The poplar trembles
before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage,
gropes around with its feeblest branches, and hisses as in impotent
passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its stem,
bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest,
bends to the winds with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt
return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur
like the roar of the far-off ocean.
* * * * *
=_George H. Calvert, 1803-._= (Manual pp. 503, 505.)
From "First Years in Europe."
=_198._= ESTIMATE OF COLERIDGE.
That Coleridge with his mental pockets full of gold, and with a mine in
fee wherefrom he not only replenished his daily purse but enriched his
neighbors, should now and then borrow a guinea, is a fact at which we
should rather smile than frown, or, more fitly, pass by without special
sensation, seeing what has been the practice of the highest,--a practice
which may with full ethical assent be regarded as a privilege inherent
in their supremacy, the free use of all knowledge collected and
experience acquired, no matter when, where, or by whom, being a natural
right of him _who has the genius to turn it to best account_.
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