_The Mission of the Comforter_.) They who are of that party still, who would still swathe religion by way of supporting it, and dizen by way of dressing it, and gaze with fond regretful admiration upon the giant forms of Spiritual Despotism and Exaggerated Externalism, as they loom shadowy and magnificent through the vapoury vista of ages, to them no wonder that he is a giant too. And there are others, far above that or any other _party_, who in their love and zeal for the Church, abstract the how and the why of Laud's public warfare, and see him abstractedly as the Champion of the Church of England. "God knows my heart," says Mr. Coleridge, (in a marginal note on Mr. Southey's article on the _History of Dissenters_, in the _Quarterly Review_ of October 1813,) "how bitterly I abhor _all_ intolerance, how deeply I pity the actors when there is reason to suppose them deluded; but is it not clear that this theatrical scene of Laud's death, who was the victim of almost national indignation, is not to be compared with 'bloody sentences' in the coolness of secure power? As well might you palliate the horrible atrocities of the Inquisition, every one of which might be justified on the same grounds that Southey has here defended Laud, by detailing the vengeance taken on some of the Inquisitors." I do not see that _here_ my honoured Uncle _defends_ the Primate: he says, "We are not the apologists of Laud; in some things he was erroneous, in some imprudent, in others culpable. Evil, which upon the great scale is ever made conducive to good, produces evil to those by whom it comes." And how wise and beautiful is this sentiment a little further on! "It especially behoves the historian to inculcate charity, and take part with the oppressed, whoever may have been the oppressors." As some excuse for my Father's expression, "theatrical scene," I allege that sentence of Laud's; "Never did man put off mortality with a better courage, nor look upon his bloody and malicious enemies with more Christian charity." My Father adds: "I know well how imprudent and unworldly these my opinions are. The Dissenters will give me no thanks, because I prefer and extol the _present_ Church of England, and the partizans of the Church will calumniate me, because I condemn particular members, and regret particular æras, of the _former_ Church of England. Would that Southey had written the _whole_ of his review in the spirit of this beautiful page." (Page 102.) In that very interesting collection of meditative Sonnets by the late Sir Aubrey de Vere is one upon Laud, against which I ventured to write, "If _anything_ done in the name of principle must needs be righteous, then the tortures and long languishing of Leighton are no impeachment of Laud's righteousness." There was a second edition of the _Aids_ in 1831, a fifth in 1843.