Excerpt from The Methodist Quarterly Review, 1863, Vol. 45 Of missions, and therefore care nothing about their methods, ) that gain was purchased at the expense of the confidence and sympathy of the best and most active Christians of the country. From this point began his estrangement from the great body of cotemporary evangelical Christians, which continued to the end of his life. This led him to find out other associates, and at the house of his friend Basil Montague he met with a circle of per sons distinguished for learning and independent, perhaps erratic thinking, with Coleridge as oracle and intellectual dictator. Irving was dazzled by a light so new and unwonted, and was led away by the fascination of the discussions to which he was for the most part only a listener. Lordly and aristocratic as he often seemed in the pulpit, and in his writings, he was readily led away by almost any positive will with which he might come into friendly contact, and with characteristic ingenuous ness he would confess his indebtedness to those by whom he had been enthralled. But between himself and Coleridge there was too great a dissimilarity of mental constitution to allow either a close contact, or the exercise of a determinate influence by the one over the other. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.