Chapter IV: Part 4

De Quincey's views on war will doubtless be astounding to most persons who have never given the subject any very particular attention. Deluded by the false doctrines of peace societies, they doubtless regard war as an evil, at once inhuman and unnecessary. Altogether hostile to this idea is the position of De Quincey; he solemnly declares that war neither can be abolished nor ought to be. 'Most heartily,' says he, 'and with my profoundest sympathy, do I go along with Wordsworth in his grand lyrical proclamation of a truth not less divine than it is mysterious, not less triumphant than it is sorrowful, namely, that among God's holiest instruments for the elevation of human nature is 'mutual slaughter' among men; yes, that 'Carnage is God's daughter.'' 'Any confederation or compact of nations for abolishing war would be the inauguration of a downward path for man.' 'There is a mystery in approaching this aspect of the case which no man has read fully. War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has as yet been deciphered. To execute judgments of retribution upon outrages offered to human rights or to human dignity, to vindicate the sanctities of the altar and the sanctities of the hearth--these are functions of human greatness which war has many times assumed, and many times faithfully discharged. But behind all these there towers dimly a greater. The great phenomenon of war it is--this, and this only--which keeps open in man a spiracle--an organ of respiration--for breathing a transcendent atmosphere, and dealing with an idea that else would perish--viz., the idea of mixed crusade and martyrdom, doing and suffering, that finds its realization in such a battle as that of Waterloo--viz., a battle fought for interests of the human race felt even where they are not understood; so that the tutelary angel of man, when he traverses such a dreadful field, when he reads the distorted features, counts the ghastly ruins, sums the hidden anguish, and the harvests

'Of horror breathing from the silent ground,'

nevertheless, speaking as God's messenger, blesses it, and calls it very good.'

Startling as these assertions may appear at first sight, they are, notwithstanding, profoundly philosophical; all history proclaims their solemn truth--is, in fact, totally inexplicable and confused on any other supposition. History is by no means merely biography condensed; far from it; biography is concerned with the shifting and ephemeral career of individual men; but history, far transcending that lowly sphere, records the revolution and progress of principles; these succeed each other in everlasting succession, like the revolution of day and night; and individuals rise into importance only as they stand related to, are the agents of, this progress. The future is forever supplanting the present; the feud is immortal--the antagonism inevitable; if effete ideas and principles, which have accomplished their mission, refuse to retire and peaceably give place to their legitimate successors, conflict arises of necessity--a conflict in which the usurper must finally triumph, or the wheels of human progress will be effectually blocked. War, then, is necessary to the advance of humanity. Although De Quincey discerns the absolute extinction of war only at the 'infinite and starry distance of the Millennium,' still, as its enginery is becoming more and more destructive, its danger and expense increasing, as the progress of civilization is gradually effacing the darker stains from human society, and luring it from the path of violence by the charm of luxurious repose, the necessity of war will gradually disappear--its total decline approach. We would remark in passing that De Quincey is altogether too captious in his criticisms upon French ideas of war. So far as the majority of men are concerned, whether Englishmen or Frenchmen, little pain is taken to search out the philosophy of events. But Cousin, in his 'Course of History,' has asserted, even more peremptorily than De Quincey himself, the divine mission of war. He essentially declares that carnage is always and of necessity God's daughter: to this extreme doctrine Mr. de Quincey would doubtless demur, averring that 'by possibility' such _might_ not be the case.

Still profounder insight is disclosed in the article on 'Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement.' It was a chance perusal of this essay that first turned our attention to De Quincey's writings, and we involuntarily exclaimed, as did he when first falling upon Ricardo's work, 'Thou art the man!' The object in view is to distinguish accurately between the Christian and pagan idea of religion. There has been great confusion on this point. What is involved in the term religion as used by a Christian? According to De Quincey there are four elements: 1st. A form of worship; 2d. An idea of God; 3d. The idea of a relation subsisting between God and His creatures; 4th. A doctrinal part. Now, of these cardinal elements, only one, that of worship, was present in pagan religions, and even this was so completely distorted, arose from impulses so utterly despicable, as to be positively immoral in its tendencies. The gods were, to their worshippers, dreadful realities--monsters of crime, at once powerful and vindictive--the very footballs of unhallowed passion; hence worship was not the result of love or reverence, or even of a regard to future interests, but it was simply an expedient to shun danger immediately behind--a mock truce between immortal foes, which either party might violate at pleasure. 'Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of sycophants.' Even in the most solemn mysteries no such thing as _instruction_ was known--'the priest did not address the people at all.' Hence all moral theories, all doctrinal teaching was utterly disjoined from ancient religions--that was resigned to nature--and, consequently, powerless alike to instruct men or command their respect, they had no inherent, self-sustaining energy, but were built upon a mere impulse, and that impulse was the most abject terror. Where, then, lurks the transcendent power of Christianity as an organ of political movement? Simply in the fact that it brings men into the most tender and affecting relations with God, and, over and above this, that it rests upon a dogmatic or doctrinal basis. These features were never suspected even as possible until Christianity revealed them. Hence Christianity 'carried along with itself its own authentication; since, while other religions introduced men simply to ceremonies and usages, which could furnish no aliment or material for their intellect, Christianity provided an eternal _palæstra_, or place of exercise, for the human understanding vitalized by human affections: for every problem whatever, interesting to the human intellect, provided only that it bears a moral aspect, immediately passes into the field of religious speculation. Religion had thus become the great organ of human culture.' Of this profound distinction De Quincey was the original discoverer.

It is known, of course, to every literary person, that Bentley attempted to _amend_ Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and that, on the whole, he made a very signal failure. It has been a matter of great surprise on the part of many, that one who is so confessedly superior in the criticism of classical poetry, whose ear was so exquisitely sensitive and accurate when awakened by ancient lyres, should prove himself such a driveller in the presence of the grandest cathedral-music of modern times. Coleridge took occasion to observe that it was only our ignorance that prevented Bentley's emendations and innovations from appearing as monstrous and unnatural in the poetry of the ancients as in that of John Milton. The charge appears very plausible and damaging at first sight. We notice it in order to exhibit De Quincey's marvellous sagacity in detecting the true relation of things: he utterly dissipated the force of the cavil by simply stating the actual bearings of the two classes of poetry. Ancient poetry was darkly austere and practical; the imagination was fettered by a grim austerity; the merely passionate--that which proceeds from the sphere of the sensibilities alone--finds no resting place in its vast domain; but in the poetry of Milton the element of passion is triumphant; hence Bentley, with his icy, critical, matter-of-fact temperament, could never appreciate Milton's majestic flights. We cannot refrain from quoting, at this point, De Quincey's acute and beautiful parallel between Grecian and English tragedy:

'The kind of feeling which broods over the Grecian tragedy, and to
court which the tragic poets of Greece naturally spread all their
canvas, was more nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than of
life. This expresses rudely the character of awe and religious
horror investing the Greek theatre. But to my own feeling the
different principle of passion which governs the Greek conception
of tragedy, as compared with the English, is best conveyed by
saying that the Grecian is a breathing from the world of sculpture,
the English a breathing from the world of painting. What we read in
sculpture is not absolutely death, but still less is it the fulness
of life. We read there the abstraction of a life that reposes, the
sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of a life that is
thrown to an infinite distance. This last is the feature of
sculpture which seems most characteristic: the form which presides
in the most commanding groups 'is not dead, but sleepeth:' true;
but it is the sleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, liberated from
the bonds of time and space, and (as to both alike) thrown (I
repeat the words) to a distance which is infinite. It affects us
profoundly, but not by agitation. Now, on the other hand, the
breathing life--life kindling, trembling, palpitating--that life
which speaks to us in painting--this is also the life that speaks
to us in English tragedy. Into an English tragedy even festivals of
joy may enter; marriages, and baptisms, or commemorations of
national trophies: which, or anything _like_ which, is incompatible
with the very being of the Greek. In that tragedy what uniformity
of gloom; in the English what light alternating with depths of
darkness! The Greek, how mournful; the English, how tumultuous!
Even the catastrophes how different! In the Greek we see a
breathless waiting for a doom that cannot be evaded; a waiting, as
it were, for the last shock of an earthquake, or the inexorable
rising of a deluge: in the English it is like a midnight of
shipwreck, from which, up to the last and until the final ruin
comes, there still survives the sort of hope that clings to human
energies.'

It is not to be expected that we can fully traverse and explore this vast section of De Quincey's writings; that would be a task beyond our present resources; and, consequently, we are compelled to pass unnoticed keen dissections of history; ingenious, although sometimes untenable, theories regarding the Essenes, the supposed expressions for eternity in the Scriptures, the character of Judas Iscariot, the doctrine of demons, the principles of casuistry, style, and rhetoric; the discussions of various points in philosophy and logic; the prodigality of erudition displayed in the articles on Plato, Homer, Dinner Real and Reputed, Bentley; the transcendent critical skill revealed in the little paper entitled 'The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,' in the essays on Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Lamb, and others; the minute dissections of feeling and passion scattered broadcast throughout his writings. We shall content ourselves with merely adducing another illustration of our author's extremely speculative and metaphysical cast of mind, and then close this section of the review. This is taken from that touchingly beautiful chapter in the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' entitled 'The Afflictions of Childhood.' De Quincey, even in his childhood, was profoundly sensitive, and capable of forming the most ardent attachments. Tender and absorbing was the love which had sprung up between himself and his sister Elizabeth; she was the joy of his life--she was supreme in his affections. At the age of nine years she suddenly sickened and died; De Quincey, although younger by three years, was overwhelmed with unspeakable agony. When his sister had been dressed for the grave, he stole silently and alone into her chamber to look once more upon her beautiful face, to kiss once more her sweet lips: while standing by the bedside he is suddenly struck down in a trance, and his description of the scene is one of the noblest prose poems in the English language. But even here, amid the absorbing disclosures of a frantic sorrow, when the mighty swell of passion had reached its culmination, and a solemn Memnonian wind, 'the saddest that ear ever heard,' began to arise, and the seals of a heavenly vision were about to be unloosed--even here he pauses, philosophically to 'explain why death, other conditions being equal, is more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year'!

We have said that De Quincey was an eminent master of the historic art. His power in this direction is signally displayed in his account of 'The Household Wreck,' 'The Spanish Nun,' 'The First Rebellion,' and the 'Flight of a Tartar Tribe.' 'The Household Wreck' is a powerful and dramatic narrative, but the plot is somewhat confused; on the whole, it is decidedly inferior to the 'Spanish Nun.' The nun is a _bona-fide_ historical personage, and her career is delineated with surprising effect. She was the daughter of a Spanish hidalgo, who pitilessly carried her in infancy to the Convent of St. Sebastian, where she remained until the age of fifteen; the quietude of that cloistered life her stormy spirit could no longer brook; she eloped, assumed male attire, became the page of a nobleman, at whose house she saw that 'old crocodile,' her father, who was now searching with mock solicitude for his absconded daughter; exposure was imminent; no safety remained until the ocean divided her from Spain, and her plans were formed at once; the nun embarked for South America, doubled Cape Horn, was shipwrecked on the coast of Peru; finally arrived at Paita; killed a man in a street encounter; escaped death only by promising to marry a lady who had fallen in love with her; once again there was no security but in flight; she joined a cavalry regiment commanded by her own brother, to whom she was unknown; him she unwittingly killed in a midnight duel; then follow the terrific passage of the Andes, the fearful tragedies at Tucuman and Cuzco, her return to Europe in compliance with royal and papal commands; she approaches the port of Cadiz; myriads upon myriads line the shore and cover the houses to catch a glimpse of the martial nun; cardinals and kings and popes hasten to embrace her; the thunders of popular welcome arise wherever she appears; but the nun finds no rest; terrific memories rankle in her bosom, and blast her repose; again she embarks for America; but then, how closed that career, so tragically tempestuous? The nun reached Vera Cruz; she took her seat in the boat to go ashore; no more is known; her fate is concealed in impenetrable mystery; 'the sea was searched for her--the forests were ransacked. The sea made no answer--the forests gave up no sign.' These incidents, which are historical verities, are wrought up into a narrative of absorbing power.

In De Quincey's brief sketch of the 'First Rebellion' are found some graphic historical paintings. The following is his description of the panic at Enniscorthy, at the moment when the rebels had carried the place by assault:

'Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate features in its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, as a centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderly retreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen the rebel pikes and bayonets, and fierce faces already gleaming through the smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowing from the thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up the avenues of escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs, and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation under every mode of excitement; and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious and supreme over all lower passions.'

* * * * *

There is a species of narrative in the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' of a somewhat different cast from that which we have been contemplating, less grand and passionate, perhaps, but more tender and exquisite--overspread with a quieter and mellower humor. We refer to the account of his brother William. He was a youth of the stormiest nature, a genuine cloud-compeller, forever raising storms and whirlwinds merely for the pleasure of directing them; 'haughty he was, aspiring, immeasurably active; fertile in resources as Robinson Crusoe; but also full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and in default of any other opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel upon his own shadow for presuming to run before him when going westward in the morning; whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought to keep deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is the author of its existence.' He hated books, except those which he chanced to write himself; he was especially great on the subject of necromancy; was even the author of a profound work, entitled 'How to Raise a Ghost, and when You have Got Him Down, how to Keep Him Down.' 'To which work, he assured us, that some most learned and enormous man, whose name was a foot and a half long, had promised him an appendix, which appendix treated of the Red Sea and Solomon's signet ring, with forms of _mittimus_ for ghosts that might be refractory, and probably a riot act for any _émeute_ among ghosts;' for he often gravely affirmed that a confederation, 'a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place among the infinite generations of ghosts against the single generation of men at any one time composing the garrison of death.' Deeming this subject too recondite for his juvenile audience, he dropped it, and commenced a course of lectures upon physics. 'This undertaking arose from some one of us envying or admiring flies for their power of walking upon the ceiling. 'Poh!' said he, 'they are impostors; they pretend to do it, but they can't do it as it ought to be done. Ah! you should see _me_ standing upright on the ceiling, with my head downward, for half an hour together, and meditating profoundly.' My sister Mary remarked that we should all be very glad to see him in that position. 'If that's the case,' he replied, 'it's very well that all is ready except as to a strap or two.' Being an excellent skater, he had first imagined that, if held up till he had started, he might then, by taking a bold sweep ahead, keep himself in position through the continued impetus of skating. But this he found not to answer; because, as he observed, 'the friction was too retarding from the plaster of Paris; but the case would be very different if the ceiling were covered with ice.' But as it was _not_, he changed his plan. The true secret, he now discovered, was this: he would consider himself in the light of a humming top; he would make an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself launched, like a top, upon the ceiling, and regularly spun. Then the vertiginous motion of the human top would overcome the force of gravitation. He should, of course, spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axis--perhaps he might even dream upon it; and he laughed at 'those scoundrels, the flies,' that never improved in their pretended art, nor made anything of it. The principle was now discovered; 'and, of course,' he said, 'if a man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from doing so for five months?' 'Certainly, nothing that I can think of,' was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settled upon the five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. The apparatus for spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, would not work--a fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On reconsidering the subject, he announced, to the disappointment of some among us, that, although the physical discovery was now complete, he saw a moral difficulty. It was not a _humming_ top that was required, but a _peg_ top. Now, in order to keep up the _vertigo_ at full stretch, without which, to a certain extent, gravitation would prove too much for him, he needed to be whipped incessantly. But that was what a gentleman ought not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittingly on the legs by any grub of a gardener, unless it were Father Adam himself, was a thing that he could not bring his mind to face.' Attempted improvements in the art of flying, which, he alleged, was then 'in a condition disgraceful to civilized society;' the composition and exhibition of that bloody tragedy, 'Sultan Amurath;' the conduct of a protracted war which arose out of a fancied insult from a factory boy, whom, surveying with intense disdain, 'he bade draw near that he might 'give his flesh to the fowls of the air!'' the government of the imaginary kingdom of 'Tigrosylvania'--occupied the attention of this hundred-handed youth until his death, at the age of sixteen--all of which is narrated with unequalled pathos and humor. But there is still another section of the narrative art, yet more sublime and unapproachable, where De Quincey stands alone--the section in which are recorded his dreams. These are without a rival or even a precedent in the English language; nay, purely impassioned prose as 'The Confessions' and 'Suspiria de Profundis' is scarcely to be found in any language; but the narration of dreams, while exposed to all its difficulties, is invested with superadded difficulties, arising from the shifting, visionary character of the world in which its scenes are laid, 'where a single false note, a single word in a wrong key, will ruin the whole music.' De Quincey's habit of dreaming was constitutional, and displayed itself even in infancy. He was naturally extremely sensitive, and of a melancholy temperament; he was so passionately fond of undisturbed repose, that he willingly submitted to any amount of contempt if he could only be let alone; he had that weird faculty which is forever peopling the darkness with myriads of phantoms; then came the afflictions of childhood--that night, which ran after his footsteps far into life--and finally came opium, which is a specific 'for exalting the dream scenery, for deepening its shadows, and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful realities:' all these allied characteristics and circumstances, combined with his vast intellectual capacity, imparted to De Quincey's dreams a terrific grandeur. They were sometimes frightful, sometimes sublime, but always accompanied by anxiety and melancholy gloom. 'I seemed,' says he, 'every night to descend--not metaphorically, but literally to descend--into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by awaking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting, at least, to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by words.' De Quincey's most elaborate dreams are: 'The Daughter of Lebanon,' 'Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,' 'The Vision of Sudden Death,' and 'Dream Fugue.' The last named is the most perfect in its conception, the most powerful in its execution. It is too long to quote, too sublime to be marred by abbreviation. If any one desires to see what can be done with the English language in an 'effort to wrestle with the utmost power of music,' let him read that dream. We shall, meanwhile, present one from the year 1820, and leave the reader to form his own estimate of it:

'The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in
dreams--a music of preparation and of awakening suspense; a music
like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_,
gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing
off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a
mighty day--a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature,
then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread
extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by
some beings, I knew not whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was
conducting--was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music,
with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion
as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I
had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the
power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again I had not
the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the
oppression of inexpiable guilt. 'Deeper than ever plummit sounded,'
I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some
greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet
the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden
alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable
fugitives. I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad;
darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and, at last, with
the sense that all was lost, female forms and the features that
were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed--and
clasped hands, and heartbreaking partings, and then--everlasting
farewells! and, with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when
the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of
death--everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again
reverberated--everlasting farewells!'

O mighty magician!

In point of style and general method of treating subjects, De Quincey's greatest faults are pedantry and discursiveness. Of the former we have no defence to make; we think that, in writing avowedly for the public, and not for any particular class, the use of technical terms merely because they are technical, and of learned terms merely because they are learned, is a positive blemish. But still greater offence is given to many readers by the _occasional_ practice of discursiveness; we employ the epithet intentionally, for the habit is by no means so inveterate as many seem to suppose. Yet even where it is most triumphant, there is, nevertheless, a goal to be reached--a goal which will finally be reached, despite interminable zigzags and 'harsh angles.' This peculiarity was, doubtless, in a great degree occasioned by the use of opium. Opium, even amid the very delirium of rapture it produces, nay, in consequence of that delirium, is hostile to strictly logical thought; the excitation approaches the character of an intuition; the glance, however keen and farsighted, is not steady; it is restless, fitful, veering forever with the movements of an unnatural stimulation; but when the exaltation has subsided, and the dread reaction and nervous depression succeeded, this result is intensified a hundred fold, and gradually shapes itself into a confirmed habit. Even if the use of opium was positively beneficial to the intellect, still its dreadful havoc with the physical system would far more than outweigh its contributions in that direction. But, so far is that from being the truth in the case, that opium, at best, has only a revealing, a disclosing power; it cannot, even in the lowest sense of the term, be called a creative lower. Let a man dream dreams as gorgeous as De Quincey's, it does not at all follow that he can write like De Quincey; as related to literature, the grandeur of dreams depends absolutely upon the dreamer's mastery of the narrative art, which the dreaming faculty itself does not either presuppose or bestow. But, over and above all this, universal experience has declared that the use of opium is fatally hostile to any very protracted mental power. It ravages the mind no less fearfully than it does the body--precipitates both in one common ruin; by it ordinary men are speedily degraded to hopeless impotence, and the most mighty shorn of half their power--a swift-pursuing shadow closes suddenly and forever over the transient gleam of unnatural splendor. These considerations account in part for De Quincey's discursiveness, but perhaps not wholly. Discursiveness is not without its beauties. We believe in logic, but still it is pleasant, at times, to see a writer sport with his subject, to see him gallop at will, unconfined by the ring circle of strict severity. Nor is this all. Possibly the apparent discursiveness may be only the preliminary journeying by which we are to secure some new and startling view of the subject. Perhaps you may consider these initial movements needlessly protracted and fatiguing; but trust your guide; whatever your private opinion, at the time, may be, he will never miss the road, and when at last you are in the proper position for observation, the thrill of unwonted pleasure will swallow up all memory of former efforts and former misgivings. Occasionally such is not the case; for instance, in the papers on Sir William Hamilton. They are three in number. Nearly half of the first is taken up in describing the difficulties under which the writer suffers of communicating with his publishers; the nervous maladies that torment his happiness; the limits of time and space so narrowly circumscribed. The same strain is taken up in the second paper. We have short dissertations on the deadly 'hiatus in the harness which should connect the pre-revolutionary with the post-revolutionary commonwealths of England;' on the adjective _old_, and the aged noun _civilation_; then comes a general belaboring of athletes and gymnasts, at which point Sir William fairly emerges into view; suddenly our author seems to recollect that his space is fast diminishing, and concludes to 'take a rise out of something or other' at once; sets down Sir William as a genuine logician, and immediately commences the consideration of several ancient word puzzles, one of which is stated in a very business-like manner: 'Vermin in account with the divine and long-legged Pelides.' Logic is pretty uniformly the subject of the third paper, and no inferior acquaintance with the topic is displayed; but we see very little of Sir William Hamilton in this miscellaneous collection. But unpardonable wandering is of extremely rare occurrence; and, on the whole, the evils of discursiveness are altogether outweighed by the positive advantages and beauties to which we have referred. To this characteristic trait must be added another--the dramatic and cumulative manner in which the subjects discussed are treated. That gives to De Quincey's style increased power and increased beauty; artistic symmetry is superinduced upon solid excellence. This peculiarity is especially noticeable in narratives where the element of horror is central, as in 'The Avenger.' The gentle whisper rises, gradually and by insensible degrees, to the awful voice of the thunderbolt. The prelude is calm enough, sweet enough, but soon the music ascends to a fiercer key; the plot darkens; the crisis gathers; louder and more tumultuous waxes the fiendish tumult, until all lesser passions are swallowed up, and the empire of a blank, rayless revenge is triumphant; we are spellbound amid the successive stages of the demoniac tragedy; we start up convulsively, as from the horrors of nightmare, at its ghastly catastrophe. But, over and above all this, in that melody, in that music of style, which exalts prose to the dignity of poetry, De Quincey is absolutely without a rival. Read the 'Confessions,' or the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' or the touching tribute to the Maid of Orleans, and all doubt upon that point will disappear. Besides, over the surface of his writings there ripples a quaint, genial humor, which is, for the most part, kept within the limits of propriety by an exquisite taste. In marked contrast to many of our most illustrious writers, De Quincey always exhibits a profound respect for Christianity. Listen to his indignant rebuke of Kant, who, in his work on 'Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason,' had expressed opinions so utterly atheistical as to draw forth severe menaces from the reigning King of Prussia, Frederic William the Second: 'Surely, gray hairs and irreligion make a monstrous union; and the spirit of proselytism carried into the service of infidelity--a youthful zeal put forth by a tottering, decrepid old man, to withdraw from desponding and suffering human nature its most essential props, whether for action or suffering, for conscience or for hope, is a spectacle too disgusting to leave room for much sympathy with merit of another kind.' Finally, we love De Quincey for his abhorrence of all knavish or quackish men, and his deep respect for human nature. We suspect that but few dignitaries of the past ever received so sound a 'knouting' as did that 'accursed Jew' Josephus, at his hands; nor do Grotius and Dr. Parr fare much better. He believes Josephus to be a villain, Grotius and Dr. Parr literary impostors, and he strips off their masks in a very summary manner. But with the trials, the struggles, the miseries of humanity, no man more profoundly sympathizes than Thomas de Quincey. 'Oftentimes,' says he, speaking of the daily police reports, 'oftentimes I stand aghast at the revelations there made of human life and the human heart; at its colossal guilt, and its colossal misery; at the suffering which oftentimes throws a shadow over palaces, and the grandeur of mute endurance which sometimes glorifies a cottage.' How touching is his memorial of those forlorn twin sisters, who 'snatched convulsively at a loving smile, or loving gesture, from a child, as at some message of remembrance from God;' how tender his tribute to 'poor Pink;' how affecting his devotion to unhappy Ann, whom, in the strength of his gratitude, he could 'pursue into the darkness of a London brothel, or into the deeper darkness of the grave'!

But we must close. We have found De Quincey a subtile philosopher, a mighty master of the historic art, a prose poet of unrivalled splendor. To powers so versatile and extraordinary, combined with learning so profound, and a style of such matchless brilliance, we believe that no other writer of the present age can lay any great claims. Still we take our leave of that eccentric, storm-tossed man of genius with feelings of profound regret. Great as his contributions to literature are, he _might_ have done vastly more. But nervous maladies blasted his hopes, overthrew his colossal designs, and he evermore drifts down the ages a wreck--splendid, brilliant, the admiration of all beholders--but none the less a wreck.

'FEED MY LAMBS.'

PART FIRST.

Harry has crept to his little bed, shivering with childish dread of the dark. Ungentle hands have placed him there, guardians careless of his comfort and chary of kind words and looks, and a coarse-voiced girl has said, as she took the light away, and banged the door behind her:

'Cry out loud, you little imp, and I'll send the black bears to catch you.'

So Harry is choking down his sobs, and crying silently, very silently. The chill and melancholy night wind, as it comes moaning through the casement and rustling the light leaves of the tall poplar as they rest against the window panes, and the great round tears as they fall with a dull, heavy drop, drop on his lonely pillow, are the only sounds that break the dismal stillness, excepting now and then, when a great sob, too mighty to be choked down, bursts from the little, overcharged heart. And then Harry fancies he feels, through the thin coverlet and torn night dress, the huge black paws of these same bears grasping the tender round shoulder, blue with the cold, while the little boy lies there shivering and shuddering in an agony of apprehension. Darkness above and around him, terrible, black, silent darkness; darkness which enwraps and enfolds him and takes away his breath, like the heavy, stifling folds of a hideous black mantle; darkness that the active imagination of the timid child peoples with phantom shapes, grotesque and horrible--forms made unnaturally visible by their own light, that mouth and leer, and stretch out distorted arms to seize him, whose appalling presence fills the room from floor to ceiling, and which eddy and circle around him in horrid demon dances, whirling gradually nearer and nearer, until myriads of hideous faces are thrust close to his own, or grin above him, while he chokes for breath--forms that make the cold sweat stand on his baby forehead, and freeze the blood in his veins, that he watches night after night, with his blue eyes starting from their sockets and his hair standing on end, that make of the desolate nighttime a dread and a horror! And there is no one to kneel beside his lonely bed and tell the frightened child, sick with dread, that there are no such things as odious black dwarfs, who drag young children off to dark and dismal dungeons by the hair of their head, nor great giants, who grow always bigger as you look at them, and who eat up, at a mouthful, little boys who cry in the dark. No tender mother bends low with all but divine compassion to listen to his little sorrows, or soothe his childish fears--to teach him his simple prayers, or tell him sweet stories of a little child like himself, before whose lowly cradle wise men bowed as at a shrine, and to do whom reverence shining ones came from a far-distant country. There is no one to pillow his curly head upon a loving bosom, and lull him to sleep with quaint old lullabies. Harry is worse than motherless.

So on the night in question, as on all other nights preceding, poor Harry, worn out with fright and weariness, is dropping to sleep from sheer exhaustion, closing his swollen eyes in troubled slumber, when, half unconsciously turning his curly head upon the pillow to find a dry place for the wet cheek to rest against, something bright and shining makes long lines of light in the tears still wet on Harry's lashes, and wakes him up again.

Such a bright, beautiful star it is. One that has been slowly rising, climbing the blue outside, until it reaches a break in the foliage of the tree before the window, and shines straight into Harry's eyes. Something of that strange solemnity that fills minds of a maturer growth when gazing on the starry heavens, hushes that baby's soul into reverence as he looks upon it. The terrible shapes melt away into the gloom, he feels no dread of the dark now, and vaguely and gradually there arises the first dim consciousness of the deep spiritual want within him--the first awakened desire of the finite soul to see and find the Infinite Father and claim his protection. Fragments of childish hymns, parts of simple prayers, such poor and scattered crumbs of spiritual instruction as he has gleaned here and there somehow, and on which the infant soul has been but meagrely fed, crowd in upon him. Then come wondering thoughts of that great good Being, that strange, unfathomable mystery, whose name is God, Who lives up in the blue somewhere, and yet is everywhere. This problem of Omnipresence he has pondered and pondered over, and reasoned upon, in his childish fashion, but now it dawns with a newer and clearer light on Harry's mind. God is everywhere. To his awakened spiritual perception this holy, mysterious, and invisible presence seems pervading the sky, the air, the earth, filling and enfolding all things. Night after night, as he had lain there sobbing and crying and thought himself all alone in the darkness, this great good God had been with him all the time, and he had never known it, never felt it until now; and, overwhelmed by the mighty thought, powerfully felt, though imperfectly comprehended, awestruck Harry, tremulous with reverence, obedient to some childish fancy that the name of father is not holy and reverent enough for such a Being, folds his tiny hands, earnestly praying:

'Our Grandfather which art in heaven, stay near poor Harry in the dark, and keep the bears away!'

Is it faith or fancy, that soft, gentle, summery atmosphere that fills the room, and makes the little, lonely heart thrill as with the pleasant consciousness of a loving presence? It is real to Harry, with his child's undoubting faith. Stretching forth his rounded arms, and clasping the dark, impalpable air in a joyous embrace, he nestles closely to the wet pillow as if it were a loving bosom, and falls asleep with a smile upon his lip. A childhood robbed of childish joys and pleasures, the little, insignificant trifles which form its sum of happiness, denied the sympathetic love and tenderness which is the life of little hearts, deprived of the pleasures suited to its state, yet too immature to turn within itself for comfort in its need, its life without and within a dull, joyless, dreary blank--such was poor Harry's, for a shadow dark and terrible rested on his baby heart and home, a something that darkened and deepened day by day, and grew more and more insupportable as the weary time crept on. What it was, and how long it had rested there before he became conscious of its presence, and whether his miserable home had ever been free from it and ever been a happy one, little Harry never knew. All his brief life it had lain there. Its shadow had crept into the violet eyes with the first faint glimmer of intelligence, and when the new-born soul, mysterious breath of God, first woke from its mystic dreaming, and looked consciously out upon the world into which it had come, its baleful presence crept into that holy sanctuary, and darkened what should have been cloudless as well as sinless. He had drawn it in with every breath from the atmosphere of the little world around him; it rested on all he came in contact with, and gradually and sadly there arose in the mind too immature to comprehend the cause and the nature of this desolating power, yet feeling vaguely day by day its blighting effects, sorrowful and earnest questionings--questionings like the following, to which there came back no answer to the little, suffering heart:

Why his home (if home it may be called in which the heart finds no resting place), the four walls that enclosed the place where he ate and slept, was such a dull, joyless, lonesome spot? What that dark something was that shadowed its light and took from it all joy and comfort, causing every face within it to wear a melancholy or forbidding aspect? Why there was no glad smile even on his father's lips, when he came to seek the sad young creatures that crept silently to his knee and looked wistfully up into the care-worn face; and why, though loving and kind, he was always kind with that sorrowful tenderness which makes sad hearts the sadder? Why this craving that he feels within him, this half-undefined, insatiable longing for maternal love and sympathy? What had sealed from the thirsting heart this purest fountain of earthly tenderness?

A mother's form was present to him day by day, but where was the maternal heart of love which should have beat within that bosom? 'Can a mother forget her children?' There is a fell and terrible destroyer, which murders peace in hearts and homes, whose very breath is a mildew and a blight, in whose desolating track follow woe, want, and ruin; a fierce, insatiable appetite, trebly cursed, that makes of life a loathsome degradation, and fills dishonored graves, blighting all that is divine and godlike in human nature, sealing the gushing fountain of maternal tenderness, and teaching even a mother's heart forgetfulness. O God! of what punishment shall thy justice deem those worthy, who, by cold neglect, cruelty, or shameful slavery to such a passion, shut out the light, and check the rich and limitless expansion of all that is divine in the souls committed to their charge? Ah! what did it matter that there were honorable titles affixed to the name so disgraced, that in the home thus blighted were all the luxuries and appliances of wealth, that rare pictures hung against its walls, carpets covered the floors whose velvet surface muffled the footfalls, costly curtains shut out the too garish light, that servants were at command, well paid to take care of the neglected children, paid to care for the house, and all fine things within it, and--paid to keep its secrets! What did all this matter to the miserable possessor of wealth and name, the disgraced husband, the heart-broken father? He could comprehend this woe in all its bearings, could measure the length, the breadth, the depth of the curse that had lighted upon him? Homes there were whose walls and floors were bare, whose windows were shaded by no costly curtains, but from which happy faces looked--lowly homes, poor in this world's wealth, but rich in domestic peace and love; and for the blessed quiet of their lowly hearthstones, he would joyfully have bartered wealth and fame, and all such dross as men call happiness. And Harry saw them too. The little, lonely heart, saddened by a shadow it could not comprehend, from its own gloomy home turned longingly to their homely cheerfulness, as flowers turn to the light.

One in particular had attracted his childish notice. It was just across the road; he could see it from the window of the nursery where he played, and he used to leave his play to watch it. Such glimpses of a happy home had streamed through its opening portals and fallen on the heart of the little solitary watcher like a benison. What hasty peeps he took at its homely brightness as the door opened and closed, and what long, long looks he bestowed upon it, when it stood open for hours together, as it did now in the fine June weather! It was only a simple cottage. Too unpretending for hall or entry, the little parlor opened into the street, and from the window where he stood, Harry could see straight into it. There it was, with its bright papered walls, and gay red carpet, its deep low window seat looking like a garden, where flowers bloomed and frail exotics stretched forth their delicate leaves to bathe in the sunlight that came streaming in, and cunning little yellow birds, in quaint, tiny cages, sang the long day through. And there--oh, busy fingers! making neat and bright the little home--heart of love, shedding blessed sunlight around it--there, so busy and blithe, so happy and gay, sat the presiding genius of the place, with a face so bright and good--just such a face as you would expect to see in such a home; one that sad and disappointed mortals, meeting in the street, would turn to for a second look, and bless it as it passed; a face to which childhood cleaves instinctively, sure of ready sympathy with its little joys and sorrows; one that would never be disfigured by envy or malice; never grow black with passion, and oh! never, never look senseless, idiotic, and drivelling, as another face on which he looked so often did; but to Harry's fancy, it was like the sky on a calm summer's day, always pure and bright, and always the same. It was brighter and happier and better altogether when, in the fresh morning time, the little lady went tripping by on the pavement beneath the window with a small market basket on her arm. Then Harry, clambering to the sill, and leaning out, could see straight into it; and sometimes it happened that, attracted by that fixed gaze of earnest admiration, that happy face would be turned upward, and break into a beaming smile, as the sunny eyes met the large, blue, mournful orbs looking down upon them. Then there would be a smile on the lip and a song in the heart of the little watcher for the rest of the day. Cheering and dear as that face had ever been to him since he had first had the happiness of beholding it, much as he had watched and loved it, it had drawn him with a more potent attraction still and grown doubly dear of late. He had been within the sacred precincts of a true home; he had breathed that atmosphere of heaven; he knew how that small, snug, cosy room looked to its inmates now. Yes, he had been there, and his going in chanced in the following manner:

This lady, whose cheerful presence was fast becoming a benison to Harry, had, among her other bright possessions, a rosy-cheeked, laughing-eyed, frolicsome mischief, about Harry's age, and he had recently come from the country happier, merrier, and fresher than ever, having still, as it were, about him the fragrant breath of the wood-violets, the purity of the unvitiated air, the freedom of the broad, green fields, the fragrant atmosphere of all the delightful things with which he had been so recently in contact.

One morning, not long after his coming, the cross girl who put Harry to bed at night, marshalled him and his brother out (as was her wont in fine weather) for a dreary promenade, which usually agreeable exercise consisted in the present instance in marching down a dusty stone pavement, by a long, unbroken line of brick buildings, up one street, and down another (for they always went the same way), until they came to a huge, dreary-looking schoolhouse, where they left Charley, and came back more drearily than they went. Well, on this particular morning, Charley had forgotten his slate, and he and the girl returning to search for it left Harry at the gate to await their return. The little urchin, just at that precise moment, spying Harry solus, and impelled by the agreeable prospect of a playfellow, rushed across the street, at the imminent danger of being run over, to scrape acquaintance.

'Come, and play with me,' cried the little fellow, bounding up to Harry in all the ardor of a glowing anticipation, eagerly folding one thin hand in both his dimpled ones, and flashing a whole flood of sunlight into the sad young eyes that so timidly met his sunny ones. 'Come, and play with me, _do!_ and we'll play at horse and build mud houses, and ma'll give us lots of candy and raisins, and a great big doughnut, ever so big, as big as my hands and your hands, and all our hands put together.'

'I can't,' said Harry, sadly resigning all thought of these rare dainties. 'Betty'll scold so!'

'We'll sit on the bank under the willow at the back of the house,' pursued the tempter, folding the hand he held still tighter within his own, 'where she can't see us; and when she comes to take you away, I'll bite her.'

The youthful pleader had unconsciously used the most potent argument possible. Harry wavered. To sit on a green bank under a willow, with such a sunny-faced companion as that, and listen to the birds singing in the branches, and the rustling of the leaves--to look up through the green, and see patches of blue sky through breaks in the foliage--and then, too, oh, blessed hope! to see the lady whom he regarded with such enthusiastic and reverent devotion, and to whose love he clung with all the wild tenacity of a desolate heart--to see her smile, and hear her speak--to _him_, perhaps; all this rose like a glorious vision before Harry, and the possibility of its realization sent the light to his eyes and the color to his face.