lies in the stimulating principle, which is essentially the same as that of hasheesh and opium. The real object sought is not the momentary pleasure felt while the liquid is gliding over the tongue, but the effect upon the nervous system. Alcohol, like the drugs already described, has power to send the blood bounding along its channels, and clothe the whole man with new force. It makes the tongue glib, it gives wings to the fancy, it makes the emotions more ready and powerful.

While it thus resembles hasheesh and opium, it differs from them in this it seems to lay hold principally upon another part of our nature. The effect of the poisons mentioned is chiefly mental. Alcohol tends at once to the brain; but, speaking after the manner of phrenologists, it affects most the base of the brain. The man drunk with opium reclines upon his couch, and resigns himself to the contemplation of his visions. The man intoxicated with alcohol is generally restless and noisy. His baser nature is easily roused; and with small provocation he becomes irritable and cruel, sensual and reckless. Reason is stimulated less than the passions, and he dashes on, like a ship before the tempest, with every sail spread, the rudder broken, and the anchor gone. The use of alcoholic stimulants is essentially degrading. The man who is drugged with opium becomes a sort of insane poet, wild, visionary, but too much occupied with his dreams to be very dangerous. But alcohol stirs up the foul dregs of human depravity, while reason and conscience are dimmed and deadened; and thus the man drugged with alcohol usually becomes a miserable compound of brute and devil. Byron once declared that he found gin a great assistance to him in writing his works. There is every reason to believe it. His poems, with all their wit and brilliancy, are malignant and sensual, and reek with Satanic inspiration. Scarce a thought morally grand can be found in them. Not a sentiment ever comes with balm to the sad heart and the wounded spirit; no word of his ever falls upon the ear of the tempted, like a voice from heaven, bidding him be strong for the right. Every line smells of gin, and gives abundant token of the animal passions which it is the peculiarity of alcohol to excite.

He who besots himself with this debasing drug, deliberately dethrones reason, conscience, and all his better attributes, and declares that the animal shall rule the spiritual. There is a story that an evil spirit appeared to a monk, and made him believe that he was fated to commit one of three crimes, which were named to him, with the command to choose which he would. Two were gross sins. The third was merely drunkenness, and this seemed so small a matter, compared with the others, that the hermit decided at once

in its favor. But when he awoke from his drunkenness he was filled with horror at the discovery, that, while under the power of alcohol, he had committed the other two sins also. The story is a fable, and yet it is true. Alcohol and human depravity are co-workers in evil deeds. Well do the panderers to every kind of vice know this fact. The theater, the gambling den, and the haunt of shame, rely upon alcohol to blind the reason, and deaden the conscience, and rouse the passions of their victims; and by its instrumentality, brutified, maddened, they are led as an ox to the slaughter. What instrument of evil is more potent and effective. Satan finds it the sceptre of his power, the right arm of his strength. Happy is he who has never bowed to this sceptre, nor set foot within the accursed realms of madness and lust over which it is swayed.

ART. V.-CHARLES LAMB.

The Works of Charles Lamb; with a Sketch of his Life and Final Memorials. By THOMAS NOON TALFOURD. Two volumes. (12mo., pp. 555, 611. NewYork: Harper & Brothers. 1855.)

No writer is more truly a citizen of the age than the essayist. He sits as much at home among modern improvements as the engineer or telegraphic operator. He appears well in the daily paper or the gilt-edged volume. He stamps improvement on the brief intervals of business, and fringes the day's toil with pleasing and useful thought. Being brief and frequent in his visitations, he seems to men much more practically a worker in their midst, than if he should say at once more than their time would allow them to hear or their interest would induce them to remember. Whether his visits are daily, like the sun, or annual, like the spring, his coming is welcomed as a blessing.

The essayist, in the performance of his legitimate functions, is as eloquent as the orator, and is heard more widely. He is as chaste and imaginative as the poet, without confinement to poetical themes and numbers. He is as bewitching in his style, and as insinuating in his instructions, as the novelist, without dragging his reader through the intricate labyrinth of improbable narrative. He reaches conclusions as sage as the historian's, without his solemn pomp and stately tread, without wafting his readers over seas of blood, to the firm landing of practical result.

Among the most pleasant and original of English essayists

was "Charles Lamb of the India House." His life, letters, essays, and poems, are comprised in two duodecimo volumes. In his business capacity as clerk at Leaden Hall, Lamb wrote, every year, several folios of manuscript "works," consisting of the entries of sales and shipments. These voluminous productions have no readers. They paid better than the loftier labors of his genius; but all Lamb's renown, as a literary man, rests on the two volumes which contain his letters and essays.

Self-knowledge is the secret lock of strength with many authors. Taking their position upon the principle of the oneness of human nature, they look within themselves, and observe in miniature the attributes of universal humanity. Such writers are generally most true to nature. In fiction they seldom transcend the region of the probable. They usually have no great intricacy of plot, and few inversions, but present in fiction what seems a plain, unvarnished narrative of facts.

The productions of such writers are best understood after a careful study of their lives. To this class belongs Charles Lamb. In his writings he appears not as a mere abstraction, but a man in body, mind, and heart. Consequently it is well that one of the volumes which appear under Talfourd's editorial supervision, is devoted to the Life and Letters. They form a practical introduction to the Essays, which are better understood and more highly valued after the perusal of the foregoing Life.

Charles Lamb was born in 1775. His father came up a little boy from Lincoln, and entered the service of Mr. Salt, a barrister of the Inner Temple. To this gentleman he became, in the language of his son, "clerk, good-servant, dresser, friend, guide, stopwatch, auditor, treasurer." Charles had the good sense never to become ashamed of his humble origin. His frequent allusions to his youth and parentage show that he was not at all affected by the prevailing snobbishness.

When seven years old he had the fortune to become a scholar in Christ's Hospital, an ancient school founded by that amiable and pious boy, King Edward VI. The scholars had the character of a distinct order among London boys. They were easily recognized by their blue coats, and a bearing dignified beyond their years.

Charles was a boy of mark among his schoolmates. He had a feeble frame, a plantigrade walk, and a stammer in his speech. Being unfitted to join in the boisterous sports of his companions, he moved among them "with all the self-concentration of a young monk." The sweet spirit and studious habits of the "gentle

hearted Charles" won kindness and esteem from teachers and companions.

Lamb's stay at Christ's Hospital, though brief, was valuable, not only for the introduction it gave him to classical authors, but as the beginning of a life-long friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Though young Lamb's talents pointed him out as worthy for the University, yet his stammering precluded his going to Cambridge on the foundation of his school. At the age of fourteen he com

pleted his life as a student. He spent three years as clerk in the South Sea House, and then obtained an appointment in the accountant's office of the East India Company. Here he remained in constant employ for more than thirty years. Hours which were not spent in labor at the "desk's dull wood," were enjoyed in "browsing at will in the fair and wholesome pasturage found in a spacious closet of good old English reading."

At length came a calamity which threw its shadow over the whole of Lamb's remaining life. Mary Lamb, his sister, had, in several instances, manifested symptoms of insanity. These resulted in sudden and uncontrollable frenzy on the 22d of September, 1796. She siezed a knife which lay upon the table, and shrieking with madness, plunged it to the heart of her aged and infirm mother. Charles was at hand only in time to see the bloody tragedy completed, and snatch the knife from his sister's hand. Mary was sent to the madhouse, and soon recovered, but was subject to frequently recurring attacks of this dreadful disorder during all her life.

Now comes one of the most touching and noble instances of selfdevotion that the annals of literature present. Lamb resolved to devote his life to his sister. His "wanderings with a fair-haired maid," who had already tenderly influenced his heart, were ended. With all the fervor of affection that ever dwelt in a brother's heart, he took upon himself the watchcare of his sister. There is always gain to him who makes a conscientious sacrifice. Lamb did not lose his reward. In her lucid intervals few women were superior to

Mary Lamb in goodness of heart and brilliancy of intellect. 'Between the acts of the distressful drama," Lamb's house was illuminated by the presence of no ordinary woman.

Half the first volume of Lamb's works, consisting of selections from his letters, connected by a sketch of his life, was published soon after his death. In this there is no allusion to Mary's insanity, which resulted in parenticide. As she survived her brother, it was feared that any allusion to her madness in the book, would have an unfavorable influence upon her. Hence every letter in which there was the merest mention of Mary's malady was carefully

excluded. Charles could not be fully understood, nor his good traits made completely manifest without the disclosure of this part of his private life. After Mary's death there was no longer a motive for withholding any facts; hence, in 1848, appeared "Final Memorials of Charles Lamb." These occupy the latter half of the first volume in the recent edition of his works. Here is narrated the calamity of which mention has been made. Place is given to letters whose personal allusions rendered their earlier publication improper. The book closes with sketches of some of his companions with whose society and friendship he was singularly blessed. The second part of the volume goes chronologically over the same ground as the former, but there is no tedious repetition. The interest of the "twice-told tale" is unabated.

Biographers of literary men complain of a lack of incidents. Lamb, in this respect, is no exception. For more than thirty years there are no events, apart from his literary labors, of more importance than a few removals from one house to another, and an occasional visit to the country. He went to his desk at ten in the morning, and returned at four in the afternoon. Visitors generally claimed his evenings. If they came not he devoted the precious hours to literary pursuits. Then were conceived and executed his happiest productions. No wonder that he loved the evening, with its pleasing associations, and exclaimed in his characteristic manner:

"Hail candle-light! without disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of the three-if we may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, mild viceroy of the moon! We love to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle-light. They are everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what savage, unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have lain about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's cheek to be sure that he understood it? This accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a somber cast, (try Hesiod or Ossian,) derived from the tradition of those unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with candles. How did they sup? What a melange of chance carving they must have made of it!-here one had got a leg of a goat when he wanted a horse's shoulder-there another had dipped his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild honey when he meditated mare's milk. There is absolutely no such thing as reading, but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noonday in gardens, and in sultry arbors; but it was labor thrown away. By the midnight taper the writer digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal if we would catch the flame, the odor. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are abstracted works

Things that were born when none but the still night,

And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes.'

Marry, daylight-daylight might furnish the images, the crude material; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing, (as mine author hath it,) they