sinning;" and relatively to my Maker, these afflictions are but penances of mercy, less than the least of my forfeitures.--I hope you will soon take pot-luck with us. Believe me, with esteem and regard, yours, S. T. COLERIDGE.[104] T. Allsop, Esq. * * * * *