It was that necessary
return to health, earnestness, and virtuous endeavor which Kreeshna
speaks of in the Hindoo Geeta: "Whenever vice and corruption have
sapped the foundations of the world, and men have lost their sense of
good and evil, I, Kreeshna, make myself manifest for the restoration
of order, and the establishment of justice, virtue, and piety." And so
this literary revolution, of which we are speaking, brought us from
frivolity to earnestness, from unbelief and all the dire negations
which it engenders, to a sublime faith in human duty and the
providence of God.
We have no room here to trace either the foreign or the native
influences which, operating as antagonism or as inspiration upon the
minds of Coleridge, Carlyle, and others, produced finally these great
and memorable results. It is but justice, however, to recognize
Coleridge as the pioneer of the new era. His fine metaphysical
intellect and grand imagination, nurtured and matured in the German
schools of philosophy and theology, reproduced the speculations of
their great thinkers in a form and coloring which could not fail to be
attractive to all seeking and sincere minds in England.
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