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England in the New World,' 1846 (Hochelaga is an aboriginal In dian name for Canada); Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers,' 1849; Reginald Hastings' and 'Darien,' novels, and Memoir of the Earl of Peterborough-the famous earl (1658-1735). The last was a posthumous work, published in 1853. Mr. Warburton had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to visit the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien, with a view to effect a friendly understanding with them, and to make himself thoroughly acquainted with their country. He sailed in the Amazon steamer, and was among the passengers who perished by fire on board that ill-fated ship. That awful catastrophe carried grief into many families, and none of its victims were more lamented than Eliot Warburton.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,' originally printed in the London Magazine,' and published in a separate form in 1822, describe the personal experiences of a scholar and man of genius who, like Coleridge, became a slave to the use of opium. To such an extent had he carried this baneful habit that in the meridian stage of his career' his daily ration was eight thousand drops of laudanum. He had found, he says, that the solid opium required a length of time to expand its effects sensibly, oftentimes not less than four hours, whereas the tincture, laudanum, manifested its presence instantaneously. The author of the Confessions' was THOMAS DE QUINCEY, son of an English merchant, and born August 15, 1785, at Greenhay, near Manchester. His father died while his children were young, leaving to his widow a fortune of sixteen hundred pounds a year. Thomas was educated at Bath, and subsequently at Worcester College, Oxford. When about sixteen, he made his way to London, and tried to raise a sum of two hundred pounds on his expectations from the paternal estate. He was reduced to extreme destitution by his dealings with the Jews, and by his want of any profession or remunerative employment. He was saved from perishing on the streets by a young woman he knew-one of the unfortunate waifs of the city-who restored him to consciousness with some warm cordial, after he had fainted from exhaustion. This youthful benefactress' he tried in vain to trace in his afteryears.

It is strange, as Miss Martineau has remarked, and as indeed occurred to himself when reflecting on this miserable period of his life, that while tortured with hunger in the streets of London for many weeks, and sleeping (or rather lying awake with cold and hunger) on the floor of an empty house, it never once occurred to him to earn money. As a classical corrector of the press, and in other ways, he might no doubt have obtained employment, but it was not

till afterwards asked why he did not, that the idea ever entered his mind.' His frie: ds, however, discovered him before it was too late, and he proceed d to Oxford. He was then in his eighteenth year. In the following year (1804) De Quincey seems to have first tasted op um. He took it as a cure for toothache, and indulged in the pleasing vice, as he then considered it, for about eight years. He continued his intellectual pursuits, married, and took up his residence in the Lake country, making occasional excursions to London, Bath, and Ed nburgh. Pecuniary difficulties at length embarrassed him, and, enfeebled by opium, he sank into a state of misery and torpor. From this state he was roused by sharp necessity, and by the success of his contributions to the London Magazine,' which were highly prized, and seemed to open up a new source of pleasure and profit. He also contributed largely to Blackwood's' and 'Tait's' magazines, in which his Autobiographic Sketches,' 'Recollections of the Lakes, and other papers appeared. Next to Macaulay, he was perhaps the most brilliant periodical writer of the day. After many years' residence at Grasmere, De Quincey removed to Scotland, and lived at Lasswade, near Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh, December 8, 1859, in his seventy-fifth year.

Besides the Confessions,' Mr. De Quincey published the 'Dialogues of Three Templars on Pol tical Economy,' 1824; and twenty years later he produced a volume on the same science- The Logic of Political Economy,' 1844. The highest authority on political economy-Mr. M'Culloch-has eulogised these treatises of Mr. De Quincey as completely successful in exposing the errors of Malthus and others in applying Ricardo's theory of value. A collected edition of the works of De Quincey has been published in sixteen volumes, distributed in the main, he says, into three classes: first, papers whose chief purpose is to interest and amuse (autobiographic sketches, reminiscences of distinguished contemporaries, biographical memoirs, whimsical narratives, and such like); secondly, essays, of a speculative, critical, or philosophical character, addressing the understanding as an insulated faculty (of these there are many); and, thirdly, papers belonging to the order of what may be called. prose-poetry-that is, fantasies or imaginations in prose-including the Suspiria de Profundis,' originally published in Blackwood's Magazine'-and which are remarkable for pathos and eloquence. In all departments, De Quincey must rank high, but he would have been more popular had he practised the art of condensation. His episodical digressions and diffuseness sometimes overrun all limitsespecially when, like Southey (in the Doctor'), he takes up some favourite philosophical theory or scholastic illustration, and presents it in every possible shape and colour. The exquisite conversation of De Quincey was of the same character-in linked sweetness long drawn out,' but rich and various in an extraordinary degree. His biographic and personal sketches are almost as minute and

unreserved as those of Rousseau, but they cannot be implicitly relied upon. He spared neither neither himself nor his friends, and has been accused of unpardonable breaches of confidence and exagger itions, especially as respects the Wordsworth family. It has been said that if his life were written truthfully no one would believe it, so strange the tale would seem.*

The following is part of the melancholy yet fascinating 'Confessions.' One day a Malay wanderer had called on the recluse author in his cottage at Grasmere, and De Quincey gave him a piece of opium.

Dreams of the Opium-Eater.

May 18-The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. Every night, through his means, I have been trasported into Asiatic scenery. I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point, but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race. it would have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, bistory, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life; the great Officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the ba rier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are to be found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooked at. grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was wor

• Memoir of Professor Wilson, by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon. I remember, 'says Mrs. Gordon.his (De Quincey's) coming to Gloucester Place one stormy night. He remained hour after hour. in vain expectation that the waters would assuage, and the hurly-burly cease. There was nothing for it but that our visitor should remain all night. The Professor (Wilson) ordered a room to be prepared for him, and they found each other such good company, that this accidental detention was prolonged without further diffi culty, for the greater part of a year. He rarely appeared at the family meals, preferring to dine in his own room, at his own hour, not unrequently turning night into day. An ounce of laudanum per diem prostrated animal lite in the early part of day. It was no unfrequent sight to find him lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting upon a book, with his arms crossed over his breast, plunged in profound slumber.'" He was most brilliant at supper parties, sitting till three or four in the morning.

shipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma, through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.

Some slight abstraction I thus attempt of my oriental dreams, which filled me always with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a killing sense of eteruity and infinity. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case in my dreams) for centuries. Sometimes I escaped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables, sofas. &c., soon became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way. I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke; it was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their coloured 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 natures.

June 1819.-I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death generally, is (cæteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think: first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite; the clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads are in summer more voluminous, more massed, and are accumulated in far grander and more towering piles; secondly, the light and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are much more fitted to be types and characters of the infinite; and, thirdly (which is the main reason). the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the antagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be ob served generally, that wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not actually more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly, in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have been the immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but, having been once roused, it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic variations, which often suddenly re-combined, locked back into a startling unity, and restored the original dream.

I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams. There were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was interspace far larger between them of savannahs and forest lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had once tenderly loved, just

as I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise, in the same summer when that child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I said to myself: It yet wants much of sunrise; and it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they cele brate the first fruits of Resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be forgotten to-day for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, and st etch away to heaven; and the churchyard is as verdant as the forest lawns, and the forest lawns are as quiet as the churchyard; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead; and then I shall be unbappy no longer.' I turned, as if to open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony. The scene was an oriental one; and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in the morn ng. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the don es and cupolas of a great city-an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman; and I looked, and it was-Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly; and I said to her at length. So, then, I have found you at last.' I waited; but she answered me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last: the same, and yet, again, how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamp-light of mighty Loudon fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (1.ps, Ann, that to me were not polluted !), her eyes were streaming with tears. The tears were now no longer seen. Sometimes she seemed altered; yet again sometimes not altered; and hardly older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with some awe. Suddenly her countenance grew dim; and, turning to the mountains, I perceived vapours rolling between us; in a moment all had vanished; thick darkness came on; and in the twinkling of an eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamp-hght in London, walking again with Ann-just as we I ad walked, when both children, eighteen years before, along

the endless terraces of Oxford Street.

Then suddenly would come a dream cf 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 he 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 labouring in so e dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where-somehow, but I knew 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 n ore in upportable, from dec pening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. (as is usual in dreams where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had no: 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 Atlanties was upon me, or the oppression of inexp able 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; hur: yings 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 Bense 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, with heart-breaking partings, and then-everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of nell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated-everlasting farewels! And again, and yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, I will sleep no more!'

In the same impassioned and melodious prose, De Quincey talks of dreams moulding themselves eternally like the billowy sands of the desert, as beheld by B uce, into towering columns.' 'They 'soar upwards to a giddy altitude, then stalk about for a minute all aglow