familiar Book. Most direct and confident is the solemn statement. I
wrote it as the final motto.

     "NOW THE SERPENT WAS MORE SUBTILE THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD WHICH
     THE LORD GOD HAD MADE."

THE TERTIARY AGE, AND ITS CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS.

In entering upon the Tertiaries, we reach that geological age which,
next to his own, has the deepest interest for man. The more striking
scenes of animal life, hitherto confined chiefly to the ocean, are now
on land; the extensive sheets of fresh water are filled with fishes of a
comparatively modern character,--with Whitefish, Pickerel, Perch, Eels,
etc.,--while the larger quadrupeds are introduced upon the continents so
gradually prepared to receive them. The connection of events throughout
the Tertiaries, considered as leading up to the coming of man, may be
traced not only in the physical condition of the earth, and in the
presence of the large terrestrial Mammalia, but also in the appearance
of those groups of animals and plants which we naturally associate with
the domestic and social existence of man. Cattle and Horses are first
found in the middle Tertiaries; the grains, the Rosaceæ, with their
variety of fruits, the tropical fruit-trees, Oranges, Bananas, etc., the
shade- and cluster-trees, so important to the comfort and shelter of
man, are added to the vegetable world during these epochs. The fossil
vegetation of the Tertiaries is, indeed, most interesting from this
point of view, showing the gradual maturing and completion of those
conditions most intimately associated with human life. The earth had
already its seasons, its spring and summer, its autumn and winter, its
seed-time and harvest, though neither sower nor reaper was there; the
forests then, as now, dropped their thick carpet of leaves upon the
ground in the autumn, and in many localities they remain where they
originally fell, with a layer of soil between the successive layers of
leaves,--a leafy chronology, as it were, by which we read the passage of
the years which divided these deposits from each other. Where the leaves
have fallen singly on a clayey soil favorable for receiving such
impressions, they have daguerreotyped themselves with the most wonderful
accuracy, and the Oaks, Poplars, Willows, Maples, Walnuts, Gum- and
Cinnamon-trees, etc., of the Tertiaries are as well known to us as are
those of our own time.

It was an eventful day, not only for science, but for the world, when a
Siberian fisherman chanced to observe a singular mound lying near the
mouth of the River Lena, where it empties into the Arctic Ocean. During
the warmer summer-weather, he noticed, that, as the snow gradually
melted, this mound assumed a more distinct and prominent outline, and at
length, on one side of it, where the heat of the sun was greatest, a
dark body became exposed, which, when completely uncovered, proved to be
that of an immense elephant, in so perfect a state of preservation that
the dogs and wolves were attracted to it as by the smell of fresh meat,
and came to feed upon it at night. The man knew little of the value of
his discovery, but the story went abroad, and an Englishman travelling
in Russia, being curious to verify it, visited the spot, and actually
found the remains where they had been reported to lie, on the frozen
shore of the Arctic Sea,--strange burial-place enough for an animal
never known to exist out of tropical climates. Little beside the
skeleton was left, though parts of the skin remained covered with hair,
showing how perfect must have been the condition of the body when first
exposed. The tusks had been sold by the fisherman; but Mr. Adams
succeeded in recovering them; and collecting all the bones except those
of one foot, which had been carried off by the wolves, he had them
removed to St. Petersburg, where the skeleton now stands in the Imperial
Museum. The inhabitants of Siberia seem to be familiar with this animal,
which they designate by the name of _Mammoth_, while naturalists call
it _Elephas primigenius_. The circumstance that they abound in the
frozen drift of the great northern plain of Asia, and are occasionally
exposed in consequence of the wearing of the large rivers traversing
Siberia, has led to the superstition among the Tongouses, that the
Mammoths live under ground, and die whenever, on coming to the surface,
the sunlight falls upon them.

Had this been the only creature of the kind found so far from the
countries to which elephants are now exclusively confined, it might have
been believed that some strange accident had brought it to the spot
where it was buried. But it was not long before similar remains were
found in various parts of Europe,--in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and
in Italy. The latter were readily accounted for by the theory that they
must be the remains of the Carthaginian elephants brought over by the
armies of Hannibal, while it was suggested that the others might have
been swept from India by some great flood, and stranded where they were
found. It was Cuvier, entitled by his intimate acquaintance with the
anatomy of living animals to an authoritative opinion in such matters,
who first dared to assert that these remains belonged to no elephant of
our period. He rested this belief upon structural evidence, and insisted
that an Indian elephant, brought upon the waves of a flood to Siberia,
would be an Indian elephant still, while all these remains differed in
structure from any species existing at present. This statement aroused
research in every direction, and the number of fossil Mammalia found
within the next few years, and proved by comparison to be different from
any living species, soon demonstrated the truth of his conclusion.

Shortly after the discovery of fossil elephants had opened this new path
of investigation, some curious bones were found by some workmen in the
quarries of Montmartre, near Paris, and brought to Cuvier for
examination. Although few in number, and affording but very scanty
_data_ for such a decision, he at once pronounced them to be the remains
of some extinct animal preceding the present geological age. Here, then,
at his very door, as it were, was a settlement of that old creation in
which he could pursue the inquiry, already become so important in its
bearings. It was not long before other bones of the same kind were
found, though nothing as yet approaching an entire skeleton. However,
with such means as he had, Cuvier began a comparison with all the living
Mammalia,--with the human skeleton first, with Monkeys, with the larger
Carnivora and Ruminants, then with all the smaller Mammalia, then with
the Pachyderms; and here, for the first time, he began to find some
resemblance. He satisfied himself that the animal must have belonged to
the family of Pachyderms; and he then proceeded to analyze and compare
all the living species, till he had collected ample evidence to show
that the bones in question did not correspond with any species, and
could not even be referred to any genus, now in existence. At length
there was discovered at Montmartre an upper jaw of the same
animal,--next a lower jaw, matching the upper one, and presently a whole
head with a few backbones was brought to light. These were enough, with
Cuvier's vast knowledge of animal structure, to give him a key to the
whole skeleton. At about the same time, in the same locality, were found
other bones and teeth also, differing from those first discovered, and
yet equally unlike those of any living animal. The first evidently
belonged to some stout and heavy animal, the others were more slender
and of lighter build. From these fragments, ample evidence to him of his
results, he drew the outlines of two animals: one which he called the
Palæotherium, (old animal,) a figure of which is given in the above
wood-cut, and the other Anoplotherium, (animal without fangs). He
presented these figures with an explanatory memoir at the Academy, and
announced them as belonging to some creation preceding the present,
since no such animals had ever existed in our own geological period.
Such a statement was a revelation to the scientific world: some looked
upon it with suspicion and distrust; others, who knew more of
comparative anatomy, hailed it as introducing a new era in science; but
it was not till complete specimens were actually found of animals
corresponding perfectly to those figured and described by Cuvier, and
proving beyond a doubt their actual existence in ancient times, that all
united in wonder and admiration at the result obtained by him with such
scanty means.

It would seem that the family of Pachyderms was largely represented
among the early Mammalia; for, since Cuvier named these species, a
number of closely allied forms have been found in deposits belonging to
the same epoch. Of course, the complete specimens are rare; but the
fragments of such skeletons occur in abundance, showing that these
old-world Pachyderms, resembling the Tapirs more than any other living
representatives of the family, were very numerous in the lower
Tertiaries.

There is, however, one animal now in existence, forming one of those
singular links before alluded to between the present and the past, of
which I will say a few words here, though its relation is rather with a
later group of Tertiary Pachyderms than with those described by Cuvier.
On the coast of Florida there is an animal of very massive, clumsy
build, long considered to be a Cetacean, but now recognized, by some
naturalists at least, as belonging to the order of Pachyderms. In form
it resembles the Cetaceans, though it has a fan-shaped tail, instead of
the broad flapper of the Whales. It inhabits fresh waters or shoal
waters, and is not so exclusively aquatic as the oceanic Cetaceans. Its
most striking feature is the form of the lower jaw, which is bent
downward, with the front teeth hanging from it. This animal is called
the Manatee, or Sea-Cow. There are three species known to
naturalists,--one in Tampa Bay, one in the Amazon, and one in Africa. In
the Tertiary deposits of Germany there has been found an animal allied
in some of its features to those described by Cuvier, but it has the
crown of its teeth folded like the Tapir, while the lower jaw is turned
down with a long tusk growing from it. This animal has been called the
Dinotherium. A part of the head, showing the heavy jaws and the
formidable tusk, is represented in the subjoined wood-cut.

Its hanging lower jaw, with the protruding tusk, corresponds perfectly
to the formation of the lower jaw and teeth in the Manatee. Some
resemblance of the Dinotherium to the Mastodon suggested a comparison
with that animal as the next step in the investigation, when it was
found that at the edge of the lower jaw of the latter there was a pit
with a small projecting tooth, also corresponding exactly in its
position to the tusk in the Dinotherium. The Elephant was now examined;
and in him also a rudimentary tooth appeared in the lower jaw, not cut
through, but placed in the same relation to the jaw and the other teeth
as that of the Mastodon. It would seem, then, that the Manatee makes one
in this series of Dinotherium, Mastodon, and Elephant, and represents
the aquatic Pachyderms, occupying the same relation to the terrestrial
Pachyderms as the Seals bear to the terrestrial Carnivora, and, like
them, lowest in structure among their kind.

The announcement of Cuvier's results stimulated research, and from this
time forward Tertiary Mammalia became the subject of extensive and most
important investigations among naturalists. The attention of collectors
once drawn to these remains, they were found in such numbers that the
wonder was how they had been so long hidden from the observation of men.
They remind us chiefly of tropical animals; indeed, Tigers, Hyenas,
Rhinoceroses, Hippopotamuses, Mastodons, and Elephants had their home in
countries which now belong to the Cold Temperate Zone, showing that the
climate in these latitudes was much milder then than it is at present.
Bones of many of these animals were found in caverns in Germany, France,
Italy, and England. Perhaps the story of Kirkdale Cave, where the first
important discovery of this kind was made on English soil, may not be so
well known to American readers as to forbid its repetition here.

It was in the summer of 1821 that some workmen, employed in quarrying
stone upon the slope of a limestone hill at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, came
accidentally upon the mouth of a cavern. Overgrown with grass and
bushes, the mouth of this cave in the hill-side had been effectually
closed against all intruders, and it was not strange that its existence
had never been suspected. The hole was small, but large enough to admit
a man on his hands and knees; and the workmen, creeping in through the
opening, found that it led into a cavern, broad in some parts, but low
throughout. There were only a few spots where a man could stand upright;
but it was quite extensive, with branches opening out from it, some of
which have not yet been explored. The whole floor was strewn, from one
end to the other, with hundreds of bones, like a huge dog-kennel. The
workmen wondered a little at their discovery, but, remembering that
there had been a murrain among the cattle in this region some years
before, they came to the conclusion that these must be the bones of
cattle that had died in great numbers at that time; and, having so
settled the matter to their own satisfaction, they took little heed to
the bones, but threw many of them out on the road with the common
limestone. Fortunately, a gentleman, living in the neighborhood, whose
attention had been attracted to them, preserved them from destruction;
and a few months after the discovery of the cave, Dr. Buckland, the
great English geologist, visited Kirkdale, to examine its strange
contents, which proved indeed stranger than any one had imagined; for
many of these remains belonged to animals never before found in England.
The bones of Hyenas, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, and Hippopotamuses
were mingled with those of Deer, Bears, Wolves, Foxes, and many smaller
creatures. The bones were gnawed, and many were broken, evidently not by
natural decay, but seemed to have been snapped violently apart. After
the most complete investigation of the circumstances, Dr. Buckland
convinced himself, and proved to the satisfaction of all scientific men,
that the cave had been a den of Hyenas[A] at a time when they, as well
as Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., existed in England in as great
numbers as they now do in the wildest parts of tropical Asia or Africa.
The narrow entrance to the cave still retained the marks of grease and
hair, such as one may see on the bars of a cage in a menagerie against
which the imprisoned animals have been in the habit of rubbing
themselves constantly, and there were marks of the same kind on the
floor and walls.

[Footnote A: Among the other facts showing that Kirkdale Cave had been
the den of these animals, and not tenanted as their home by any of the
other creatures whose remains occurred there, were the excrements of the
Hyenas found in considerable quantity by Dr. Buckland, and identified as
such by the keeper of a menagerie. Any one who may wish to read the
whole history of Dr. Buckland's investigations of this matter, showing
the patience and sagacity with which he collected and arranged the
evidence, will find a full account of Kirkdale Cave and other caverns
containing fossil bones in his "Reliquiæ Diluvianæ."]

It was evident that the Hyenas were the lords of this ancient cavern,
and the other animals their unwilling guests; for the remains of the
latter were those which had been most gnawed, broken, and mangled; and
the head of an enormous Hyena, with gigantic fangs found complete, bore
ample evidence to their great size and power. Some of the animals, such
as the Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., could not have been brought into
the cave without being first killed and torn to pieces, for it is not
large enough to admit them. But their gnawed and broken bones attest,
nevertheless, that they were devoured like the rest; and probably the
Hyenas then had the same propensity which characterizes those of our own
time, to tear in pieces the body of any dead animal, and carry it to
their den to feed upon it apart.

While Kirkdale Cave was evidently the haunt of Hyenas chiefly, other
caverns in Germany and France were tenanted in a similar manner by a
gigantic species of Bear. Their remains, mingled with those of the
animals on which they fed, have been found in great numbers in the
Cavern of Gailenreuth, in Franconia. The subjoined wood-cut shows the
head of this formidable beast, which must have exceeded in size any Bear
now living. Indeed, although there were many smaller kinds, and the
other types of the Animal Kingdom in the Tertiaries seem to approach
very nearly both in size and general character their modern
representatives, yet, on the whole, the earlier Mammalia were giants in
comparison with those now living. The Mastodon and Mammoth, as compared
with the modern Elephant, the Megatherium, as compared with the Sloths
of present times, the Hyenas and Bears of the European caverns, and the
fossil Elk of Ireland, by the side of which even the Moose of our
Northern woods is belittled, are remarkable instances in proof of this.
One cannot but be struck with the fact that this first representation of
Mammalia, the very impersonation of brute force in power, size, and
ferocity, immediately preceded the introduction of man, with whose
creation intelligence and moral strength became the dominant influences
on earth.

Among these huge Tertiary Mammalia, one of those most common on the
North-American continent seems to have been the Mastodon. The
magnificent specimens preserved in this country are too well known to
require description. The remains of the Rhinoceros occur also in the
recent Tertiary deposits of North America, though as yet no perfect
skeletons have been found. The Edentata, now confined to South America
and the western coast of Africa, were also numerous in the Southern
States during that time; their remains have been found as far north as
the Salt Lick in Kentucky. But we must not judge of the Tertiary
Edentata by any now known to us. The Sloths, the Armadillos, the
Ant-Eaters, the Pangolins, are all animals of rather small size; but
formerly they were represented by the gigantic Megatherium, the
Megalonyx, and the Mylodon, some of which were larger than the Elephant,
and others about the same size of the Rhinoceros or Hippopotamus. The
subjoined wood-cut represents a Mylodon in the act of lifting himself
against the trunk of a tree.

They were clumsy brutes, and though their limbs were evidently built
with reference to powerful movements, perhaps climbing, or at least
rising on their hind quarters, the act of climbing with them cannot have
had anything of the nimbleness or activity generally associated with it.
On the contrary, they probably were barely able to support their huge
bodies on their hind limbs, which are exceedingly massive, and on the
stiff, heavy tail, while they dragged down with their front limbs the
branches of the trees, and fed upon them at leisure. The Zoölogical
Museum at Cambridge is indebted to the generosity of Mr. Joshua Bates
for a very fine set of casts taken from the Megatherium in the British
Museum. They are now mounted, and may be seen in one of the
exhibition-rooms of the building. Large Reptiles, but very unlike those
of the Cretaceous and Jurassic epochs, belonging chiefly to the types of
Turtles, Crocodiles, Pythons, and Salamanders, existed during the
Tertiary epochs. The wood-cut below represents a gigantic Salamander of
the Tertiary deposits. It is a curious fact, illustrative of the
ignorance of all anatomical science in those days, that, when the
remains of this reptile (Audrias, as it is now called) were first
discovered toward the close of the seventeenth century, they were
described by old Professor Scheuchzer as the bones of an infant
destroyed by the Deluge, and were actually preserved, not for their
scientific value, but as precious relics of the Flood, and described in
a separate pamphlet, entitled, "Homo Diluvii Testis." Among the Tertiary
Reptiles the Turtles seem to have been a very prominent type, by their
size as well as by their extensive distribution. Their remains have been
found both in the far West and in the East. The fossil Turtles of
Nebraska are well known to American naturalists; but the Oriental one
exceeds them in size, and is, indeed, the most gigantic representative
of the order known thus far. A man could stand under the arch of the
shield of the old Himalayan Turtle preserved in the British Museum.

It would carry me too far, were I to attempt to give anything more than
the most cursory sketch of the animals of the Tertiary age; and, indeed,
they are so well known, and have been so fully represented in
text-books, that I fear some of my readers may think even now that I
have dwelt too long upon them. Monkeys were unquestionably introduced
upon earth before the close of the Tertiaries; some bones have been
found in Southern France, and also on Mount Pentelicus in Greece, in the
later Tertiary deposits; but these remains have not yet been collected
in sufficient number to establish much more than the fact of their
presence in the animal creation at that time. I do not offer any opinion
respecting the fossil human bones so much discussed recently, because
the evidence is at present too scanty to admit of any decisive judgment
concerning them. It becomes, however, daily more probable that facts
will force us sooner or later to admit that the creation of man lies far
beyond any period yet assigned to it, and that a succession of human
races, as of animals, have followed one another upon the earth. It may
be the inestimable privilege of our young naturalists to solve this
great problem, but the older men of our generation must be content to
renounce this hope; we may have some prophetic vision of its fulfilment,
we may look from afar into the land of promise, but we shall not enter
in and possess it.

The other great types of the Animal Kingdom are very fully represented
in the Tertiaries, and in their general appearance they approach much
more closely those of the present creation than of any previous epochs.
Professor Heer has collected and described the Tertiary Insects in great
number and variety; and the Butterflies, Bugs, Flies, Grasshoppers,
Dragon-Flies, Beetles, etc., described in his volumes, would hardly be
distinguished from our own, except by a practised entomologist. Among
Crustacea, the Shrimp-like forms of the earlier geological epochs have
become much less conspicuous, while Crabs and Lobsters are now the
prominent representatives of the class. Among Mollusks, the Chambered
Shells, hitherto so numerous, have become, as they now are, very few in
comparison with the naked Cephalopods. The Nautili, however, resemble
those now living in the Pacific Ocean; and some fragments of the
Paper-Nautilus have been found, showing that this delicate shell was
already in existence. There is one very peculiar type of this class,
belonging to the Tertiaries, which should not be passed by unnoticed. It
partakes of the character both of the Cretaceous Belemnites and of the
living Cuttle-Fish, and is known as the Spirulirostra. Another very
characteristic group among the Tertiary Shells is that of the
Nummulites, formerly placed by naturalists in immediate proximity with
the Ammonites, on account of their internal partitions. This is now
admitted to have been an error; their position is not yet fully
determined, but they certainly stand very low in the scale, and have no
affinity whatever with the Cephalopods. The subjoined wood-cut
represents one of these Shells, so numerous in the Tertiaries that large
masses of rock consist of their remains. The Univalve Shells or
Gasteropods of the Tertiaries embraced all the families now living,
including land and fresh-water Shells as well as the marine
representatives of the type. Some of the latter, as, for instance, the
Cerithium, are accumulated in vast numbers. The limestone quarries out
of which Paris is chiefly built consist wholly of these Shells. The
fresh-water basins were filled with Helices, one of which is represented
in the following wood-cut, with Planorbis, Limnæus and other Shells
resembling those now so common in all our lakes and rivers, and
differing from the living ones only by slight specific characters. The
Bivalves also have the same resemblance to the present ones, including
fresh-water Mussels as well as the marine Clams and Oysters. Among
Radiates, the higher Echini (Sea-Urchins) have become numerous, while
the other Echinoderms of all families abound. Corals include, for the
first time, the more highly organized Madrepores.

In the Tertiaries we see the dawn of the present condition of things,
not only in the character of the animals and plants, but in the height
of the mountains and in the distribution of land and sea.

Let us give a glance at the continents whose growth we have been
following, and see what these more recent geological epochs have done
for their completion. In Europe they have filled the basin in Central
France, and converted all that region into dry land: they have filled
also the channel between France and Spain; they have united Central
Russia with the rest of Europe by the completion of Poland, and have
greatly enlarged Austria and Turkey; they have completed the
promontories of Italy and Greece, and have converted the inland sea at
the foot of the Jura into the plain of Switzerland. But this fruitful
period in the progress of the world, when the character of organic life
was higher and the physical features of the earth more varied than ever
before, was not without its storms and convulsions. The Pyrenees, the
Apennines, the Alps, and with them the whole range of the Caucasus and
Himalayas, were raised either immediately after the Cretaceous epoch, or
in the course of the Tertiaries. Indeed, with this most significant
passage in her history, Europe acquired all her essential characters.
There remained, it is true, much to be done in what is called by
geologists "modern times." The work of the artist is not yet finished
when his statue is blocked out and the grand outline of his conception
stands complete; and there still remained, after the earth was rescued
from the water, after her framework of mountains was erected, after her
soil was clothed with field and forest, processes by which her valleys
were to be made more fruitful, her gulfs to be filled with the rich
detritus poured into them by the rivers, her whole surface to be
rendered more habitable for the higher races who were to possess it.

We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. A glance at the
geological map will show the reader that during the Permian, Triassic,
and Jurassic epochs little was added to the United States, though here
and there deposits belonging to each of them crop out. In the Cretaceous
epoch, however, large tracts of land were accumulated, chiefly in the
South and West; and during the Tertiaries the continent was very nearly
completed, leaving only a narrow gulf running up to the neighborhood of
St. Louis to be filled by modern detritus, and the peninsula of Florida
to be built by the industrious Coral-Workers of our own period. The age
of the Alleghany chain is not yet positively determined, but it was
probably raised at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. Up to that
time, only the Laurentian Hills, the northern side of that mountainous
triangle which now makes the skeleton, as it were, of the United States,
existed. The upheaval of the Alleghanies added its eastern side, raising
the central part of the continent so as to form a long slope from the
base of the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean; but it was not until the
Tertiary Age that the upheaval of the great chain at the West completed
the triangle, and transformed that wide westerly slope into the
Mississippi Valley, bounded on one side by the Alleghanies, and on the
other by the Rocky Mountains.

It is my belief, founded upon the tropical character of the Fauna, that
a much milder climate then prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere
than is now known to it. Some naturalists have supposed that the
presence of the tropical Mammalia in the Northern Temperate Zone might
be otherwise accounted for,--that they might have been endowed with
warmer covering, with thicker hair or fur. But I think the simpler and
more natural reason for their existence throughout the North is to be
found in the difference of climate; and I am the more inclined to this
opinion because the Tertiary animals generally, the Fishes, Shells,
etc., in the same regions, are more closely allied in character to those
now living in the Tropics than to those of the Temperate Zones. The
Tertiary age may be called the geological summer; we shall see,
hereafter, how abruptly it was brought to a close.

One word more as to the relation of the Tertiary Mammalia to the
creation which preceded them. I can only repeat here the argument used
before: the huge quadrupeds characteristic of these epochs make their
appearance suddenly, and the deposits containing them follow as
immediately upon those of the Cretaceous epoch, in which no trace of
them occurs, as do those of the Cretaceous upon those of the Jurassic
epoch. I would remind the reader that in the central basin of France, in
which Cuvier found his first Palæotherium, and which afterwards proved
to have been thickly settled by the early Mammalia, the deposits of the
Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary epochs follow each other in
immediate, direct, uninterrupted succession; that the same is true of
other localities, in Germany, in Southern Europe, in England, where the
most complete collections have been made from all these deposits; and
there has never been brought to light a single fact leading us to
suppose that any intermediate forms have ever existed through which more
recent types have been developed out of older ones. For thirty years
Geology has been gradually establishing, by evidence the fulness and
accuracy of which are truly amazing, the regularity in the sequence of
the geological formations, and distinguishing, with ever-increasing
precision, the specific differences of the animals and plants contained
in these accumulations of past ages. These results bear living testimony
to the wonderful progress of the kindred sciences of Geology and
Palæontology in the last half-century; and the development-theory has
but an insecure foundation so long as it attempts to strengthen itself
by belittling the geological record, the assumed imperfection of which,
in default of positive facts, has now become the favorite argument of
its upholders.

THE NEW SANGREAL.

  "Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood!
  Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest!
  Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sick
  Of all the falseness, all the little aims,
  The weary vanities, the gasping joys,
  The slow procession of this satiate world!
  Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest!
  Down through the old reverberating time,
  I see Thy knights in wonderful array
  Go out to victory, like the solemn stars
  Fighting in courses, with their conquering swords,
  Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength,
  Their living glory, their majestic death.
  Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

  He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest,
  So high, that all the glittering, misty world,
  All summer's splendid tempests, lay below,
  And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet;
  So still, not any sound of silentness
  Expressed the silence, nor the pallid sun
  Burned on his eyelids; all alone and still,
  Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips,
  Broken with eager stress. Then he arose.
  But always, down the hoary mountain-side,
  Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams,
  In clattering streets, or the great city's roar,
  Still from his never sated soul went up,
  "Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

  Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang,
  And when its silvery anger smote the air,
  Men sprang to arms from every true man's home,
  And followed to the field. He followed, too,--
  All the mad blood of manhood in his veins,
  All the fierce instincts of a warring race
  Kindled like flame in every tingling limb,
  And raging in his soul on fire with war.
  He heard a thousand voices call him on:
  Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despair
  From swamps and forests and the still bayous
  That hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair:
  From fields and marshes where the tropic sun
  Scorches a million laborers scourged to work;
  From homes that are not homes; from mother-hearts
  Torn from the infants lingering at their breasts;
  From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives;
  From men grown mad with whips and tyranny;
  From all a country groaning in its chains.
  Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more;
  He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour,
  And armed, and sped to battle. Now no more
  He cried or prayed,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

  So in the front of deadly strife he stood;
  The glorious thunder of the roaring guns,
  The restless hurricane of screaming shells,
  The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls,
  The sudden clash of sabres, and the beat
  Of rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge,
  Made a great chorus to his valorous soul,
  The dreadful music of a grappling world,
  That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide,
  But fell upon its turning. Over him
  Fluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on,
  While he lay helpless on the trampled sward,
  His hot life running scarlet from its source,
  And all his soul in sudden quiet spent,
  As still as on the silent mountain-top;
  So still that from his quick-remembering heart
  Burst that old cry,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"

  Then a bright mist descended over him,
  And in its central glory stood a shape,
  Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding hands
  Stretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divine
  Like a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:--
  "The blood poured out for brothers is my blood;
  The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh;
  No more in golden chalices I dwell,
  No longer in a vision, angel-borne:
  Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest.
  Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied:
  Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee.
  As first I broke the bread and poured the wine,
  So have I broken thee and poured thy life,
  So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee,
  So do I bear thee in my wounded hands."
  Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow,
  And over all its anguish stole a smile;
  The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breath
  Sighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind,
  Sobbing, but sweet,--"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

In the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive
flourish seems uncalled for; and so indeed it would be, if by such means
it were meant simply to justify the undertaking. In regard to any of the
great powers in literature there exists already a prevailing interest,
which cannot be presumed to slumber for one moment in any thinking
mind.[A] By way of notification, there is no need of prelude. Yet there
are occasions, as, for example, the entrances of kings, which absolutely
demand the inaugural flourish of arms,--which, like the rosy flood of
dawn, require to be ushered in by a train of twilight glories. And there
are lives which proceed as by the movements of music,--which, must
therefore be heralded by overtures: majestic steppings, heard in the
background, compel us, through mere sympathy with their pomp of
procession, to sound the note of preparation.

[Footnote A: "_In any thinking mind_." Yet it must be confessed that
there _does_ exist a woful ignorance or negligence concerning De Quincey
in quarters from which better things might be expected. Misappreciation
it cannot be called, where no trouble has been taken to estimate claims
that needed only to be weighed to be truly valued. Up to this time,
there has never been published in England a single essay on the life or
the genius of De Quincey that indicated even a good acquaintance, on the
part of the writer, with that author's works; and in such a case, of
course, not much could be looked for in the way of just interpretation.
Gilfillan did him gross injustice: indeed, from what he condescended to
say of the man, it would be difficult to conjecture that a greater than
Gilfillan was there. And, will the reader believe it? in Professor
Craik's "English Literature"--a work of great excellence--the name of De
Quincey is not mentioned! "Sam Johnson," says Craik, "was the last king
that sat upon the throne of English prose literature." Let it be that
Sam was a proper king; yet it is just as true that De Quincey was
legitimately his successor. First, in the matter of time: Sam died in
1784, and De Quincey was born in 1785, just in time to continue the
regal line. What was it, again, that entitled Johnson to kingly honors?
Was it learning? De Quincey was as erudite. Was it his style? There is
no writer in the language who in that matter may look down on De
Quincey.

If there ever was a writer "damned with faint praise," it was De
Quincey. Some stupid writer for the London "Athenæum," for instance,
dared to compliment the poor "opium-chewer" after the following
style:--"He possessed taste, but _he lacked creative energy_; and his
subtle and highly refined intellect was ingenious and acute rather than
powerful." This reminds me of a criticism once passed upon Shakspeare by
a mere pedagogue, to the effect that the great poet had considerable
genius, but very little taste!]

Else I should plunge _in medias res_ upon a sketch of De Quincey's life;
were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the
important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which,
implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with me in
all such courtesies,--

  "Neu desint epulis rosæ";

particularly as the shade we deal with can be evoked only by peculiar
incantations,--only the heralding of certain precise claims will this
monarch listen to as the just _inferiæ_, the fitting sacrifice or
hecatomb of our homage.

The key-note of preparation, the claim which preëminently should be set
forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of
hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound
mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart,
sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an
altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the
shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the
hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as
concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal in open
light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once
disclosed, which are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those
meditations which most resemble dreams; and as to the manner of these
revelations, no Roman _pontifex maximus_, were it even Cæsar himself,
could have rivalled their magisterial pomp.

The peculiarities of his life all point in the direction here indicated.
It was his remarkable experience which furnished him the key to certain
secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along
that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by
the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions
of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and
with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically
inscribed meanings did he--this Champollion, defying all human enigmas,
this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms
and yawning abysses of human astronomy--resolve into orderly
constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic
interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable
amongst men. The conditions of his power in this respect are
psychologically inseparable from the remarkable conditions of his life,
two of which are especially to be noticed. First, a ruling disposition
towards meditation, constituting him, in the highest sense of the word,
a poet. Secondly, the peculiar qualities which this singular mental
constitution derived from his use of opium,--qualities which, although
they did not increase, or even give direction to his meditative power,
at least magnified it, both optically, as to its visual capacity, and
creatively, as to its constructive faculty. These two conditions, each
concurrent with the other in its ruling influence, impart to his life a
degree of psychological interest which belongs to no other on record.
Nor is this all. The reader knows how often a secondary interest will
attach to the mightiest of conquerors or to the wisest of sovereigns,
who is not merely in himself, and through his own deeds, magnificent,
but whose glory is many times repeated and piled up by numerous
reverberations of itself from a contemporary race of Titans. Thus,
doubtless, Charles V., although himself King of Spain, Germany, the
Netherlands, and a portion of Italy, gloried in the sublime empery of
the Turkish Solyman, as by some subtile connection of fate sympathetic
with his own. A secondary interest of this nature belongs to the life of
De Quincey,--a life which inclosed, as an island, a whole period of
English literature, one, too, which in activity and originality is
unsurpassed by any other, including the names of Scott and Dickens, of
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey, of Moore, Byron, Shelley, and
Keats. His connection with very many of these was not simply that of
coëxistence, but also of familiar intercourse.

Between De Quincey's life and his writings it is impossible that there
should be any distraction of interest, so intimately are the two
interwoven: in this case more so than in that of any known author.
Particularly is this true of his more impassioned writings, which are a
faithful rescript of his all-impassioned life. Hierophant we have called
him,--the prince of hierophants,--having reference to the matter of his
revelations; but in his _manner_, in his style of composition, he is
something more than this: here he stands the _monarch_ amongst
rhapsodists. In these writings are displayed the main peculiarities of
his life and genius.

But, besides these, there is a large section of his works, the aim of
which is purely intellectual, where feeling is not at all involved; and
surely there is not, in either ancient or modern literature, a section
which, in the same amount of space, exhibits the same degree of intense
activity on the part of the analytic understanding, applied to the
illustration of truth or to the solution of vexed problems. This latter
class is the more remarkable from its polar antithesis to the former;
just as, in his life, it is a most remarkable characteristic of the man,
that, rising above all other men through the rhapsodies of dreams, he
should yet be able truly to say of himself that he had devoted a greater
number of hours to intellectual pursuits than any other man whom he had
seen, heard of, or read of. A wider range is thus exhibited, not of
thought merely, but also of the possible modes of expressing thought,
than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in
rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey
does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of
legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he
is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual
gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with
every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the
demonstration,--between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from
which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the
earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested
serpent "mounts and burns." His alchemy is infinite, combining light
with warmth in all degrees,--in pathos, in humor,[A] in genial
illumination. Let the reader, if he can, imagine Rousseau to have
written "Dinner, Real and Reputed," or the paper on "The Essenes," in
both of which great erudition is necessary, but in which erudition is as
nothing when compared to the faculty of recombining into novel forms
what previously had been so grouped as to be misunderstood, or had
lacked just the one element necessary for introducing order. To have
written these would have entitled Rousseau to a separate sceptre. Or,
moving into a realm of art totally distinct from this, suppose him to
have been the author of "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts":
that would mount a new plume in Rousseau's hat. But I happen just now to
be reminded of another little paper, numbering about six pages,
entitled, "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth": give him _that_,
too. Why, the little French king is beginning to assume an imperial
consequence! We beg the reader's pardon for indulging in comparisons of
this nature, which are always disagreeable; but we have this excuse,
that the two writers are often mentioned as on the same level, and with
no appreciation of that unlimited range of power which belongs to De
Quincey, but not at all to Rousseau. All but one of the trophies which
we have hypothetically transferred to the Frenchman adorn a single
volume out of twenty-two, in the Boston edition. Nor is this one
imperial column adorned by these alone: there are, besides,--alas for
Rousseau!--two other _spolia opima_ by which the French master is, in
his own field, proved not the first, nor even the second,--_proximus,
sed non secundus_,--so wide is the distance between De Quincey and _any_
other antagonist. These two are the essays respectively entitled, "Joan
of Arc," and "The English Mail-Coach."

[Footnote A: Of De Quincey's humor, a friend once remarked to me, that
it always reminded him of an elephant attempting to dance. Now, without
any doubt, an elephant could dance after an elephantine fashion; but
surely you would never catch him going through the movements of a jig or
a Virginia "breakdown." He never lets you forget that he is an elephant.
So with De Quincey. Levity is an element farthest removed from _his_
humor; in fact, whenever he allows himself to indulge in humor at all,
you may be sure that murder is going on somewhere in the vicinity, a
tragedy of pretty frequent occurrence in De Quincey's works.

There was sufficient humor in De Quincey to have endowed a dozen
Aristophaneses. There was something, too, in its order, by which it
resembled the gigantesque features of the old Greek master. I will
illustrate my meaning by a single instance from each. In Aristophanes's
"Clouds," Strepsiades is being initiated into the Socratic
_Phrontisterium_, and in the course of the ceremony Socrates directs his
pupil's attention to the moon for certain mysterious purposes. But the
moon only reminds Strepsy of numerous imperturbable duns that storm
about his ears with lunar exactness, (literally so, since the Greeks
paid, or refused to pay, regularly on the last day of the month,)--and
here it is that the opportunity is offered for a monstrous stroke of
humor; for, at this crisis, Strepsy is made to exclaim, "Some magic is
it, O Socrates, about the moon? Well! since you are up to that sort of
thing, what do you say, now, to a spell by which I could snap the old
monster out of her course for a generation or so?" Now for the parallel
case from De Quincey. It is from his paper on "California," a
politico-economical treatise. The author's object is to illustrate the
fact that scarcity of gold is not due to its non-existence, but to the
difficulty of obtaining it. "Emeralds and sapphires," says he, "are
lying at this moment in a place which I could indicate, and no policeman
is on duty in the whole neighborhood to hinder me or the reader from
pocketing as many as we please. We are also at perfect liberty to pocket
the anchors of Her Majesty's ship the Victoria, (one hundred and twenty
guns,) and to sell them for old iron. Pocket them by all means, and I
engage that the magistrate sitting at the Thames police-office will have
too much respect for your powers to think of detaining you. If he does,
your course is to pocket the police-office, and all which it inherits.
The man that pockets an anchor may be a dangerous customer, but not a
customer to be sneezed at." This strikes us as very similar to
Strepsiades's bagging the moon.]

It is impossible to be exhaustive upon such a subject as that which I
have undertaken. I shall select, therefore, two prominent centres, about
which the thoughts which I wish to present naturally revolve: De
Quincey's childhood, and his opium-experiences.

Thomas de Quincey--hierophant, rhapsodist, philosopher--was born at
Greenhay, then a suburb of Manchester, in Lancashire County, England, on
the 15th of August, 1785. According to his own account, the family of
the De Quinceys was of Norwegian origin; and after its transfer to
France, in connection with William the Norman, it received its
territorial appellation from the village of Quincy, in Normandy. Thence,
at the time of the Norman Invasion, it was transplanted to England,
where, as afterwards in Scotland, it rose to the highest position, not
merely in connection with a lordly title and princely estates, but
chiefly on account of valuable services rendered to the State, and
conferring preeminence in baronial privilege and consideration.

So sensitive was De Quincey, even at the early age of fifteen, on the
point of his descent, lest from his name he might be supposed of French
extraction, that, even into the ears of George III. (that king having,
in an accidental interview with him at Frogmore, suggested the
possibility of his family having come to England at the time of the
Huguenot exodus from France) he ventured to breathe the most earnest
protest against any supposition of that nature, and boldly insisted upon
his purely Norman blood,--blood that in the baronial wars had helped to
establish the earliest basis of English constitutional liberty, and that
had flowed from knightly veins in the wars of the Crusades. Robert De
Quincey came into England with William the Conqueror, uniting with whose
fortunes, he fared after the Conquest as a feudal baron, founding the
line of Winchester; and that he was a baron of the first water is
evident from the statement of Gerard Leigh,--that his armorial device
was inscribed (and how inscribed, if not memorially and as a mark of
eminent distinction?) on the stained glass in the old church of St.
Paul's.

And here it is proper that the reader's attention should be momentarily
diverted to the American branch of this family, at the head of which
stands the Hon. Josiah Quincy, (the aristocratic _De_ being omitted,)--a
branch which fled from England in the early part of the seventeenth
century, to avoid a strife which had then become too intense and fiery
to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their
withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness
of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a
critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,--as indicating how
surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will
continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of
ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier
between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our
fancied retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its
accumulated violence,--as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence
with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human
affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming
by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her
direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread
alternative,--it is interesting to note how this same family, separated
by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous
crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an
interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise
reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for
refuge,--a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and
under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two
antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in
battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that
could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.

But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their
prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came
suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty
traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved
in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his
successors. The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however,
remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey
tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last
vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together
with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings. But above
the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate
far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of
promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster. For just
here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family
freshly grounded upon a second heritage,--one sublime in its order above
that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever
imperishable,--namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of
Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought
under distinct illumination for all time to come. These are the vast
acres over which human pride must henceforth soar,--acres that have
been, through the mighty realizations of human genius, built out into
the mysterious ocean-depths of chaotic Nature, and that have in some
measure bridged over infinite chasms in thought, and by just so far have
extended the fluctuating boundaries of human empire. And for De Quincey
himself, in view of that monumental structure which rises above the
shattered wrecks of his poor, frail body, as above the mummied dust of
Egyptian kings remain eternally the pyramids which they wrought in their
lifetime, we find it impossible to cherish a single regret, that,
possibly, by the treasonable slip of a predecessor, he may have been
robbed of an earldom,--or even that, during a life which by some years
overlapped the average allotment to humanity, and through which were
daily accumulating the most splendid results in the very highest
departments of philosophy and art, these accumulations nevertheless went
on without any notable recognition from a court the most liberal in all
Europe; no badge of outward knighthood coming to him through all these
years, as formerly to Sir Thomas Browne for his subtile meditations, and
to Sir William Hamilton for his philosophic speculations. The absence of
such merely _nominal_ titles excites in us no deep regret; there is in
them little that is monumental, and the pretty tinsel, with which they
gild monuments already based on substantial worth, is easily, and
without a sigh, exchanged for that everlasting sunshine reflected from
the loving remembrances of human hearts.

But at the same time that we so willingly dispense with these nominal
conditions in the case of De Quincey,--though, assuredly, there was
never a man upon earth whom these conditions, considered as aërial
hieroglyphs of the most regal pomp and magnificence, would more
consistently fit,--we cannot thus easily set aside those other outward
conditions of affluence and respectability, which, by their presence or
absence, so materially shape and mould the life, and particularly in its
earliest tendencies and impulses,--in that season of immature
preparation when the channels of habit are in the process of formation,
and while yet a marvellous uncertainty hangs and broods over the
beginnings of life, as over the infant rivulet yet dandled and tended by
its mountain-nurses. For, although there are certain elements which
rigidly and by a foreseen certainty determine its course, as, for
instance, an extraordinary vantage-height of source, securing for it the
force and swiftness of a torrent,--yet how shifting are the
mountain-winds, chilling into frosty silence or quickening with Favonian
warmth, and how shifting the flying clouds, which, whether marshalled in
mimic tournament above it, or in the shock of a real conflict, forever
sway its tender fountains! Thus, even in inexperienced childhood, do the
scales of the individual destiny begin, favorably or unfavorably, to
determine their future preponderations, by reason of influences merely
material, and before, indeed, any sovereignty save a corporeal one (in
conjunction with heavenly powers) is at all recognized in life. For, in
this period, with which above all others we associate influences the
most divine, "with trailing clouds of glory," those influences which are
purely material are the most efficiently operative. Against the former,
adult man, in whom reason is developed, _may_ battle, though ignobly,
and, for himself, ruinously; and against the latter oftentimes he _must_
struggle, to escape ignominious shipwreck. But the child, helpless alike
for both these conflicts, is, through the very ignorance which shields
him from all conscious guilt, bound over in the most impotent (though,
because impotent and unconscious, the least humiliating) slavery to
material circumstance,--a slavery which he cannot escape, and which,
during the period of its absolutism, absorbs his very blood, bone, and
nerve. To poverty, which the strong man resists, the child succumbs; on
the other hand, that affluence of comfort, from which philosophy often
weans the adult, wraps childhood about with a sheltering care; and
fortunate indeed it is, if the mastery of Nature over us during our
first years is thus a gentle dealing with us, fertilizing our powers
with the rich juices of an earthly prosperity. And in this respect De
Quincey _was_ eminently fortunate. The powers of heaven and of earth
and--if we side with Milton and _other_ pagan mythologists in
attributing the gift of wealth to some Plutonian dynasty--the dark
powers _under_ the earth seem to have conjointly arrayed themselves in
his behalf. Whatever storms were in the book of Fate written against his
name they postponed till a far-off future, in the mean time granting him
the happiest of all childhoods. Really of gentle blood, and thus gaining
whatever substantial benefits in constitutional temperament and
susceptibilities _could_ be thence derived, although lacking, as Pope
also had lacked, the factitious circumstance and airy heralding of this
distinction, he was, in addition to this, surrounded by elements of
aristocratic refinement and luxury, and thus hedged in not merely
against the assault, in any form, of pinching poverty, (as would be any
one in tolerably comfortable circumstances,) but even against the most
trivial hint of possible want,--against all necessity of limitation or
retrenchment in any normal line of expenditure.

He was the son of a merchant, who, at the early age of thirty-nine,
died, leaving to his family--a wife and six children--an estate yielding
annually an income of sixteen hundred pounds. And as at his father's
death De Quincey was seven years old, we may reasonably infer, that,
during this previous period, while his father was still living, and
adding to this fixed a fluctuating income from his yearly gains, (which
to a wholesale merchant of his standing were considerable,) the
family-fortunes were even more auspicious, amounting to the yearly
realization of between two and three thousand pounds, and that at a time
when Napoleon had not as yet meddled with the financial affairs of
Europe, nor by his intimidations caused even pounds and shillings to
shrink into less worth and significance than they formerly had,--in view
of which fact, if we are to charge Alexander the Great (as in a famous
anecdote he was charged) with the crime of highway-robbery, as the
"snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" in the way of crowns and a few
dozen sceptres, what a heinous charge must be brought against this
Corsican as universal pickpocket! This pecuniary depreciation De Quincey
himself realized some years later, when, determining to quit school, he
thought himself compelled[A] to cut off all communication with his
guardians, and gave himself up to a Bohemian life among the Welsh
mountains, wandering from one rustic valley to another with the most
scanty means of support,--for just then the Allies were in full rig
against France, and the shrinkage of guineas in our young wanderer's
pocket became palpably evident in view of the increased price of his
dinner.

[Footnote A: But afterwards he discovered his mistake, and that it was
only by the lack on his part of that frankness which the kindness of his
guardians deserved that he had brought so much misery upon himself in
after-life. His younger brother, Richard,--the Pink of the
"Autobiographic Sketches,"--made the same mistake, a mistake which in
his case was never rectified, but led to a life of perilous wanderings
and adventures.]

The time _did_ come at length when the full epos of a remarkable
prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the
unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy
lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad.
Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his
mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the
sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years of
luxurious opulence and ease.

I dwell thus at length upon the aristocratic elegance of De Quincey's
earliest surroundings, (which, coming at a later period, I should notice
merely as an accident,) because, although not a _potential_ element,
capable of producing or of adding one single iota to the essential
character of genius, it is yet a negative condition--a _sine qua
non_--to the displays of genius in certain directions and under certain
aspects. By misfortune it is true that power may be intensified. So may
it by the baptism of malice. But, given a certain degree of power, there
still remains a question as to its _kind_. So deep is the sky: but of
what _hue_, of what aspect? Wine is strong, and so is the crude alcohol
but what the _mellowness_? And the blood in our veins, it is an infinite
force: but of what temper? Is it warm, or is it cold? Does it minister
to Moloch, or to Apollo? Will it shape the Madonna face, or the Medusa?
Why, the simple fact that the rich blue sky over-arches this earth of
ours, or that it is warm blood which flows in our veins, is sufficient
to prove that no malignant Ahriman made the world. Just here the
question is not, what increment or what momentum genius may receive from
outward circumstances, but what coloring, what mood. Here it is that a
Mozart differs from a Mendelssohn. The important difference which
obtains, in this respect, between great powers in literature, otherwise
coördinate, will receive illustration from a comparison between De
Quincey and Byron. For both these writers were capable, in a degree
rarely equalled in any literature, of reproducing, or rather, we should
say, of reconstructing, the pomp of Nature and of human life. In this
general office they stand together: both wear, in our eyes, the regal
purple; both have caused to rise between earth and heaven miracles of
grandeur, such as never Cheops wrought through his myriad slaves, or
Solomon with his fabled ring. But in the final result, as in the whole
_modus operandi_, of their architecture, they stand apart _toto coelo_.
Byron builds a structure that repeats certain elements in Nature or
humanity; but they are those elements only which are allied to gloom,
for he builds in suspicion and distrust, and upon the basis of a
cynicism that has been nurtured in his very flesh and blood from birth;
he erects a Pisa-like tower which overhangs and threatens all human
hopes and all that is beautiful in human love. Who else, save this
archangelic intellect, shut out by a mighty shadow of eclipse from the
bright hopes and warm affections of all sunny hearts, could have
originated such a Pandemonian monster as the poem on "Darkness"? The
most striking specimen of Byron's imaginative power, and nearly the most
striking that has ever been produced, is the apostrophe to the sea, in
"Childe Harold." But what is it in the sea which affects Lord Byron's
susceptibilities to grandeur? Its destructiveness alone. And _how_? Is
it through any high moral purpose or meaning that seems to sway the
movements of destruction? No; it is only through the gloomy mystery of
the ruin itself,--ruin revealed upon a scale so vast and under
conditions of terror the most appalling,--ruin wrought under the
semblance of an almighty passion for revenge directed against the human
race. Thus, as an expression of the attitude which the sea maintains
toward man, we have the following passage of Æschylian grandeur, but
also of Æschylian gloom:--

                                "Thou dost arise
  And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
  For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
  Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
  And send'st him, shivering in thy _playful_ spray,
  And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
  His petty hope in some near port or bay,
  And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay!"

Who but this dark spirit, forever wooing the powers of darkness, and of
darkness the most sullen, praying to Nemesis alone, could, with such
lamentable lack of faith in the purity and soundness of human
affections, have given utterance to a sentiment like this:--

  "O love! no habitant of earth thou art,--
  An _unseen_ seraph we believe in thee"?

or the following:--

  "Who loves, raves,--'tis youth's frenzy," etc.?

and again:--

  "Few--_none_--find what they love or could have loved,
  Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
  Necessity of loving having removed
  Antipathies"?

This, then, is the nearest approach to human love,--the removal of all
antipathies! But even these

                     "recur erelong,
  Envenomed with irrevocable wrong:
  And circumstance--that unspiritual god
  And miscreator--makes and helps along
  Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
  Whose touch turns hope to dust,--the dust which all have trod."

De Quincey, on the other hand, in whose heart there was laid no such
hollow basis for infidelity toward the master-passions of humanity,
repeated the pomps of joy or of sorrow, as evolved out of universal
human nature, and as, through sunshine and tempest, typified in the
outside world,--but never for one instant did he seek alliance, on the
one side, with the shallow enthusiasm of the raving Bacchante, or, on
the other, with the overshadowing despotism of gloom; nor can there be
found on a single page of all his writings the slightest hint indicating
even a latent sympathy with the power which builds only to crush, or
with the intellect that denies, and that against the dearest objects of
human faith fulminates its denials and shocking recantations solely for
the purposes of scorn.

Whence this marked difference? To account for it, we must needs trace
back to the first haunts of childhood the steps of these two fugitives,
each of whom has passed thence, the one into a desert _mirage_, teeming
with processions of the gloomiest falsities in life, and the other--also
into the desert, but where he is yet refreshed and solaced by an
unshaken faith in the genial verities of life, though separated from
them by irrecoverable miles of trackless wastes, and where, however
apparently abandoned and desolate, he is yet ministered unto by angels,
and no mimic fantasies are suffered to exercise upon his heart their
overmastering seductions to

  "Allure, or terrify, or undermine."

Whether the days of childhood be our happiest days, is a question all by
itself. But there can be no question as to the inevitable certainty with
which the conditions of childhood, fortunate or unfortunate, determine
the main temper and disposition of our lives. For it is underneath the
multitude of fleeting proposals and conscious efforts, born of reason,
and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point,
seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the
undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled
and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice,
branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims
among all opposite directions and aims, and which, although we rarely
recognize its important functions, is in all cases the arbiter of our
destiny. And in the very word _disposition_ is indicated the finality of
its arbitraments as contrasted with all _proposition_.

Now, with respect to this disposition: Nature furnishes its basis; but
it is the external structure of circumstance, built up or building about
childhood,--to shelter or imprison,--which, more than all else, gives it
its determinate character; and though this outward structure may in
after-life be thoroughly obliterated, or replaced by its
opposite,--porcelain by clay, or clay by porcelain,--yet will the
tendencies originally developed remain and hold a sway almost
uninterrupted over life. And, generally, the happy influences that
preside over the child may be reduced under three heads: first, a genial
temperament,--one that naturally, and of its own motion, inclines toward
a centre of peace and rest rather than toward the opposite centre of
strife; secondly, profound domestic affections; and, thirdly, affluence,
which, although of all three it is the most negative, the most material
condition, is yet practically the most important, because of the degree
in which it is necessary to the full and unlimited prosperity of the
other two. For how frequent are the cases in which the happiest of
temperaments are perverted by the necessities of toil, so burdensome to
tender years, or in which corroding anxieties, weighing upon parents'
hearts, check the free play of domestic love!--and in all cases where
such limitations are present, even in the gentlest form, there must be a
cramping up of the human organization and individuality somewhere; and
everywhere, and under all circumstances, there must be sensibly felt the
absence of that leisure which crowns and glorifies the affections of
home, making them seem the most like summer sunshine, or rather like a
sunshine which knows no season, which is an eternal presence in the
soul.

As regards all these three elements, De Quincey's childhood was
prosperous; afterwards, vicissitudes came,--mighty changes capable of
affecting all other transmutations, but thoroughly impotent to annul the
inwrought grace of a pre-established beauty. On the other hand, Byron's
childhood was, in all these elements, unfortunate. The sting left in his
mother's heart by the faithless desertion of her husband, after the
desolation of her fortunes, was forever inflicted upon him, and
intensified by her fitful temper; and notwithstanding the change in his
outward prospects which occurred afterwards, he was never able to lift
himself out of the Trophonian cave into which his infancy had been
thrust, any more than Vulcan could have cured that crooked gait of his,
which dated from some vague infantile remembrances of having been
rudely kicked out of heaven over its brazen battlements, one summer's
day,--for that it was a summer's day we are certain from a line of
"Paradise Lost," commemorating the tragic circumstance:--

  "From morn till noon he fell, from noon till dewy eve--
  _A summer's day_."

And this allusion to Vulcan reminds us that Byron, in addition to all
his other early mishaps, had also the identical clubfoot of the Lemnian
god. Among the guardians over Byron's childhood was a demon, that,
receiving an ample place in his victim's heart, stood demoniacally his
ground through life, transmuting love to hate, and what might have been
benefits to fatal snares. Over De Quincey's childhood, on the contrary,
a strong angel guarded to withstand and thwart all threatened ruin,
teaching him the gentle whisperings of faith and love in the darkest
hours of life: an angel that built happy palaces, the beautiful images
of which, and their echoed festivals, far outlasted the splendor of
their material substance.

"We,--the children of the house,--" says De Quincey, in his
"Autobiographic Sketches," "stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier
in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of
Agur--'Give me neither poverty nor riches'--was realized for us. That
blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we were
to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity;
obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished
with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with _extra_ means of health, of
intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand we
knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the
consciousness of privations too sordid, nor tempted into restlessness by
privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for
pride. Grateful, also, to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all
things else, we were trained to a Spartan, simplicity of diet,--that we
fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if
(after the manner of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks
to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation,
these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration: that I
lived in a rural solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my
infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by
horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and
loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church."

Let the reader suppose a different case from that here presented. Let
him suppose, for instance, that De Quincey, now arrived at the age of
seven, and having now at least one "pugilistic brother" to torment his
peace, could annul his own infancy, and in its place substitute that of
one of the factory-boys of Manchester, of the same age, (and many such
could be found,) among those with whom daily the military
predispositions of this brother brought him into a disagreeable
conflict. Instead of the pure air of outside Lancashire, let there be
substituted the cotton-dust of the Lancashire mills. The contrast, even
in thought, is painful. It is true that thus the irrepressible fires of
human genius could not be quenched. Nay, through just these
instrumentalities, oftentimes, is genius fostered. We need not the
instance of Romulus and Remus, or of the Persian Cyrus, to prove that
men have sometimes been nourished by bears or by she-wolves.
Nevertheless, this is essentially a Roman nurture. The Greeks, on the
contrary, laid their infant heroes on beds of violets,--if we may
believe the Pindaric odes,--set over them a divine watch, and fed them
with angels' food. And this Grecian nurture De Quincey had.

And not the least important element of this nurture is that of perfect
_leisure_. Through this it is that we pass from the outward to the
subjective relations of De Quincey's childhood; for only in connection
with these has the element just introduced any value, since leisure,
which is the atmosphere, the breathing-place of genius, is also cap and
bells for the fool. In relation to power, it is, like solitude, the open
heaven through which the grandeurs of eternity flow into the penetralian
recesses of the human heart, after that once the faculties of thought,
or the sensibilities, have been powerfully awakened. Sensibility _had_
been thus awakened in De Quincey, through grief occasioned by the loss
of a sister, his favorite and familiar playmate,--a grief so profound,
that he, somewhere, in speaking of it, anticipates the certainty of its
presence in the hour of death; and thought, also, had been prematurely
awakened, both under the influence of this overmastering pathos of
sorrow, and because of his strong predisposition to meditation. Both the
pathos and the meditative tendencies were increased by the halcyon peace
of his childhood. In a memorial of the poet Schiller, he speaks of that
childhood as the happiest, "of which the happiness has survived and
expressed itself, not in distinct records, but in deep affection, in
abiding love, and the hauntings of meditative power." His, at least, was
the felicity of this echoless peace.

In no memorial is it so absolutely requisite that a marked prominence
should be given to its first section as in De Quincey's. This is a
striking peculiarity in his life. If it were not so, I should have
seriously transgressed in keeping the reader's attention so long upon a
point which, aside from such peculiarity, would yield no sufficient, at
least no proportionate value. But, in the treatment of any life, that
cannot seem disproportionate which enters into it as an element only and
just in that ratio of prominence with which it enters into the life
itself, No stream can rise above the level of its source. No life, which
lacks a prominent interest as to its beginnings, can ever, in its entire
course, develop any distinguishing features of interest. This is true of
any life; but it is true of De Quincey's above all others on record,
that, through all its successive arches, ascending and descending, it
repeats the original arch of childhood. Repeats,--but with what
marvellous transformations! For hardly is its earliest section passed,
when, for all its future course, it is masked by a mighty trouble. No
longer does it flow along its natural path, and beneath the open sky,
but, like the sacred Alpheus, runs

  "Through caverns measureless to man,
  Down to the sunless sea."

Yet, amid the "briny tides" of that sea, amid turmoil and perplexity and
the saddest of mysteries, it preserves its earliest gentleness, and its
inward, noiseless peace, till once more it gushes up toward the sweet
heaven through the Arethusan font of death. Easily, then, is it to be
seen why De Quincey himself continually reverted, both in his conscious
reminiscences and through the subconscious relapses of dreams, from a
life clouded and disguised in its maturer years, to the unmasked purity
of its earliest heaven. And what from the vast desert, what from the
fatal wreck of life, was he to look back upon, for even an imaginary
solace, if not upon the rich argosies that spread their happier sails
above a calmer sea? We are forcibly reminded of the dream which
Milton[A] gives to his Christ in the desert, hungry and tired:--

                      "There he slept,
  And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream,
  Of meats and drinks, Nature's refreshment sweet.
  Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood,
  And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
  Food to Elijah bringing even and morn,
  Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought:
  He saw the prophet also, how he fled
  Into the desert, and how there he slept
  Under a juniper, then how, awaked,
  He found his supper on the coals prepared,
  And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
  And eat the second time after repose,
  The strength whereof sufficed him forty days;
  Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,
  Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse."

[Footnote A: _Paradise Regained_, Book II.]

If the splendors of divinity could be so disguised by the severe
necessities of the wilderness and of brutal hunger as to be thus
solicited and baffled even in dreams,--if, by the lowest of mortal
appetites, they could be so humiliated and eclipsed as to revel in the
shadowy visions of merely human plenty,--then by how much more must the
human heart, eclipsed at noon, revert, under the mask of sorrow and of
dreams, to the virgin beauties of the dawn! with how much more violent
revulsion must the weary, foot-sore traveller, lost in a waste of sands,
be carried back through the gate of ivory or of horn to the dewy,
flower-strewn fields of some far happier place and time!

The transition from De Quincey's childhood to his opium-experiences is
as natural, therefore, as from strophe to antistrophe in choral
antiphonies. Henceforth, as the reader already understands, we are not
permitted to look upon a simple, undisguised life, unless we draw aside
a veil as impenetrable as that which covers the face of Isis or the
poppy-sceptred Demeter. Under this _papaverian_ mask it is likely to be
best known to the reader; for it is under the title of "Opium-Eater"
that he is most generally recognized. It was through his
Opium-Confessions, popular both as to matter and style, that he first
conciliated and charmed the reading public,--and to such a degree that
great expectations were awakened as to anything which afterwards he
might write. This expectation heightens appreciation; and in this case
it helped many a metaphysical dose down the voracious throat of the
public, without its being aware of the nauseating potion, or
experiencing any uncomfortable consequences. The flood of popularity
produced by the Opium-Confessions among that large intellectual class of
readers who, notwithstanding their mental capacity, yet insist upon the
graces of composition and upon a subject of immediate and moving
interest, was sufficient to float into a popular haven many a ship of
heavier freightage, which might else have fallen short of port.

The general interest which is manifested in De Quincey _personally_ is
also very much due to the fact that he was an opium-eater, and an
opium-eater willing to breathe into the public ear the peculiarities of
his situation and its hidden mysteries, or "_suspiria de profundis_."
This interest is partly of that vulgar sort which connects itself with
all mysterious or abnormal phenomena in Nature or in the human mind,
with a "What is it?" or a spiritual medium, and which is satisfied with
a palpable exhibition of the novelty; and partly it is of a
philosophical order, inquiring into the causes and modes of the abnormal
development. It is rarely the case that human vision is especially or
deliberately directed to the sun or the moon, except at the marvellous
season of eclipse, when interest is awakened by the novelty of the
appearance among the vulgar, and among philosophers by the unusual
nature of the phenomenon, demanding explanation. Then it is that the
people inhabiting this globe are excited by something which calls off
their attention from terrestrial trifles to that which connects them
with unknown worlds. If we had been born Hindoos, we should, at such
times, exhibit our skittish tendencies, "shying" at the sun-eating
monster with nervous apprehension, and should doubtless do our best,
through horrid yells and tintinnabulations, towards getting up a
tremendous counter-irritation upon the earth that should tell mightily
on the nerves of this umbratilous tiger in the heavens. But since we are
neither Hindoos nor Egyptians, nor skittish heathen of any sort, we take
defiant attitudes and look through smoked glasses. At any rate, it is
only at such times that we pay particular attentions, by way of
courtesy, to foreign worlds. And of all the creatures of God which come
within the circle of human knowledge or notice, which is it that may be
said to enjoy the most continuous round of attentions, and to live in
excitement the most nearly approaching to perpetual? It is the comet,
which no sooner gets out of reach of _our_ flying compliments than she
becomes the pet of Jupiter's magnificent citizens, or calls forth
deprecating murmurs from our shy sister Venus, and Mercury, our milder
brother, who, from all such mischiefs, creeps as nearly as possible
under the paternal wings of the Sun. No one of these erratic visitors
can remember the time when she was not making a stir somewhere in the
universe, or when a cloudy night, intercepting her from vision, would
not have been as surely execrated as are the colds which afflict _prima
donnas_.

Strikingly similar to our interest in these heavenly bodies is that
which we manifest in mortal men. Here, too, it is the darkened orb or
the eccentric comet that bespeaks especial notice. Judged by this
interest, considered in its vulgar aspects, De Quincey would suffer
gross injustice. Externally, and at one period of his life, I am certain
that he had all the requisite qualifications for collecting a mob about
him, and that, had he appeared in the streets of London after one of his
long sojourns amongst the mountains, no unearthly wight of whatever
description, no tattered lunatic or Botany-Bay convict, would have been
able to vie with him in the picturesque _déshabillé_ of the whole
"turnout." Picture to yourself the scene. This "king of shreds and
patches"--for, to the outward sense, he seems that now--has been "at
large" for days, perhaps for two or three weeks; he has been
unkennelled, and, among the lawless mountains, has felt no restraint
upon his own lawlessness, however Cyclopean. Doubtless he has met with
panthers and wolves, each one of whom will to its dying day retain
impressive recollections of the wee monster, from which they fled as a
trifle too uncanny even for them. As to his subsistence during these
rambles, it would be very difficult to say how he managed that affair,
at these, or indeed at any other times; and it may be that the prophetic
limitation of a fast to forty days is now the urgent occasion of his
return from vagabondism. One thing we may be sure of,--that he has made
plentiful use of a certain magical drug hid away in his
waistcoat-pocket. Like Wordsworth's brook, he has been wandering
purposely and at his own sweet will, or rather where his feet have taken
him; and he has laid him down to sleep wherever sleep may have chanced
to find him.

The result we have here, in this uncouth specimen of humanity, in the
matted hair, the soiled garments, and the straggling gait; and what
gives the finishing touch to this grotesque picture is his utter
unconsciousness of the ludicrous features of his situation, as they
appear to other eyes. Soon, it is true, he will go through an Æson-like
rejuvenation; for, in a certain cottage, there are hearts that anxiously
await his return, and hands ready to fulfil their oft-repeated duties in
the way of refitting him out for another tramp. But, before this
transformation is effected, let us suppose the case of his being set
down in the streets of London, somewhere in the vicinity of Cheapside.
What an eddying of stragglers about this new-found focus of attraction!
what amazement, and curiosity to find him out, if, indeed, he be
find-out-able, and not, as the unmistakable papaverian odor suggests,
some Stygian bird, hailing from the farther side of Lethe. But, Stygian
or not, neither Hermes nor Pan (nor Panic, his namesake) could muster
such a rabble at his heels, supposing _him_ to appear on Cheapside!

In his innermost sensibilities he would have shrunk from this vulgar
notice as from pollution itself. It would be monstrous to conceive of
him in such situations, except for the purpose of showing that he had
very much in his outward habit that would readily attract such a notice.
In the same light we are to regard some illustrations which J. Hill
Burton has given in "The Book-Hunter" of similar features in his
character, and which I take the liberty of introducing here; for,
although they have appeared in "Blackwood," and more lately in a
book-form, they are still unpublished to many of my readers.

Thus, we have him pictured to us as he appeared at a dinner, "whereto he
was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who
entertained novel and anarchical views regarding the 'Golden Ass' of
Apuleius. The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion
is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced
its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival;
he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? A
street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle
great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to
the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher
handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a
stormy winter night; and the trousers,--some one suggests that they are
inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that Papaverius
never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them." De Quincey,
led on by the current of his own thoughts,--though he was always too
courteous to absorb the entire conversation,--talks on "till it is far
into the night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about
separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas on the progress of
civilization, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the power of
the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the specials, he
could testify to the inconvenience of late hours: for was it not the
other night, that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, his
own door, he knocked and knocked, but the old woman within either
couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, having
taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme
unpleasantness of such a couch?"

"Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore,
he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing
on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should
get a penny and go home,--a proposal which he subjected to some
philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he
had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had
eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting
articulate utterance from him. How that wearied, worn little body was to
be refreshed was a difficult problem: soft food disagreed with him; the
hard he could not eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of
that vegetable unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it
might be supposed that there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to
be treated in the house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense! If
the wineglasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal
size, there was no risk,--and so the weary is at rest for a time.

"At early morn, a triumphant cry of '_Eureka!_' calls me to his place of
rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a
considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims
his attention--my best-bound quarto--is spread upon a piece of
bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him
pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of
attire to separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according
to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered
a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a
very important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face
from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it
occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch
paintings of the Temptation of St. Anthony."

I cannot refrain from quoting from Mr. Burton one more example,
illustrative of the fact that De Quincey, in money-matters, considered
merely the immediate and pressing exigencies of the present. "He arrives
very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission,--a process in
which he often endured impediments,--he represents, with his usual
silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being
then and there invested with a sum of money in the current coin of the
realm,--the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he
very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or
fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely to prove
unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any
difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he
is at that moment in possession of a document which he is prepared to
deposit with the lender,--a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to
remove any feeling of anxiety which the moat prudent person could
experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which
develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable,
possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled
bit of paper, and spread it out,--a fifty-pound bank-note! All sums of
money were measured by him through the common standard of immediate use;
and, with more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the bank-note,
might he inform you, that, with the gentleman opposite, to whom he had
hitherto been entirely a stranger, but who happened to be the nearest to
him at the time when the exigency occurred to him, he had just succeeded
in negotiating a loan of two-pence."

These pictures, though true to certain phases of De Quincey's outward
life, are yet far from personally representing him, even to the eye.
They satisfy curiosity, and that is about all. As to the real character
of the man, they are negative and unessential; they represent, indeed,
his utter carelessness as to all that, like dress, may at pleasure be
put on or off, but "the human child incarnate" is not thus brought
before us. For, could we but once look upon his face in rest, then
should we forget these inferior attributes; just as, looking upon the
Memnonian statues, one forgets the horrid nicknames of "Shandy" and
"Andy" which they have received from casual travellers, observing merely
their grotesque features. Features of this latter sort "dislimn" and
yield, as the writing on palimpsests, to the regal majesty of the divine
countenance, which none can look upon and smile. Let me paint De
Quincey's face as at this moment I seem to see it. It is wrinkled as
with an Homeric antiquity; arid it is, and sallow, as parchment. Through
a certain Bedouin-like conformation,--which, however, is idealized by
the lofty, massive forehead, and by the prevailing subtilty of the
general expression,--it seems fitted to desert solitudes; and in this
respect it is truly Memnonian. In another respect, also, is it
Memnonian,--that, whenever should rest upon its features the morning
sunlight, we should surely await its responsive requiem or its trembling
_jubilate_. By a sort of instinctive palmistry (applied, not to the
hands, but to the face) we interpret symbols of ineffable sorrow and of
ineffable peace. These, too, are Memnonian,--as is also that infinite
distance which seems to interpose between its subtile meanings and the
very possibility of interpretation. This air of remoteness, baffling the
impertinent crowd not less effectually than the dust which has gathered
for centuries about the heads of Sphinxes, is due partly to the deeply
sunken eyes beneath the wrinkled, overarching forehead; partly it arises
from that childlike simplicity and sweetness which lurk in gentle
undulations of the features,--undulations as of happy wavelets set in
motion ages since, and that cannot cease forever; but chiefly it is born
of a dream-like, brooding eternity of speculation, which we can trace
neither to the eye alone, nor to the mouth, but rather to the effect
which both together produce in the countenance.

This is the face which for more than half a century opium veiled to
mortal eyes, and which refuses to reveal itself save through hints the
most fugitive and impalpable. Here are draperies and involutions of
mystery from which mere curiosity stands aloof. This is the head which
we have loved, and which in our eyes wears a triple wreath of glory: the
laurel for his Apollo-like art, the lotos-leaf for his impassioned
dreams, and roses for his most gentle and loving nature.

How much of that which glorified De Quincey was due to opium? Very
little as to quality, but very much as to the degree and the peculiar
manner in which original qualities and dispositions are developed, for
here it is that the only field of influence open to abnormal agencies
lies. Coleridge, as an opium-eater, is the only individual worthy of
notice in the same connection. Had _he_ also confessed, it is uncertain
what new revelations might have been made. It is certain that opium
exercised a very potent effect upon him; for it was generally after his
dose that his remarkable intellectual displays occurred. These displays
were mostly confined to his conversations, which were usually
long-winded metaphysical epics, evolving a continued series of
abstractions and analyses, and, for their movement, depending upon a
sort of poetic construction. A pity it is that we must content ourselves
with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere,
opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge. For a laudanum negus, whatever
there may be about it that is pernicious, will, to a mind that is
metaphysically predisposed, open up thoroughfares of thought which are
raised above the level of the gross material, and which lead into the
region of the shadowy. Show us the man who habitually carries pills of
_any_ sort in his waistcoat-pocket, be they opium or whatever else, and
we can assure you that that man is an _aërobat_,--that somehow, in one
sense or another, he walks in the air above other men's heads. Whatever
disturbs the healthful isolation of the nervous system is prosperous to
metaphysics, because it attracts the mental attention to the organism
through which thought is carried on. Numerous are the instances of men
who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets,
if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their
teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the
superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[A] If Tacitus had
fared in any sort like his brother,--if there had been anything like an
equitable division between them of muscle and brain, it is more than
probable that we should have lost the illustrious historian.

[Footnote A: It has been adduced as an important proof of the soul's
immortality, that frequently, as physical power declines, the mind
exhibits unusual activity. But the argument moves in the opposite
direction. For of what sort is this unusual activity? That which results
from unbalanced nerves; and the indications are that not only are the
physical harmonies disturbed, but that the same disturbing cause has
impaired the delicate adjustments of thought itself. Sometimes there is
manifested, towards the near approach of death, an almost insane
brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who
occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile
mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating
smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it
may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant
vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian
faith. Nay, from the lips of a theological professor, the fragmentary
glimmerings of a maniac's mind have been adduced for precisely the same
purpose.]

Coleridge was indolent from temperament, a disposition which was
increased by opium. Hence De Quincey was of the opinion that it injured
Coleridge's poetic faculties; which probably was the case, since in
genuine poetry the mind is prominently realistic, its motions are all
outward, and therefore excessive indolence must of necessity be fatal.

De Quincey's physical system, on the contrary, seemed preconformed to
opium: it demanded it, and would be satisfied with nothing else. No
temptation so strong _could_ have been presented to Coleridge. De
Quincey really craved the drug. His stomach was deranged, and was still
suffering from the sad results of his youthful wanderings in London. It
seems almost as if fate had compelled the unfortunate course into which
he finally drifted. The craving first appeared in the shape of a horrid
gnawing at the stomach; afterwards this indefinite yearning gave place
to a specific one, which was unmistakable in its demands. Daily, like
the daughters of the horse-leech, it cried, "Give, give!" Toward the
last, this craving became, in De Quincey's solemn belief, an animal
incarnate, and the opium-eater reasoned after the following fashion:--It
is not I that eat, it is not I that am responsible either for the fact
of eating or the amount; am I the keeper of this horrid monster's
conscience? He even carried the conceit so far as to consider a portion
of each meal as especially devoted to this insane stomachic reveller,
just as a voracious Greek or Roman would have attributed no small part
of his outrageous appetite to the gods, as eating by proxy through the
mouths of mortals. This is almost as bad as the case reported of
Stonewall Jackson, who, it is said, religiously believed that whatever
he ate was, by some mysterious physiological economy, conveyed into his
left leg.

No less was De Quincey _psychologically_ preconformed to opium. The
prodigious mental activity so early awakened in him counteracted the
narcotic despotism of the drug, and made it a sort of ally. The reader
sees from this how much depends upon predispositions as to the effect of
opium. De Quincey himself says that the man whose daily talk is of oxen
will pursue his bovine speculations into dreams. Opium originates
nothing; but, given activity of a certain type and moving in a certain
direction, and there will be perhaps through opium a multiplication of
energies and velocities. What was De Quincey _without_ opium? is,
therefore, the question preliminary to any proper estimate as to what in
him was due to opium. This question has already been answered in the
remarks made concerning his childhood. His meditative tendencies were
especially noticed as most characteristic. There was besides this a
natural leaning toward the mysterious,--the mysterious, I mean, as
depending, not upon the terrible or ghostly, or upon anything which
excites gloom or fear, but upon operations that are simply inscrutable
as moving in darkness. Take, for example, the idea of a grand
combination of human energies mustered together in secret, and operating
through invisible agencies for the downfall of Christianity,--an idea
which was conveyed to De Quincey in his childhood through the Abbé
Baruel's book exposing such a general conspiracy was existing throughout
Europe: this was the sort of mystery which arrested and engrossed his
thoughts. Similar elements invested all secret societies with an awful
grandeur in his conception. So, too, the complicated operations of great
cities such as London, which he call the "Nation of London," where even
Nature is mimicked, both in her strict regularity of results, and in the
seeming unconsciousness of all her outward phases, hiding all meaning
under the enigmas that defy solution. In order to this effect it was
absolutely necessary that there should be not simply one mystery
standing alone by itself, and striking in its portentous significance;
there must have been more than this,--namely, a network of occult
influences, a vast organization, wheeling in and out upon itself,
gyrating in mystic cycles and epicycles, repeating over and again its
dark omens, and displaying its insignia in a never-ending variety of
shapes. To him intricacy the most perplexing was also the most inviting.
It was this which lent an overwhelming interest to certain problems of
history that presented the most labyrinthian mazes to be disinvolved:
for the demon that was in him sought after hieroglyphics that by all
others had been pronounced undecipherable; and not unfrequently it was
to his eye that for the first time there seemed to be an unknown element
that must be supplied. Such a problem was presented by the religious
sect among the Hebrews entitled the _Essenes_. Admitting the character
and functions of this sect to have been those generally ascribed to it
no special importance. But the idea once having occurred to De Quincey
that the general assumption was the farthest removed from the
truth,--than there was an unknown _x_ in the problem, which could be
satisfied by no such meagre hypothesis,--that, to meet the urgent
demands of the case, there must be substituted for this Jewish sect an
organization of no less importance than the Christian Church
itself,--that this organization, thus suddenly brought to light, was
one, moreover, that, from the most imperative necessity, veiled itself
from all eyes, uttering its sublime articles of faith, and even its very
name, to itself only in secret recesses of silence:--from the moment
that all this was revealed to De Quincey, there was thenceforth no limit
to his profound interest. Two separate essays he wrote on this
subject,[A] of which he seemed never to tire.

[Footnote A: Yet, marvellous as it may seem, he wrote the second without
being distinctly conscious of having written a previous one. It was no
uncommon thing for him to forget his own writings. In one case it is
known that for a long time he persisted in disowning his production. His
American editor--a fact which is little known--selected, from among the
mass of periodical writings in the various magazines for which De
Quincey wrote, those which, having no other clue to guide him than,
their peculiar style, he judged to have proceeded from De Quincey's pen.
In one instance,--as to the "Traditions of the Rabbins,"--after
considerable examination, he still hesitated, and finally wrote to De
Quincey, to set himself right. The latter disowned the essay: he had
forgotten it. Mr. F., however, after another examination, concluded,
that, notwithstanding De Quincey's denial of the fact, he _must_ have
written it; accordingly, at his own risk, he published it. Afterwards De
Quincey owned up, and ever after that referred all disputed cases of
this nature to his Boston publishers.]

"Klosterheim" is from beginning to end only the development, through
regular stages, of an intricately involved mystery of this subtile
nature. Oftentimes De Quincey deals with the horrid tragedy of murder;
but the mere fact of a murder, however shocking, was not sufficient to
arrest him. With the celebrated Williams murders, on the contrary, he
was entirely taken up, since these proceeded in accordance with designs
not traceable to the cursory glance, but which tasked the skill of a
decipherer to interpret and reduce to harmony. Here were murders that
revolved musically, that modulated themselves to master-principles, and
that at every stage of progress sought alliance with the hidden
mysteries of universal human nature. I know of no writer but De Quincey
who invests mysteries of this tragic order with their appropriate
drapery, so that they shall, to our imaginations, unfold the full
measure of their capacities for striking awe into our hearts.

This sort of mystery is always connected with dreams. They owe their
very existence to darkness, which withdraws them from the material
limitations of every-day life; they are shifted to an ideal
_proscenium_; their _dramatis personæ_, however familiar nominally, and
however much derived from material suggestions, are yet in all their
motions obedient to an alien centre as opposite as is possible to the
ordinary centre about which the mere mechanism of life revolves. We
should therefore expect beforehand in De Quincey an overruling tendency
towards this remote architecture of dreams. The careful reader of his
"Autobiographic Sketches" will remember, that, at the early age of
seven, and before he knew of even the existence of opium, the least
material hint which bordered on the shadowy was sufficient to lift him
up into aërial structures, and to lead his infant footsteps amongst the
clouds. Such hints, after his little sister's death, were furnished by
certain expressions of the Litany, by pictures in the stained windows of
the church, and by the tumult of the organ. Nor were the dreams thus
introduced mere fantasies, irregular and inconsistent. Throughout, they
were self-sustained and majestic.

The natural effects of opium were concurrent with preëxisting tendencies
of De Quincey's mind. If, instead of having his restless intellect, he
had been indolent,--if, instead of loving the mysterious, because it
invited a Titanic energy to reduce its anarchy to order, he had loved it
as simply dark or obscure,--if his natural subtilty of reflection had
been less, or if he had been endowed with inferior powers in the sublime
architecture of impassioned expression,--then might he as well have
smoked a meerschaum, taken snuff or grog or any other stimulant, as to
have gone out of his way for the more refined pleasures of opium.

The reader will indulge us in a single philosophical distinction, at
this point, by which we mean to classify the effects of opium under two
heads: first, the _external_, and, secondly, the _internal_. Properly
speaking, all the _positive_ effects of opium must be internal; for all
its movements are inward in their direction, being refluent upon the
focal centres of life. Thus, one of the most noticeable phenomena
connected with opium-eating is the burden of life resting back upon the
heart, which deliberately pulsates the moments of existence, as if the
most momentous issues depended upon each separate throb. But this very
reflux of sensibility will produce great effects at the surface, which
are purely negative. This latter class of effects Homer has indicated
with considerable accuracy, in the ninth Odyssey, (82-105,) where he
notices specifically an air of carelessness regarding external
things,--carelessness as to the mutual interchange of conversation by
question and answer, and as to the ordinary pursuits of life as
disturbing an inward peace. The same characteristics are more fully
developed in Tennyson's "Lotos-Eaters":--

  "Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
  Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
  To each; but whoso did receive of them,
  And taste, to him the gushing of the wave,
  Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
  On alien shores; and if his fellows spake,
  His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
  And deaf-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
  And music in his ears his beating heart did make."

By causing the life to flow inward upon a more ideal centre, opium
deepens the consciousness, and compels it to give testimony to processes
and connections that in ordinary moments escape unrecorded. It is as if
new materials were found for a history of the individual
life,--materials which, like freshly discovered records, sound the
deepest meanings of the present and measure the abysses of the past.
Thus it is that the fugitive imagery of sense is interpreted as a scroll
which hides infinite truths under the most fleeting of symbols,--symbols
which are not sufficiently enduring to call them words, or even
syllables of words, since the most trivial hint or whisper of them has
hardly reached us ere they have perished. Thus it is that even the still
more intangible record of memory, where are preserved only images and
echoes of that which undeniably has perished, is revivified and
enlarged.

There is, then, in the opium-eater a most marked, a polar antithesis
between his every-day life and the central manifestations of his genius.
In the latter, there is beautiful order, as in a symphony of
Beethoven's; but in the former, looked upon from without, all seems
confusion. There is the same antithesis in every meditative mind; but
here opium has heightened each part of the contrast. The more we admire
the _en_centric harmonies of inwrapt power, the more do we find to draw
forth laughter in the eccentricities of outward habit. The very same
agencies which undisguised and unveiled the deep, divine heaven, masked
the earth with desert sands; and De Quincey's outward life was thus
masked and rendered abnormal, that the blue heaven in which he revelled
might be infinitely exalted.

Thus is it possible for the seemingly ludicrous to harmonize with
transcendent sublimity. We smile at De Quincey's giving in "copy" on the
generous margins of a splendid "Somnium Scipionis"; but the precious
words, that might perhaps have found some more fit vehicle to the
composer's eye, could have found no deeper place in our hearts. We look
at the hatless sleeper among the mountains: his face seems utterly blank
and meaningless, and to all intents and purposes he seems as good as
dead; but let us ascend with him in his dreams, and we shall soon forget
that under God's heavens there exists mortality or the commonplace uses
of mortality.

As we ascend from grotesque features to such as are more intellectual,
that peculiarity of his character which most strikes us is his
inimitable courtesy. Mr. F.,--to whom I am indebted for the most novel
and interesting portions of this memorial,--from his own personal
interviews with the man, among many other things, retains this chiefly
in remembrance,--that De Quincey was the perfectest gentleman he had
ever seen.

I take the liberty here of particularizing somewhat in regard to one
visit which this friend of De Quincey's paid him, particularly as it
introduces us to the man towards the last of his life (1851). Mr. F.,
curious as it may seem, found but one person in Edinburgh who could
inform him definitely as to De Quincey's whereabouts. In return to a
note, giving De Quincey information of his arrival, etc., the latter
replies in a letter which is very characteristic, and which may well be
highly prized, so rarely was it that any friend was able to obtain from
him such a memento. The style, perhaps, is as familiar as it was ever
his habit to indulge in; and it shows how impossible it was for him,
even on the most temporary summons, to dispense with his usual
regularity of expression or with any logical nicety of method. The
letter runs thus:--

     _Thursday evening, August 26, 1851_.

     "My dear Sir,--The acccompanying billet from my daughter, short at
     any rate under the pressure of instant engagements, has been cut
     shorter by a sudden and very distressing headache; I, therefore,
     who (from a peculiar nervousness connected with the act of writing)
     so rarely attempt to discharge my own debts in the letter-writing
     department of life, find myself unaccountably, I might say
     mysteriously, engaged in the knight-errantry of undertaking for
     other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute
     refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate
     of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded,
     I am affecting the large bounties of supererogation. I appear to be
     vaporing in a spirit of vainglory; and yet it is under the mere
     coercion of '_salva necessitas_' that I am surprised into this
     unparalleled instance of activity. Do you walk? That is, do you
     like walking for four hours '_on end_'--(which is our archaic
     expression for _continuously_)? If I knew _that_, I would arrange
     accordingly for meeting you. The case as to distance is this. The
     Dalkeith railway, from the Waverley station, brings you to Esk
     Bank. That is its nearest approach,--its _perihelion_, in relation
     to ourselves; and it is precisely two and three-quarters miles
     distant from _Mavis Bush_,--the name of our cottage. Close to us,
     and the most noticeable object for guiding your inquiries, is _Mr.
     Annandale's Paper-Mills_.

     "Now, then, accordingly as you direct my motions, I will--rain
     being supposed absent--join you at your hotel in Edinburgh any time
     after 11 A.M. and walk out the whole distance, (seven miles from
     the Scott monument,) or else I will meet you at Esk Bank; or, if
     you prefer coming out in a carriage, I will await your coming here
     in that state of motionless repose which best befits a philosopher.
     Excuse my levity; and believe that with sincere pleasure we shall
     receive your obliging visit.

     "Ever your faithful servant,

     "THOMAS DE QUINCEY."

In order to appreciate the physical powers of him who proposed a walk of
the distance indicated in the letter, we must remember that he was then
just sixty-six years _plus_ ten days old. He was now living with his
daughters, in the utmost simplicity. On his arrival, Mr. F. found De
Quincey awaiting him at the door of his cottage,--a short man, with
small head, and eyes that were absolutely indescribable as human
features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most
urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is
spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence
is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of
Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a
solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a
present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, that was the friend
of Wilson,--and--what furnishes a more sublime suggestion--this is he
that knows by heart the mountain-fells and the mysterious recesses of
hidden valleys for miles around; and we think, if he could convey us
from the haunts of this Lasswade of his old age to those which glorified
the Grasmere of his youth, what new chords he might touch,--of human
love, for there it was that the sweetness of his wedded life had been
buried and embalmed in a thousand outward memorials of happy hours long
gone by,--and of human sadness, for there it was that he had experienced
the reversal of every outward fortune, and the alienations of
friendships which he most highly valued. But the remembrances of
Grasmere and of youth seem now to have been removed as into some other
life: the man of a past generation walks alone, and amid other scenes.
And yonder is the study in which he spends hours that are most
holy,--hours consecrated to what specific employments is known to none,
since across its threshold no feet save his have passed for years. Now
and then some grand intellectual effort proceeds forth from its sacred
precincts; but that only happens when pecuniary necessities compel the
exertion. How is it that the time not thus occupied is spent?--in what
remembrances, in what hidden thoughts, what passing dreams?

As it grows dark, De Quincey's guest, having spent most precious moments
which he feels ought never to cease, signifies the necessity of his
taking his departure. To take leave of this strange man, however, is not
so easy a matter as one might rashly suppose. There is a genius of
procrastination about him. Was he ever known to make his appearance at
any dinner in season, or indeed at any entertainment? Yes, he did
_once_, at the recital of a Greek tragedy on the Edinburgh stage; but
that happened through a trick played on him by an acquaintance, who, to
secure some remote chance of his seeing the performance, told him that
the doors opened at half-past six, whereas, in fact, they opened at
seven. How preposterous, then, to suppose that he would let an
opportunity pass for procrastinating other people, and putting all
manner of snares about their feet! It is dangerous with such a man to
hint of late hours; for just that lateness is to him the very jewel of
the thing. In mentioning the circumstance, you only suggest to him the
infinite pleasure connected with the circumstance. Perhaps he will
deliberately set to work to prove that candle-light is the one
absolutely indispensable condition to genial intercourse,--which would
doubtless suggest a great contrast, in that respect, between the ancient
and modern economy,--and where, then, _is_ there to be an end? All
attempts to extricate yourself by unravelling the net which is being
woven about you are hopelessly vain; you cannot keep pace with _him_.
The thought of delay enchants him, and he dallies with it, as a child
with a pet delicacy. Thus, he is at the house of a friend; it storms,
and a reasonable excuse is furnished for his favorite experiment. The
consequence is, that, once started in this direction, the delay is
continued for a year. Late hours were particularly potent to "draw out"
De Quincey; and, understanding this, Professor Wilson used to protract
his dinners almost into the morning, a tribute which De Quincey
doubtless appreciated.

So that it is better to be on the sly about saying "Good bye" to this
host of yours. When, however, it was absolutely necessary to be gone, De
Quincey forthwith insisted on accompanying his guest. What, then, was to
be done? Ominously the sky looked down upon them, momently threatening a
storm. No resource was there but to give the man his way, and accept his
offer of companionship for a short distance, painfully conscious though
you are of the fact that every step taken forwards must, during this
same August night, be retraced by the weary-looking old man at your
side, who now lacks barely four years of life's average allotment. Thus
you move on: and the heavens move on their hurricanes by nearer
approaches, warnings of which propagate themselves all around you in
every sound of the wind and every rustle of the forest-leaves.
Meanwhile, there is no rest to the silvery vocal utterances of your
companion: every object by the way furnishes a ready topic for
conversation. Just now you are passing an antiquated old mansion, and
your guide stops to tell you that in this house may have been committed
most strange and horrible murders, that, in spite of the tempestuous
mutterings heard on every side, ought now and here to be specially and
solemnly memorialized by human relation. A woman passes by, a perfect
stranger, but De Quincey steps entirely out of the road to one side,
takes off his hat, and in the most reverent attitude awaits her
passage,--and you, poor astonished mortal that you are, lest you should
yourself seem scandalously uncourteous, are compelled to do likewise. In
this incident we see what infinite majesty invested the very semblance
of humanity in De Quincey's thoughts: and something of the same
remarkable courtesy was manifested by Rufus Choate, who uniformly
addressed the lowest of women in the witness-box as if they were every
one of them worthy of the most queenly consideration.

Onward you proceed,--one,--two,--three miles, and you can endure no
longer the thought that your friend shall go on farther, increasing thus
at every step the burden of his journey back. You have, reached the Esk
bank and the bridge which spans the stream; the storm so long threatened
begins now to let loose its rage against all unsheltered mortals. Here
De Quincey consents to bid you good-bye,--to you his last good-bye; and
as here you leave him, so is he forever enshrined in your thoughts,
together with the primal mysteries of night and of storm, of human
tragedies and of the most pathetic human tenderness.

But this paper, already sufficiently prolonged, should draw to a close.
It is a source of great mortification to me that I cannot find some very
disagreeable thing to say of De Quincey, merely as a matter of poetic
justice; for assuredly he was in the habit of saying all the malicious
things _he_ could about his friends. If there was anything in a man's
face or shape particularly uncouth, you might trust De Quincey for
noticing _that_. Even Wordsworth he could not let off without a Parthian
shot at his awkward legs and round shoulders; Dr. Parr he rated soundly
on his mean proportions; and one of the most unfortunate things which
ever happened to the Russian Emperor Alexander was to have been seen in
London by De Quincey, who, even amid the festivities of national and
international congratulation on the fall of Napoleon, could not forget
that this imperial ally was a very commonplace-looking fellow, after
all. But, in regard to physical superiority, De Quincey lived in a glass
house too fragile to admit of his throwing many stones at his neighbors.
The very fact that he valued personal appearance at so low an estimate
takes away the sting from his remarks on the deformities of other
people: he could not have meant any detraction, but simply wished to
present a perfect picture to the eye, preserving the ugly features with
the faultless, just as we all insist on doing in regard to those we
love. De Quincey and myself, therefore, are likely to part good friends.
Surely, if there was anything which vexed the tender heart of this man,
it was "the little love and the infinite hate" which went to make up the
sum of life. If morbid in any direction, it was not in that of spite,
but of love; and as an instance of almost unnatural intensity of
affection, witness his insane grief over little Kate Wordsworth's
grave,--a grief which satisfied itself only by reasonless prostrations,
for whole nights, over the dark mould which covered her from his sight.

It only remains for us to look in upon De Quincey's last hours. We are
enabled to take almost the position of those who were permitted really
to watch at his bedside, through a slight unpublished sketch, from the
hand of his daughter, in a letter to an American friend. I tremble
almost to use materials that personally are so sacred; but sympathy, and
the tender interest which is awakened in our hearts by such a life, are
also sacred, and in privilege stand nearest to grief.

During the few last, days of his life De Quincey wandered much, mixing
up "real and imaginary, or apparently imaginary things." He complained,
one night, that his feet were hot and tired. His daughter arranged the
blankets around them, saying, "Is that better, papa?" when he answered,
"Yes, my love, I think it is; you know, my dear girl, these are the feet
that Christ washed."

Everything seemed to connect itself in his mind with little children. He
aroused one day, and said suddenly,--"You must know, my dear, the
Edinburgh cabmen are the most brutal set of fellows under the sun. I
must tell you that I and the little children were all invited to supper
with Jesus Christ. So, as you see, it was a great honor. I thought I
must buy new dresses for the little ones; and--would you believe it
possible?--when I went out with the children, these wretches laughed at
their new dresses."

"Of my brothers he often spoke, both those that are dead and those that
are alive, as if they were his own brothers. One night he said, when I
entered the room,--

"'Is that you, Horace?'

"'No, papa.'

"'Oh, I see! I thought you were Horace; for he was talking to me just
now, and I suppose has just left the room.'"

Speaking of his father, one day, suddenly and without introduction, he
exclaimed,--"There is one thing I deeply regret, that I did not know my