and then misapplies them to the concrete organism, the life of which, according to the common metaphor, has been destroyed by his dissecting knife. Coleridge goes too far in speaking as if analysis were in itself a mischievous instead of an important process, much as Wordsworth thought that every man of science was ready to botanise on his mother's grave. But, on the other hand, the clear conviction that a society could only be explained as an organic and continuous whole enables him to point out very distinctly the limits of the opposite school. One indication of this contrast may be found in Coleridge's theory of Church and State. It is curious that Mill, in his essay upon Coleridge, especially admires him for taking into account the historical element in which Bentham was deficient. It is curious because it is remarkable that the leader of a school which boasted specially of resting upon experience, should admit that it was weak precisely in not appreciating the historical method on which surely experience should be founded. It seems almost as if the antagonists had changed weapons like the duellists in 'Hamlet.' The _à priori_ thinker rests upon experience, and the empiricist upon a really _à priori_ method. The ambiguity indicates Coleridge's peculiar position towards the opposite school. He regards society as an organism, a something which has grown through long centuries, and therefore to be studied in its vital principle, not to be analysed into a mere mechanism for distributing certain lumps of happiness. In doing so he was saying what had been said by Burke, whose wisdom he fully appreciated and whose real consistency he recognised. To my mind, indeed, Burke as a political philosopher was far greater than Coleridge. But Burke hated the metaphysics in which Coleridge delighted, and therefore with him we seem at best to come upon blank prejudice, or prescription, as the ultimate ground of political science. Coleridge feels the necessity of connecting his organic principles with some genuine philosophical principle, and Mill admits that Conservatism in his treatment was something very superior to the mere brute prejudice to which Eldon and Castlereagh appealed, and which was used as a bludgeon by 'The Quarterly Review.' Unluckily it is here, too, that we find the weakness of Coleridge's character. He tried to put together his views at a time when his mind had been hopelessly enervated; when he could guess and beat about a principle, but could never get it fairly stated or see its full bearings. He is struggling for utterance, still clinging to the belief that he can elaborate a system, but never getting beyond prolegomena and fruitful hints. He says that to study politics with benefit we must try to elaborate the 'idea' of Church and State, and the 'idea,' as he explains, is identical with what scientific people call a law. But how the law or laws of an organism are to be determined by some transcendental principle overruling