it being written in Scripture, 'Ask,' and it shall be given you! and my human reason being, moreover, convinced of the propriety of offering 'petitions' as well as thanksgivings to Deity." S. T. C. 1797. "I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge, he reverted with strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said,-- --'Of whose all-seeing eye Aught to demand were impotence of mind.' This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the highest energy of which the human heart was capable--praying, that is, with the total concentration of the faculties; and the great mass of worldly men and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of praying." 'Mr. De Quincey in Tait's Magazine, September, 1834, p.515.' "Mr. Coleridge, within two years of his death, very solemnly declared to me his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bed-side one afternoon, and he fell--an unusual thing for him--into a long account of many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others, but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. 'But I have no difficulty,' said he, 'in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness 'as we forgive'. I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and will;--O no! my dear, it is 'to pray', to pray as God would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon--this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's warfare on earth. 'Teach' us to pray, O Lord!' And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. O what a sight was there!" 'Table Talk,' vol. i. p. 162. Ed.] TO THE NIGHTINGALE.