And now for your second Letter. What shall I say? When our Griefs and Fears and agitations are strongly roused towards one object, we almost want some fresh memento to remind us that we have other Loves, other Interests. Forgive me if I tell you that your last letter did, in something of this way, make me feel afresh, that there was that in my very heart that called you Son as well as Friend, and reminded me that a Father's affection could not exist exempt from a Father's anxiety. I am fully aware that every syllable in the latter half of your letter proceeded from the strong two-fold desire at once to comfort and conciliate, and that I ought to regard your remarks as the mere straining of the Soul towards an End felt and known to be pure and lovely; and even so I do regard them, yet I cannot read them without anxiety: not indeed anxious Thoughts, but anxious Feeling. Sane or insane, fearful thing it is, when I can be comforted by an assurance of the latter; but I neither know nor _dare_ hear of any mid state, of no vague necessities dare I hear. Our own wandering thoughts may be suffered to become Tyrants over the mind, of which they are the Offspring and the most effective Viceroys, or substitutes of that dark and dim spiritual Personëity, whose whispers and fiery darts holy men have supposed them to be, and that these may end in the loss, or rather Forfeiture of Free agency, I doubt not. But, my dearest friend, I have both the _Faith of Reason_ and the Voice of Conscience and the assurance of Scripture, that, "resist the evil one, and he will flee from you." But for self-condemnation, J... would never have tampered with Fatalism; and but for Fatalism, he would never have had such cause to condemn himself. With truest love, Yours, S. T. COLERIDGE. T. Allsop, Esq. P.S. Affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, in short, to you and _yours_. While I write the two last words, my lips felt an appetite to kiss the baby. LETTER 206. TO GILLMAN Ramsgate, 28th Oct., 1822. Dear Friend,