Again it is with thought as it is with life (I should say “soul,” if the word had not been hackneyed out of all endurance--but then the poets have exhausted nature)--it must be married to something material before you can hope to get good fruit from it--capable of continuing the species. Luckily, anything will do. It seems to have been foreseen from the creation that thought would scarcely prove prolific, unless it might be kindled at every sense and by every object in the world. Experience more than proves the justness of that foresight, and thus we have sermons in stones. By a bountiful provision, the human mind is capable of immediate and fruitful alliance with a bough, a brook, a cloud--all that the eye may see or the ear echo. It may be observed, too, that just as Sir Cassian Creme strengthens the blood of his ancient and delicate house by an alliance with his dairy-woman, so a cultivated mind may produce more vigorous progeny by intimacy with an atom than with any long-descended speculation on the Soul, say. Coleridge’s method of thinking is much to the purpose, and what came of it as a whole? For amusement’s sake, let us carry theory into practice. Let us try what course of reflection we may get by contemplating the first natural object that comes to hand. The field is wide enough: there is Parnassus, and there is Holborn Hill. But there are too many squatters on the former eminence already, perhaps; and besides, a kind of Bedlam is said to have arisen about the base of it lately, beyond which few adventurers are known to proceed. Our aspirations are humble--we may choose the lesser hill. “Alas, then!” says the dear reader, “we are to have some antiquarian reflections. Better Parnassus and Bedlam!”--Fear not. Providence, which has otherwise been very good to me, gave me a Protestant mind; and while therein exists no disposition to adore St. Botolph’s toes, or to worship St. Pancras’s well-preserved tibia, I am equally unenthusiastic about Pope’s nightcap, I don’t care a fig for Queen Anne’s farthings, and I would not go round the corner to behold the site of the Chelsea bunhouse. There is little, after all, in bricks, bones, and the coffins of men; but a glimpse into the lives of men, or into the eyes of nature--that is another thing.