The next year De Quincey made his appearance at Grasmere, having rented a cottage which was formerly occupied by Wordsworth, and which he himself was to occupy off and on for over a quarter of a century. The Nab, as it was called, was standing in the time of Hawthorne, who describes it as a small, buff-tinted, plastered building, agreeably situated under a great, precipitous hill, with Rydal Water close at hand. For about a couple of years after his settlement here De Quincey was almost a daily visitant at Wordsworth's, when Coleridge was a guest, and where he carried on the publication of the Friend. | Many of De Quincey's books were German, and he gave Coleridge a general license to use them as he would, which license he interpreted so liberally that sometimes as many as five hundred would be out at once. thorized Cottle to ask Coleridge if he would accept his dose, which rose to three hundred and forty five hundred pounds from an admirer of his genius, grains of opium, or eight thousand drops of laudabut he forbade him to mention his name. Cottle num, daily, which was only a little more than half considered a moment, and advised him to present what Coleridge was taking! I must not allow myhim with a smaller sum, which he could at any time self to speak of Coleridge's madness, of which the augment. "Three hundred pounds I will give him," reader will find a curious account in Cottle's "Remsaid De Quincey; and he did, for Coleridge ac- | iniscences," but confine myself to his benefactor and knowledged the money in a receipt dated November fellow-sinner, De Quincey, who resolved to conquer 12, 1807. Such was the beginning of the acquaint- | the habit, and reduced his dose to forty grains daily. ance of Thomas de Quincey with Samuel Taylor Instantly, as if by magic, the cloud which rested on Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Sou- his brain was lifted, and he was happy, and ought to they. have been, for he was about to be married. The woman whom he loved, and who loved him, was named Margaret Simpson. She was the daughter of a Westmoreland farmer, a massive, upright character, who had read a great deal of the literature of his country, and from whom she inherited intellectual tastes. He was a courageous man to let his daughter marry De Quincey at the age of eighteen. A more gracious or a more beautiful lady never was seen. She was of a steady mind, tender and deep in her excess of love, full of patient good sense and readiness of service, and was an admirable manager. Without her aid all record of bills paid, and to be paid, must have perished, and De Quincey's domestic economy gone into irretrievable confusion. He was a tolerably happy man till his thirty-second birthday, but after that time the Circean spell fell upon him more heavily than ever. Sleeping and waking became alike to him. At length he was afraid to sleep, and sat up all night and the following day. Sometimes he lay down in the day, and had his family sit round him and talk, hoping to draw an influence from his outward into his inner world-but in vain. He seemed to live and to converse, when awake, with his visionary companions much more than with the realities of life. what do you see, dear? What is it that you see? was the constant exclamation of his wife, by which he was awakened as soon as he had fallen asleep, though to him it seemed as if he had slept for years. The tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself in his dreams. It often appeared upon the rocking waters of the ocean, which was paved with innumerable faces upturned to the heavens: faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged up by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries. Then there came an indescribable sense of physical horrors, ugly birds, snakes, and crocodiles. He was compelled to live with the crocodiles for hundreds of years. He escaped sometimes, and was in Chinese houses with cane tables and sofas, the feet of which were instinct with life-the abominable head of the crocodile, with his leering eyes, looking out at him multiplied into a thousand repetitions. The dream was broken by gentle voices speaking to him, and he instantly awoke. It was broad noon, and his children were standing hand-in-hand by his bedside. They had come to show him their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let him see them dressed for going out. The transition from the crocodile to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy was so awful that he wept as he kissed their faces. Children were very fond of De Quincey. "Here's a letter-" said Mrs. Wordsworth. "From Mr. De Quincey," interrupted Johnny. And, when he had finished his prayers, he added: "Mr. De Quincey is one of my friends." He was stopping at Allan Bank one time when he opened the door of what might be called the library in search of a book, and found Wordsworth seated and in earnest conversation with a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three. He was in a sailor's dress, was in robust health, and looked at once ardent and goodnatured. “Mr. Wilson, of Elleray," said Wordsworth, in his deep tones. It was John Wilson, who was at Oxford when De Quincey was, though he knew it not, and whom he had lately seen dancing with all his might at Low Brathay, the residence of Charles Lloyd. They were friends at once, and for life. Wilson lost his fortune not long after this, and went to Edinburgh to practise at the bar. His home was his mother's house, to which De Quincey came at his invitation. They did not know what to make of the new-comer with the boyish figure and the gentle voice, who speedily asserted the right to say the final word, and who became the referee on knotty points of philosophy or scholarship. Everybody wanted to see and hear the new literary lion, and he was persecuted with invitations to dine. Robert Pearse Gillies, who saw De Quincey during this visit to Edinburgh, and who speaks of the wonder he excited, says that he was daily in the habit of taking opium as food. The habit began, as we have seen, in 1804, and continued till 1812. A year later the irritation in his stomach, caused by months of starvation in London, led him to increase "Oh! 2 The liberality of De Quincey from his twentythird to his thirty-fifth year was greater than his means warranted. He did not have a friend that was not welcome to his purse, and many of his friends (Coleridge, for example) were of the kind to whom anybody's purse was welcome. By the time he was thirty-six the greater part of his patrimony had melted away, and it was with a heavy sense of work before him that he made another mighty struggle to give up opium. He went up to London to live by his pen, and went as a matter of course to see the Lambs, who placed him by their own fireside, where he could say as much or as little as he pleased. Lamb introduced him to Messrs. Taylor & Hessey, the publishers of the London Magazine, who introduced him to their contributors as they were assembled round their hospitable table in Fleet Street. There he met Talfourd, with whom he had become acquainted in the Middle Temple thirteen years before; Hood, who was a sort of sub-editor of the Magazine; Reynolds, his brother-in-law, who assisted him in writing his "Odes and Addresses," and was himself a poet of high promise; Clare, the Northamptonshire poet, who was then a lion; Cunningham, also a poet, and the head-man of the sculp tor Chantrey; Darley, the editor of Beaumont and Fletcher, and a charming poet; Hazlitt, metaphysician and critic, who was about to make a donkey of himself by falling in love with the daughter of a tailor; Wainwright, dandy and poisoner; and Proctor, sweetest of England's lyrical poets. Barry Cornwall did not take kindly to De Quincey, whom he found by no means genial or unbending, and whom he did not like in the least. The most famous writer on the London Magazine when De Quincey began to write for it was Lamb's shadowy alter ego "Elia;" but it was not long before he was eclipsed by an "English Opium-Eater," whose "Confessions were given to the public through its pages. They were immensely successful, both with the public and with men of letters. Sir James Mackintosh read them with more delight than he could express; Horace Smith had seen nothing so original and interesting in periodical literature; and James Montgomery wrote a series of articles about them in the Sheffield Iris. These famous papers were written in a little room at the back of 4 York Street, Covent Garden, which speedily became a busy literary workshop, turning out translations from the German, and a characteristic series of "Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been neglected," which Lamb, with De Quincey's assent, parodied, in one of his liveliest papers, "A Letter to an Old Man whose Education has been neglected." From this wonderful place proceeded the wonderful novel of "Walladmor," which some impudent German hack had perpetrated to meet the demand for a new story from the pen of Scott, which that year was not forthcoming for the Easter Fair at Leipsic, and which De Quincey transfused into English, making the German perpetration only a groundwork for his own. His fame grew rapidly, and publishers were anxious to have him write for them, among others Mr. Charles Knight, who found him as helpless in every position of responsibility as when he paced Oxford Street looking for his lost Ann. Mr. Knight invited him to his house in Pall Mall one summer when his family were out of town, and he tells a story to the effect that he tapped at his chamber-door to bid him goodnight, and found him at the window habited like a prize-fighter when he enters the ring. "You will take cold," exclaimed Mr. Knight. "Where is your shirt?" "I have not a shirt-my shirts are unwashed." "But why not tell the servant to send them to the laundress?" "Ah! how could I presume to do that in Mrs. Knight's absence?" On one occasion while he was staying at Mr. Knight's he expected a remittance from his mother, which would enable him to return to his family at Grasmere. During Mr. Knight's absence he took his box away; a clew to his lodgings was obtained, and he was found in a miserable place on the Surrey side of the Waterloo Bridge. He had received a large draft on a London banker at twenty-one days' sight, and, going to Lombard Street, was astonished to learn that he could not get the money till the draft was due. He produced it to Mr. Knight, who told him to come to him in the morning, and he would give him the cash for it. "What? How? Can the amount be got before the draft is due?" "Never fear; come then, and you shall go home as fast as you came." The loss, within a period of four years, of his youngest and eldest sons, and of his wife, left De Quincey a widower of fifty-two, with three boys and three girls, and a mind unhinged with sorrow. After his wife's death he fancied that the children were too much for him; they were noisy, and intruded on him in his study, so he took lodgings for himself in another part of Edinburgh, and two or three years afterward went with his daughters to Lasswade. He changed his lodgings frequently, having at one time as many as four different ones, for all of which he paid rent. He had relapsed into opium again, reaching about five thousand drops a day, and had set to work resolutely to subdue the habit. His garden at Lasswade became a sort of tread-mill, in which he took his daily exercise to the extent of fifteen or twenty miles. In ninety days he walked a thousand miles-walked, walked, until he could say, “And the man was sitting clothed, and in his right mind." In June, 1844, he brought his dose down to six grains a day, and never much exceeded it, since it caused him such nervous suffering. His three daughtersMargaret, Florence, and Emily-were the light of his eyes, the eldest, Margaret, being the head of his cozy little cottage. Three sisters loving each other more he never knew or heard of, he told Miss Mitford, and it gladdened him beyond measure to hear all day intermitting gayety and laughter from their little drawing-room. He could not be broken of some of his peculiar habits, such as writing at night, refreshing himself with rivers of tea and coffee, going to bed in the early hours, waking at mid-day, and wandering round the country, or in the pleasant lonely lanes near his house. If by some chance the day was not so spent, he indulged in starlight rambles-a thin, light figure in odd habiliments, in list shoes, advancing silently through the darkness. His presence at Lasswade was the signal for a crowd of beggars who would tell him their doubtful stories, and who did get his money-the largest share going to borrowed babies and drunken old women. He set a morbid value upon his papers, and their not being disturbed. They accumulated till he was "snowed up," which meant that there was not an inch on the table to set a cup upon; that his bed could not be made up for the weight of papers there; that there was not a chair that could be used for sitting on; and that the track from the door to the fireplace had been cut off even for his own careful treading. When his lodging had reached this state of things, he locked the door and went elsewhere. He was a reassuring man for nervous people to live with—the commonest incident in his household at night being the casual remark, "Papa, your hair is on fire;" of which a calm "Is it, my love?" and a hand rubbing out the blaze, was all the notice taken. So passed the days and nights, and months and years, of Thomas De Quincey, opiumeater, scholar, author, and man of genius. The early friends and literary contemporaries of De Quincey dropped off one by one-Coleridge and Lamb in the same year, Hood, Hartley Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and last his life-long friend Wilson. He was growing old, and his health, which was never strong, was becoming feebler. The slightest extra effort wearied him; laudanum lost its effect, and his sleep was broken and fitful. Just after his seventy-fourth birthday a physician who had been summoned to see him found him in his parlor sitting on a sofa, but resting his head on a cushion placed before him. He came again and again, and found him weaker and weaker. At last he refused all food. One night when his landlady's sister had left him and his daughter had taken her place, he woke up, and she saw that he was anxious about something. She went and sat down by him, and he said he was grieved at the coarse manners of some rough fellows. What had they done? Well, she knew that he and the children were invited to the great supper. Did | she know what supper he meant? No. Well, he was invited to come and bring the children to the great supper of Jesus Christ. Wishing them to have suitable dresses, he had them all dressed from head to foot in white; but some rough men in the streets of Edinburgh jeered at and made the children ashamed. His daughter Margaret was sent for, and great was his pleasure on seeing her. "How is mamma?" he said; nor would he address her by any other name. Toward evening his weakness became extreme. "Mamma, I cannot bear the weight of clothes upon my feet." His daughter pulled off the heavy blanket, and wrapped a light shawl around his feet. "Is that better?" 'Yes, my love, I am better in every way. I feel much better. You know these are the feet that Jesus washed." As the night wore on, his physician came and sat with his daughters. Twice only was his breathing interrupted by words. He had for hours failed to recognize his children, but they heard him murmur distinctly: "My dear, dear mother. Then I was greatly mistaken." As the waves of death rolled faster and faster over him, he threw up his arms, which to the last retained, their strength, and said, as if in great surprise: "Sister! sister! sister!" The loud breathing became slower and slower; and, as the world of Edinburgh awoke to work and life that December morning, all that was mortal of Thomas De Quincey fell asleep forever. IT A WEEK IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. T was a glorious September morning when I first | their way to the moors, lochs, mountains, and wild awoke in a remote Highland inn, after sleeping but picturesque scenery of the western Highlands, it off the effects of a tiresome journey, during which presents an appearance of great bustle and liveliness I had incessantly to look after the few impedimenta during the summer months. The Caledonian Canal with which, as an unhampered and unfastidious Amer- was constructed by the Government at enormous exican, I had contented myself during my brief sojourn pense, to connect Lochs Ness, Oich, and Lochie, so in the "mother-country." It was, in truth, a fault- that even frigates-of-war might pass from the North less day-the deep azure of the heavens seeming to Sea to the Atlantic without making the dangerous be almost tangible, the air soft and caressing, and | passage of the Pentland Firth; but, from want of redolent of that balmy fragrance which is the most depth and other causes, it has not yet been of much exquisite charm of a day in autumn. Looking through use-except to the flourishing Glasgow Steamboat the window, I could see the narrow vale of Glen Company, that sways its large passenger-trade. Nevis, with its shallow, silvery stream meandering between banks just fringed with a vivid green, that died away imperceptibly into the dark-brown heather which clothed the valley and the mountain-side. On each side extended a range of low hills, whose slopes were striped with the torn channels of wintry torrents, now dry and overgrown with stunted birch and purple heather-blossoms. There was a stillness and languor in the hazy atmosphere that was suggestive of our own sweet Indian-summer; for it was the same sweet, silent, solemn sky-that faint memory of summer in which consists the frailty of surpassing loveliness, to which we give the sadly-suggestive name of the "Indian-summer." On my arrival I received a truly Highland welcome, at which the inevitable decanter, containing the colorless fluid so much beloved by the inhabitants, was present. My entertainer was a hale old man, with a family of one son and six daughters. On further acquaintance, the girls proved to be charming company, full of fresh, boisterous spirits and ready wit, and not at all behind their compeers of the city in mental accomplishments, even if their accent might not have been up to the Belgravian standard. The son, Ronald, was as fine a specimen of manhood as it has been my lot to see. It was a positive delight to gaze upon him, for he impressed me with the grand possibilities of even our physical conformation. He was six feet four inches in height, and proportionably built; with piercing gray eyes, a wealth of color, and glossy black hair. And he was what to my inquisitive propensities was not quite so attractive-as meek and reticent as a nun; but this reticence by no means proceeded from lack of either learning, humor, or sociability. There was a smart knock at my door. "Come in !" The door was gently half-opened, and a head --such a head!-protruded toward me. It was that of a young lad, with a look of age on his smoky face -a face that was nearly annihilated by the masses of unkempt, tow-like thatching that fell over it. Seizing a handful of that colorless, perplexed garni- | ture of his, and nodding with dislocating emphasis, On the third morning of my visit, the McIntyres he said, "Her breakvost is wetting," and vanished. took me to a shooting-party, called together by the On descending into the sanded parlor of the little local proprietor, Lord Abinger. The party numinn, I found an ample meal prepared of eggs, fresh bered thirty, besides a score or so of "gillies" to load trout, and wheaten "scones," of which I heartily and prime, for most of the sportsmen had two fowlpartook, under the superintendence of the hostess, a ing-pieces each. There was a fine stretch of moorfresh-looking matron in muslin cap, or "mutch," and land before us, dotted with those heathery knolls so, homespun gown. During my rather vigorous per- dear to the red grouse; on our left, at some distance, formance, two little wonder-struck urchins, in tartan was a fresh-water loch, with a border of fen, that was frocks, kept gazing at me, finger in mouth, that was strongly suggestive of teal and snipe; and looming surrounded with the stain of molasses, as if I were grandly on our right was the king of the British quite a new specimen of humanity. On mentioning mountains-Ben Nevis. When all was ready, the my curiosity regarding the shock-headed waiter to party broke up into knots of twos and threes, extendthe good lady, she laughingly said: "And, indeet, it ing over a considerable distance, and then began the was no other but chust Jan McTougal, the parish 'gentle sport" in earnest, for it was an unusually idiot, and he is a very good, wise laad-that laad, favorable season. Before that incomparable day exthough he not know the English ferry well." pired, and the sturdy ponies were laden with the rich and beautiful spoil, I saw enough to lead me to the belief that perhaps the most interesting sport to be found anywhere is the shooting along the foot of the Scottish mountains. One never knows what an acre of ground may produce. It may be a hare, rabbit, partridge, duck, snipe, plover, woodcock, or any of the grouse family except the ptarmigan-so that at the close of the day there may be half a dozen different varieties in the game-bag. And the best of it is, I bore a letter of introduction from a London friend to a gentleman in Fort William, named McIntyre, who was a superintendent of excise; and after breakfast I walked along the pretty, white, winding road into the village. Fort William is an Invernessshire village of some two thousand inhabitants, situated on Loch Linnhe, and, from its situation at the southwestern extremity of the Caledonian Canal, along which swarms of pleasure-seekers travel on that one need not over-exert himself, for often within gunshot of a farm-house, on the outskirts of a hamlet, in a turnip-field just within hail of the mansion, round some abrupt turn of the highway, down the rugged slope where the tangled brushwood is uninvaded from season to season, across the rude, mosscovered dike-anywhere and everywhere, the sportsman may be on the alert. This, at least, is surely a bright result of the once-detested game-laws; and, although the right of shooting is reserved exclusively to those who can pay heavily for it to the local proprietor, to the English "milor," who hires half a county for the gratification of his destructive propensities, or to the pursy and ubiquitous London winemerchant who, by dint of his golden staff, pushes his way into the ranks of the blessed, yet every straw- | thatched cottage in the district reaps substantial and savory benefits from the incessant musketry which enlivens the Highland moors during the season. There is sometimes, of course, a sad waste of powder. The vexatious snipe, for instance, is admirably calculated to try the patience and unruffle the starchiness of the cockney millionaire, as he may shoot a whole month at one and never kill it. The baffled look of rage and despair on the vinous face of the city novice, as "Jeems," with a dry, palatal chuckle and a well-assumed stare of stolid indifference, hands him his piece over and over again without results, would throw Mephistopheles himself into ecstasies of cynical delight. At two o'clock the party assembled in a birchcopse for luncheon. Troops of ladies were there to meet their fathers, husbands, or brothers; and among them the brilliant Countess of S―, formerly -as I was informed by a clansman, with a look of unmitigated disgust-a London prima donna, and now the best equestrienne and the most unconventional character in the county. "But," continued this kilted autocrat, with grim satisfaction in his icy tones, "she is never received into society whatever; and she gallops about more like a man than as a lady, and moreover a countess, should." which seemed not unaccustomed to such homage; and, as she left him to speak to her attendant, I could scan her perfect physique, the bewitching figure, the ineffable grace of bearing and movement, the sweet but pensive expression on the pale, noble face, and heartily could I say, “Incedit regina !" "Whatever is the matter with the man?" exclaimed Ronald McIntyre, close at my side. I start-. ed, and must have looked confused, for he laughed aloud, and, shaking his head, said: "Ah, Gordon, my boy, beware! Come along with me, and let me introduce you to a countrywoman of your own, who is a gem of a woman; only I am sorry to say this climate of ours has made sad havoc with her looks, and health as well-she is a confirmed invalid, poor lady!" "Who is she?" I asked, with some impatience, and feeling that strange, yearning outgoing of the heart that the meeting with one's country-folk in a foreign land awakens. "Come and see," he replied. We approached a group of chatty people who were standing around an open carriage, and a portly gentleman, with the unmistakable stamp of Britain on his face, turned round and cordially took my hand as Ronald said, "Lord Abinger, my American friend, Mr. Gordon." "I am glad to see you, sir-glad to see you. This is Lady Abinger, who, as your countrywoman, is naturally pleased to meet you," he said, while the rest of the group edged away. The worn and delicate little woman, half reclining in the carriage, held out her hand, and in a faint but kindly. voice, and with a glimmer of enthusiasm in the poor, faded eyes, expressed her pleasure at meeting her countryman. "The Highlands don't suit me, at least, Mr. Gordon. I have only been ten years in the country, going all the while from Inverlochy here to London, and from London to Inverlochy, in search of health, but only getting weaker at every turn." I expressed my profound regret. 'But why," she said, brighten"But surely," I said, "she must have some home ing up, "don't you ask me what is my native State?" society?" "Yes-no; she lives the most of her time, except when she is in London, away yonder in Badenoch, in a beautiful castle on the Spey, near the foot of Cairngorm;" and he pointed toward the dim, blue outline of the noble central Grampians. "There must be something wrong with her," he continued, in an awed undertone, "for she never goes to church! But she is ferry good to the poor-oh, ferry good!" This he said with a look of suddenly becoming conscious that he might have been too sweeping in his censure of a lady to one who was a perfect stranger to him. My curiosity, generally lively, was stimulated; and-pardon me, ye who are ever and justly jealous lest a citizen of the Great Republic should demean himself by sycophancy or grandee-worship-I stationed myself where I might fairly examine this mala avis. Superb! She was standing in a careless attitude, listlessly caressing a gigantic mastiff, VOL. III.-12 "Oh, I wait for your ladyship to tell me. The inquisitive spirit must be kept within bounds on this island, I believe." Only that I am extremely sorry to see in your ladyship so melancholy a type of the fortunes of that cause," I replied, with some feeling. "I am not quite sure whether I ought to take such an expression of sympathy as that in good part or not," she said, playfully. I was warmly invited by Lord Abinger to call at Inverlochy Castle, and offered the freedom of moor and mountain; but the time I had at my disposal only admitted of my calling to say farewell before my departure, and, meanwhile, I was anxious to make the ascent of Ben Nevis, to see Glencoe, and |