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queen. To Ambition, she sends Power; to Avarice, Wealth; to Love, Jealousy; to Revenge, Remorse; alas! what are these, but so many other names for vexation or disappointment? Neither is she to be won by flattery or by bribes; she is to be gained by waging war against her enemies, much sooner than by paying any particular court to herself. Those that her adversaries, will find that they need not go to her, for she will come unto them. None bid so high for her as kings; few are more willing, none more able, to purchase her alliance at the fullest price. But she has no more respect for kings than for their subjects; she mocks them, indeed, with the empty show of a visit, by sending to their palaces all her equipage, her pomp, and her train, but she comes not herself. What detains

She is travelling incognita to keep a private assignation with Contentment, and to partake of a tête-à-tête and a dinner of herbs in a cottage. Hear, then, mighty queen! what sovereigns seldom hear, the words of soberness and truth. I neither despise thee too little, nor desire thee too much; for thou wieldest an earthly sceptre, and thy gifts cannot exceed thy dominion. Like other potentates, thou also art a creature of circumstances, and an ephemeris of time. Like other potentates, thou also, when stripped of thy auxiliaries, art no longer competent to thine own subsistence; nay, thou canst not even stand by thyself. Unsupported by Content, on the one hand, and by Health on the other, thou fallest an unwieldy and bloated pageant to the ground.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.'

1. A WONDERFUL DREAM.'

(FROM "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER," PUBLISHED IN 1821.)

THE dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in sleep-music of preparation and of awakening

(1) De Quincey is considered by competent critics one of the finest, if not the finest, English writer of his day. His powerful grasp of his subject, and his easy, graceful, forcible, and picturesque manner of dealing with it, are characteristic of a great master of language. In his later writings he relied, perhaps, too much on his previous reputation, and became occasionally tedious and verbose.

(2) The power displayed in the above passage none can question. This is apparent even in the fragment torn from its connection, and is most conspicuous in its proper place in the book. It was very much elaborated originally, and received several finishing strokes in the last edition.

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 labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where-somehow, but I knew not how -by some beings, 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 had 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 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 hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death,' the sound was reverberated-everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles and cried aloud, "I will sleep no more!"

2. A CELESTIAL DRIVE.

(FROM AN "ESSAY ON THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH.")

AMONGST the presents carried out by our first embassy to China, was a state coach. It had been specially selected as a personal

(1) The abhorred name of death. See "Paradise Lost," ii. 789.

gift by George III.; but the exact mode of using it was an intense mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed (Lord Macartney), had given some imperfect explanations upon this point; but, as his Excellency communicated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very moment of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly illuminated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand state question, "Where was the Emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and for the scoundrel who drove he might sit where he could find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his Imperial majesty ascended his new English throne, under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on the left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people, constructively present by representation, there was but one discontented person, and that was the coachman. This mutinous individual audaciously shouted, Where am I to sit?" But the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside places to himself; but such is the cupidity of ambition, that he was still dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition, addressed to the Emperor through the window, "I say, how am I to catch hold of the reins ? " "Anyhow," was the Imperial answer; "don't trouble me, man, in my glory. How catch the reins? Why, through the windows, through the keyholes— anyhow!" Finally, this contumacious coachman lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury reins (temporary reins),. communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The Emperor descended after the briefest of circuits; he descended in great pomp from his throne, with the severest resolution never to remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken neck, and the state-coach was dedicated thenceforward as a votive offering to the god Fo, Fo, whom the learned more accurately call Fi, Fi.

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3. FUNCTIONS AND DIGNITY OF STYLE.

(FROM AN "ESSAY ON STYLE.")

STYLE has two separate functions-first, to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which is obscure to the understanding; secondly, to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities. Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes from previous mistreatment, but oftener from original perplexities investing its very nature. Upon the style it is, if we take that word in its largest sense, upon the skill and art of the developer, that these perplexities greatly depend for their illumination. Look, again, at that other class of cases, when the difficulties are not for the understanding, but for the practical sensibilities as applicable to the services of life. The subject, suppose, is already understood sufficiently; but it is lifeless as a motive. It is not new light that is to be communicated, but old torpor that is to be dispersed. The writer is not summoned to convince, but to persuade. Decaying lineaments are to be retraced, and faded colouring to be refreshed. Now, these offices of style are really not essentially below the level of those other offices attached to the original discovery of truth. He that, to an old conviction, long since inoperative and dead, gives the regeneration that carries it back into the heart as a vital power of action; he, again, that by new light, or by light trained to flow through a new channel, reconciles to the understanding a truth which had nitherto seemed dark or doubtful-both these men are really, quoad us that benefit by their services, the discoverers of the truth. Yet these results are among the possible gifts of style. Light to see the road, power to advance along it such being amongst the promises and proper functions of style, it is a capital (.e. very great) error, under the idea of its ministeriality, to undervalue this great organ of the advancing intellect an organ which is equally important considered as a tool for the culture and popularization of truth, and also (if it had no use at all in that way) as a mode' per se of the beautiful, and a fountain of intellectual pleasure. The vice of that appreciation which we English apply to style, lies in representing it as a mere ornamental accident of written composition, a trivial embellishment, like the mouldings of furniture, the cornices of ceilings, or the arabesques of tea-urns. On the con

(1) Mode, a term of philosophy, indicating the particular form or appearance under which a reality becomes manifest to the human understanding.

trary, it is a product of art the rarest, subtlest, and most intellectual; and, like other products of the fine arts, it is then finest when it is most eminently disinterested, that is, most conspicuously detached from gross palpable uses.

GEORGE CANNING.'

THE LATENT POWER OF ENGLAND.

(FROM "SPEECH AT PLYMOUTH,"2 DELIVERED IN 1823.)

LET it not be said that we cultivate peace, either because we fear, or because we are unprepared for war; on the contrary, if eight months ago the Government did not hesitate to proclaim that the country was prepared for war, if war should be unfortunately necessary, every month of peace that has since passed has but made us so much the more capable of exertion. The resources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources, we but accumulate those means. Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town, is a proof they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness-how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage, how quickly would it put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as is one of these magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself, while apparently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion.

(1) "Among our own orators, Mr. Canning seems to be the best model of the adorned style, In some qualities of style he surpassed Mr. Pitt. His diction was more various, sometimes more simple, more idiomatical, even in its more elevated parts. It sparkled with imagery, and was brightened by illustration."— Mackintosh.

(2) Canning had at this time just been appointed foreign secretary, and was speaking at Plymouth after his election for the borough.

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