Mr. Coleridge’s conversation, it is true, has not now all the brilliant versatility of his former years; yet we know not whether the contrast between his bodily weakness and his mental power does not leave a deeper and more solemnly affecting impression, than his most triumphant displays in youth could ever have done.  To see the pain-stricken countenance relax, and the contracted frame dilate under the kindling of intellectual fire alone—­to watch the infirmities of the flesh shrinking out of sight, or glorified and transfigured in the brightness of the awakening spirit—­is an awful object of contemplation; and in no other person did we ever witness such a distinction,—­nay, alienation of mind from body,—­such a mastery of the purely intellectual over the purely corporeal, as in the instance of this remarkable man.  Even now his conversation is characterized by all the essentials of its former excellence; there is the same individuality, the same unexpectedness, the same universal grasp; nothing is too high, nothing too low for it:  it glances from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, with a speed and a splendour, an ease and a power, which almost seem inspired:  yet its universality is not of the same kind with the superficial ranging of the clever talkers whose criticism and whose information are called forth by, and spent upon, the particular topics in hand.  No; in this more, perhaps, than in anything else is Mr. Coleridge’s discourse distinguished:  that it springs from an inner centre, and illustrates by light from the soul.  His thoughts are, if we may so say, as the radii of a circle, the centre of which may be in the petals of a rose, and the circumference as wide as the boundary of things visible and invisible.  In this it was that we always thought another eminent light of our time, recently lost to us, an exact contrast to Mr. Coleridge as to quality and style of conversation.  You could not in all London or England hear a more fluent, a more brilliant, a more exquisitely elegant converser than Sir James Mackintosh; nor could you ever find him unprovided.  But, somehow or other, it always seemed as if all the sharp and brilliant things he said were poured out of so many vials filled and labelled for the particular occasion; it struck us, to use a figure, as if his mind were an ample and well-arranged hortus siccus, from which you might have specimens of every kind of plant, but all of them cut and dried for store.  You rarely saw nature working at the very moment in him.  With Coleridge it was and still is otherwise.  He may be slower, more rambling, less pertinent; he may not strike at the instant as so eloquent; but then, what he brings forth is fresh coined; his flowers are newly gathered, they are wet with dew, and, if you please, you may almost see them growing in the rich garden of his mind.  The projection is visible; the enchantment is done before your eyes.  To listen to Mackintosh was to inhale perfume; it pleased, but did not satisfy.  The effect of an hour with Coleridge is to set you thinking; his words haunt you for a week afterwards; they are spells, brightenings, revelations.  In short, it is, if we may venture to draw so bold a line, the whole difference between talent and genius.