difficulties of the thoughts and arguments themselves.  Locke on the Human Understanding is a work that has probably been often recommended to you.  Perhaps, if you keep steadily in view the danger of his materialistic, unpoetic, and therefore untrue philosophy, the book may do you more good than harm; it will furnish you with useful exercise for your thinking powers; and you will see it so often quoted as authority, on one side as truth, on the other as falsehood, that it may be as well you should form your own judgment of it.  You should previously, however, become guarded against any dangers that might result from your study of Locke, by acquiring a thorough-knowledge of the philosophy of Coleridge.  This will so approve itself to your conscience, your intellect, and your imagination, that there can be no risk of its being ever supplanted in a mind like yours by “plebeian"[79] systems of philosophy.  Few have now any difficulty in perceiving the infidel tendencies of that of Locke, especially with the assistance of his French philosophic followers, (with whose writings, for the charms of style and thought, you will probably become acquainted in future years.) They have declared what the real meaning of his system is by the developments which they have proved to be its necessary consequences.  Let Coleridge, then, be your previous study, and the philosophic system detailed in his various writings may serve as a nucleus, round which all other philosophy may safely enfold itself.  The writings of Coleridge form an era in the history of the mind; and their progress in altering the whole character of thought, not only in this but in foreign nations, if it has been slow, (which is one of the necessary conditions of permanence,) has been already astonishingly extensive.  Even those who have never heard of the name of Coleridge find their habits of thought moulded, and their perceptions of truth cleared and deepened, by the powerful influence of his master-mind,—­powerful still, though it has probably only reached them through three or four interposing mediums.  The proud boast of one of his descendants is amply verified:  “He has given the power of vision:”  and in ages yet to come, many who may unfortunately be ignorant of the very name of their benefactor will still be profiting daily, more and more, by the mental telescopes he has provided.  Thus it is that many have rejoiced in having the distant brought near to them, and the confused made clear, without knowing that Jansen was the name of him who had conferred such benefits upon mankind.  The immediate artist, the latest moulder of an original design, is the one whose skill is extolled and depended upon; and so it is even already in the case of Coleridge.  It is those only who are intimately acquainted with him who can plainly see, that it is by the power of vision he has conferred that the really philosophic writers of the present day are enabled to give views so clear and deep on the many subjects