COSMIC/ FORCES.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:]
Siu,—Yonr article on "Professor Huxley and Cosmic Forces" reminds mo of a story told me by my old friend Frederick Manners, more than fifty years ago. Professor Buckland, talking to Coleridge, repeatedly spoke of "Nature" as doing this and that, till at last Coleridge impatiently said : "Why do you not say God,' when you mean God." Buckland answered that he thought it more reverential to use the in- direct phrase, but that, of course, Coleridge attached the same meaning to both words. To which Coleridge indignantly rejoined : "What, Sir ! I think God and Nature the same ! I think Nature is the devil in a strait-waistcoat !" John Sterling, from whom I think the story came, afterwards put the phrase into "Hell in harness" in one of his felicitous aphorisms.—I
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