Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/83

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ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
73

highly gifted. For, though unpretending to the name and honours of a literary woman, I shall presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an intellectual woman: and I believe that if ever her letters should be collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure "mother English," racy and fresh with idiomatic graces, as any in our language—hardly excepting those of Lady M. W. Montague.—These are my honours of descent: I have no others: and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures is not the most favourable to moral, or to intellectual qualities.

Lord D—— placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was really so; but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent—from being the first regular meal, the first "good man's table," that I had sat down to for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarcely eat any thing, On the day when I first received my 10l. Bank-note, I