example, against perfidious despots and murdering oppressors—should come to be dishonoured or less honoured, in that proportion would the inference be valid that these interests were shaking in their foundations: so that, in effect, any confederation or compact of nations for the abolishing of war, would be the inauguration of a downward path for man. Let Manchester chew the cud of this "bitter fancy" of one of her own sons; for De Quincey is a Manchester man. But after all, though that great town—great in several senses—is identified in popular parlance with a certain "School" claiming to represent it, there are multitudes within its huge area, who are not de jure "represented" by Mr. Bright; and perhaps Manchester at large might use, mutatis mutandis, John Wilkes's apology, when he assured the king that he was not a Wilkite.—This argument for War, then, will be no marrowless bone of contention for the dogs that delight to bark and bite, and angry lions that growl and fight, within the ring of our debating clubs. It will doubtless excite strife of tongues and war of words, as now issued in the widely-read "Selections," though we believe it was scantily noted in its original form of publication, which was in an ecclesiastical journal without a public on this side the Tweed.
To "The English Mail-Coach" is appended the "Vision of Sudden Death," in which the author, who has been a great coach-traveller in his time, tells how he was, nearly forty years ago, in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness to "an appalling scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most terrific to two young people," whom, he says, he had no means of assisting, except in so far as he was able to give them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even that not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from a frightful death by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. The third section is occupied with the mystic translation of this incident into the Opium-eater's nightly dreams—thrilling glimpses and dazzling glances of which we have all read in the "Confessions"—for the incident, "raised and idealised," was naturally and very speedily carried into his visions of the night, "into a rolling succession of dreams." "The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue." Hence the concluding section is styled "Dream-Fugue upon the Theme of Sudden Death," and well it bears out the suggestive title. It is an elaborate example of that mastery of the dream-element, that troublous familiarity with its psychological marvels, that interfusion of tempestuous agitation with seraphic calm—peculiar to them who deeply meditate, and intensely feel, and greatly dream—and again that wondrous spell and witchery of style, in all of which combined, Mr. de Quincey has had no predecessor, and has no fellow, perhaps no follower.
There is one part of the "English Mail-Coach" which, apart from its intrinsic pathos, events of the day will cause many bright eyes to read through blinding tears. It is where the author describes his journey by the mail when the mail was the messenger to the provinces of news of battle, and bore gazettes with details of glorious victory, in the time of Salamanca and Badajoz—and how he was questioned, as one that could tell, by simple agitated hearts, in rural districts through which the mail was passing, as to the fate of this or that brave young hero, for whom those hearts were now disquieted in vain, and should too soon ache well-nigh unto death.
