ON TAXATION.

WE can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory: taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth — on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health — on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The school-boy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772. He was the son of a poor cu rate, and the youngest of ten children. His early education was received at Christ's Hcspital, in London. Charles Lamb was his school-fe.low, and has made a touching allusion to him in one of the Essays of Elia. Coleridge was unusually precocious, and was thoroughly spoiled by the ill-judging fondness of his uncle, who took charge of him after the death of his father. He went to the University at Cambridge, but quitted it after two years, on account of debts, it is supposed. He enlisted as a common soldier, but was discharged, after a few months' service, on the interposition of his friends. He became an intimate friend of Southey, and the two poets subsequently married sisters. It does not appear that Coleridge had either property, employment, or any rational prospect of earning a living at the time of his marriage; but his early years were his best and most productive ones. The Ancient Mariner, the Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni, the first part of Christabel, and other minor poems, displaying the highest qualities of im`gination, were written in his

twenty-fifth year. To quiet the pangs of his diseased nerves, he commenced the use of opium; and the habit, once established, was never broken. In the quantity of this terrible drug which he came to consume he left even De Quincey far behind; and the effect of this slavery to a morbid appetite upon his health, his intellect, and his moral character made the record of all his subsequent life pitiable. Vast projects were conceived, as baseless as the domes of Kubla Khan; great quartos were planned, of which not a line was written but the title page. His wife and children left him in despair, and took refuge with Southey. All that he earned was insufficient for his wants, and his begging letters show too well the depth of his abasement. He found a home at last with a certain Mr. Gillman, who was proud of his famous guest; and there he lived for eighteen years, until his death in 1834 Coleridge had, by nature, all the great qualities which constitute a poet. We cannot predict the future growth of the poetic art; but it is difficult to imagine a state of society in which his best works will not be read with pleasure, if not with ungrudging admiration. The splendor of his imagery, the force and the subtilty of thought, and the natural melody of his verse have placed him, by common consent, among the few immortal names. We cannot forget, as we wish we could, the selfish indulgence, the aimless indolence, the habitual untruth, and the unspeakable degradation of his later years; and we must lament that, with a mind so ill balanced, his very genius should have taken the form of a "splendid disease." His poems were collected by his son and daughter, and are published in three volumes. His prose essays, published in The Friend, are finely written, and are as clear in meaning as metaphysical treatises in general. A very striking description of him occurs in Carlyle's Life of Stirling, one of the most beautiful and characteristic works of the great essayist.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause

On thy bald, awful head, O, sovran Blanc !

The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge. But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,

Thy habitation from eternity.

O, dread and silent mount, I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought. Entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it, —

Thou, the mean while, wast blending with my thought,

Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,

Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused
Into the mighty vision passing - there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.

Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise
Thou owest - not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink,
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald, wake, O, wake, and utter praise !
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad,
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam ?

And who commanded, and the silence came, -
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye icefalls, ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge;
Motionless torrents, silent cataracts,

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen, full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,

Answer, and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice;
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds;
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost;
Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle's nest;
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm;
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds;
Ye signs and wonders of the element,

Utter forth, God, and fill the hills with praise!

Once more, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast -
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain, thou
That, as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,

Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me rise, O, ever rise;
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth.
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!