ing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt translation from the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy summer air of highest noon, and from the unutterable abortions of miscreated gigantic vermin to the sight of infancy and innocent human creatures.-Opium

eater.

DREAMS OF STRUGgle.

Suddenly would come a dream of far different character-a tumultuous dream-commencing with a music such as now I often heard in sleep-music of preparation and of awakening suspense. The undulations of fast-gathering tumults were like the opening of the Coronation Anthem; and, like that, gave the feeling of a multitudinous movement 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 ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where-somehow, but I know not how-by some beings, but I knew not by whom a battle, a strife, an agony, was travelling through all its stages-was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet not the power to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet 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 features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed-and clasped hands, with heart-breaking parting; 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, the sound was reverberatedeverlasting farewells! And again, and yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, "I will sleep no more!"— Opium-eater.

Although the promised continuation of the Confessions was not written, De Quincey contributed papers on many subjects, all bearing the signature of "The English Opium-eater." His connection with the London Magazine lasted from his thirtyseventh to his forty-first year. During these four years he lived in humble lodgings in London, his family remaining at the cottage in Grasmere, where he visited them rarely, if ever. He intimates that the days of his opium-eating were past. But this must be taken in the qualified sense that he used smaller quantities, upon the whole. To John Wilson he wrote in February, 1825:

DE QUINCEY AT FORTY.

At this time I am quite free from opium; but it has left the liver-the Achilles's heel of almost every human fabric subject to affections which are tremendous for weight of wretchedness attached to them. To fence with these on the one hand, and with the other to maintain the war with the wretched business of hackauthor, with all its horrible degradation, is more than I am able to bear. At this moment I have not a place to Something I meditate-I know not

hide my head in.

what. With a good publisher, and leisure to premeditate what I write, I might yet liberate myself : after which, having paid everybody, I would slink into some dark corner, educate my children, and show my face no more.

It is certain that during this residence in London De Quincey was miserably poor. Near the close of that year, as we learn quite incidentally, he received a considerable remittance from his mother, so that he was able to return to his family at Grasmere. John Wilson, with whom De Quincey had formed a close friendship while both resided in the Lake region, was now the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; and through his interest De Quincey was formally engaged as a contributor to that publication. His first paper, upon Lessing's Laocoon, was printed in January, 1827; next month appeared the famous essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts; and this was followed in March by the paper on The Toilette of a Hebrew Lady. This connection with Blackwood naturally drew De Quincey to Edinburgh, where for the next three years he passed his time much as he did at Grasmere. Finally it was decided by or rather for De Quincey, that his wife and children should come to him at Edinburgh. They accordingly left Grasmere in 1830, although De Quincey was nominally the tenant of the cottage there for several years longer. When the family was reunited at Edinburgh, De Quincey was forty-five years of age; his wife about thirtytwo. During the next four years he was a fre

quent contributor to Blackwood. Then there was an unexplained interruption of his papers in that periodical. But the connection was resumed in 1837, when appeared a narrative article entitled The Revolt of the Tartars; followed in succeeding years by many others, among which is the essay on The Essenes.

De Quincey had begun to write for Tait's Magazine, in which for several years appeared some of his most notable papers, prominent among which is the series entitled Sketches of Life and Manners from the Autobiography of an English Opium-eater. During these years at Edinburgh, De Quincey developed those marked eccentricities in personal conduct of which his biographers have made so much. Domestic bereavements followed one after another. His youngest son died in 1833 at the age of five. Two years after, at the age of eighteen, died his eldest son, William, "my first-born child, the crown and glory of my life," wrote De Quincey long afterward. Two years later-that is, in 1837-died his wife, to whom he had been married twenty-one years before.

De Quincey, at the age of fifty-six, was left a widower, with six children, Margaret, the eldest, being a girl yet in her teens. For a couple of years De Quincey lived in lodgings by himself, which he had taken so that he might have a place for his books and where he could carry on his literary labors. Then Margaret and her younger brother Horace took household matters into their own hands. Not without the consent of their father --who in all practical affairs was as helpless as an

infant-they took a pretty cottage at Lasswade, seven miles from Edinburgh. That, of course, required money; but this was not wanting. Where it came from we can only guess; certainly not from De Quincey's own scanty earnings as a magazinist; most likely from his mother and her wealthy brother, now far advanced in years. This Lasswade cottage, known yet as "De Quincey's Villa," was his nominal home during the twenty remaining years of his life, though much of it was spent in obscure lodgings at Edinburgh, where he did his work. He shifted these from time to time, as they became filled up with his accumulated books and papers. At one time, as we are told, he was paying rent for four or five such obscure lodging-places; but whenever he walked out to. Lasswade, there was a cheerful home ready for his reception. In a letter to Mary Russell Mitford he gives a pleasant description of his daughters and of their life at Lasswade, after his sons, now grown up, had gone to follow their respective vocations: one with the army in China; another in India; the third, as a physician, to Brazil.

DE QUINCEY'S DAUGHTERS.

They live in the most absolute harmony I have ever witnessed. Such a sound as that of dissension in any shade or degree, I have not once heard issuing from their lips. And it gladdens me beyond measure that all day long I hear from their little drawing-room intermitting sounds of gayety and laughter, the most natural and spontaneous. Three sisters more entirely loving to each other, and more unaffectedly drawing their daily pleasures from sources that will always continue to lie