sod, granite though it be in a hundred courses, is a feeble witness of the permanence and influence of his spirit among the American people. He mounted into literature from the moment that he fell; he began to move the soul of a great community; and part of the principle and enthusiasm of Massachusetts to-day is due to his sacrifice, to the presence of his spirit as a power in the life of the State.

5. Did Montgomery lose his influence in the Revolution because he died without victory, on its threshold, pierced with three wounds, before Quebec? Philadelphia was in tears for him, as it has been for our hero. His eulogies were uttered by the most eloquent tongues of America and Britain, and a thrill of his power beats in the volumes of our history, and runs yet through the onset of every Irish brigade beneath the American banner, which he planted on Montreal.

6. Did Lawrence die when his breath expired in the defeat on the sea, after his exclamation, "Don't give up the ship!" What victorious captain in that naval war shed forth such power? His spirit soared and touched every flag on every frigate, to make its red more commanding, and its stars flame brighter. It went abroad in songs, and every sailor felt him and feels him now as an inspiration.

7. God is giving us new heroes to be enthroned with those of the earlier struggles. Before our greatest victories come, He gives us, as in former years, names to rally for, and examples to inflame us with the old and the unconquerable fire. Ellsworth, Lyon, Winthrop, Baker, our patriots who have fallen in ill-success, will hallow our new contest, and exert wider influence as spirit-heroes than over their regiments and battalions, while they shall ascend to a more tender honor in the nation's memory and gratitude.

8. And other avenues of service than those of the earth are opened for such as he whom we are waiting to lay in the tomb. "It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory," saith the Sacred Word. God has higher uses for such spirits. In the Father's house are many mansions; and Christ hath pre

pared the place for all ranks of mortals for whom He died. The mysteries of the other world are not revealed. The principles of judgment, the tests of acceptance and of the Supreme eminence are unfolded. Intellect, genius, knowledge, faith, shall be as nothing before humility, sacrifice, charity. But in the uses of charity the fiery tongue, the furnished mind, the unquailing heart, shall have ample opportunities, and ampler than here. Paul goes to an immense service still as an Apostle; Newton to reflect from grander heavens a vaster light.

9. As we shut the door of the tomb of genius, let it be with gratitude to God for its splendor here, and with a hope for its future that swells our bosom, though its outline be dim. And let us not be tempted, in view of the sudden close of our gifted friend's career, in any sad and skeptical spirit, to say, 'What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!" The soul is not a shadow. The body is. Genius is not a shadow. It is a substance. Patriotism is not a shadow. It is light.

10. Great purposes, and the spirit that counts death nothing in contrast with honor and the welfare of our country,—these are the witnesses that man is not a passing vapor, but an immortal spirit. Husband and father, brother and friend, Senator and soldier, genius and hero, we give thee, not to the grave and gloom-we give thee to God, to thy place in the country's heart, and to the great services that may await thee in the world of dawn beyond the sunset, with tears, with affection, with gratitude, and with prayer.

LESSON LX.

THE DREAMS OF AN OPIUM-EATER.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

Thomas De Quincey, an eminent English author, was born in Manchester in 1785. About the age of twelve he was sent to the grammar school at Bath, where he attained such proficiency in Greek that his teacher declared he could harangue an Athenian mob. He subsequently left the grammar school surreptitiously. and fled to

London, where, for several months, he lived a life of harrowing poverty and distress, the story of which he has told with wonderful eloquence in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. In 1803 he entered the University of Oxford, where he remained five years, and became addicted to the use of opium. At this time he was noted for his remarkable conversational powers and vast erudition. After he had indulged in the excessive use of opium for many years, he finally overcame the deadly habit, and in 1821 published his Confessions, which purport to be an autobiography, and created a great sensation. He wrote much, but published litle under his own name. His collected works, comprising some eighteen or twenty volumes, have been published in America, but our space will not allow an extended list of them. He was most at home in the regions of pure speculation, and is acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant writers in English literature. He died at Edinburgh, in 1859.

I

KNOW not whether others share in my feelings on this point, but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep; and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons.

2. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Hindostan. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories and modes of faith is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed.

3. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life.

4. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires also,

into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyze.

5. All this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror, which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas: and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest I was worshiped; I was sacrificed.

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6. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Siva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried, for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud.

7. I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later, came a reflux of feelings that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what

I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness.

8. Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables and sofas soon became instinct with life; the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated.

9. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams,' that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke; it was broad noon; and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their colored shoes or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest, that so awful was the transition from the crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams to the sight of innocent human natures, and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.

10. As a final specimen, I cite a dream of a different character. It commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams a music of preparation and of awakening suspense-a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, 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 final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity.