effect of opium upon the mental action. Employed as a medicine, forty or fifty drops constitute an ordinary dose. But De Quincey had so accustomed his system to the use of the drug, that he could consume a quantity that would have killed ten men wholly unaccustomed to it. At one period his daily allowance was eight thousand drops. He would sit down by his table at night, with a lamp, a book of German metaphysics, a decanter of laudanum before him, and read, and drink, and dream wild, beautiful, and horrid dreams till morning came. These dreams were waking dreams, visions which the eyes seemed to behold, while reason still denied their reality. He often saw mountains, plains, rivers, seas, oceans before him; sometimes oceans paved with innumerable human faces, upturned to the heavens-faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, which "surged upward by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries," while the mind of the dreamer was "infinitely agitated, and surged, and tossed with the ocean." He thus describes some of his horrible sensations:

"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, I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in 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." Page 118.

Another of his dreams he describes in language far more sublime than anything in the books of the hasheesh eaters:

"It commenced with a music which I now often heard in dreams, a music of preparation, an awakening suspense, a music like 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. Somewhere, I knew not where; somehow, I knew not how; by some beings, I knew not whom, a battle, a strife, an agony was conducting-was evolving, like a great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I 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 I had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. Deeper down 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, tempests and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then, everlasting farewells, and with a sigh 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.' Page 124.

Thus he writes when the agonies of a shattered nervous system stretch him upon the rack; but when he looks only at the joyous beginnings of the opium intoxication, he breaks forth in the most extravagant laudations of the baneful drug:

"O mighty opium, that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel, bringest an assuaging balm. Eloquent opium, that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, and to the guilty man, for one night, givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood. . . . Thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxitiles, and from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,' callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the dishonors of the grave. Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtile, mighty opium !"

Thus, almost in the same breath, blessings the most extravagant, and curses the most bitter are bestowed on it. Here is the ecstasy of the first intoxication, the morbid flights of imagination hurried to the verge of insanity, mingled with the remorse of a soul conscious of selfdestruction, and yet hopelessly infatuated and enslaved, the nobler nature brought into bondage by the diseased appetites of the flesh.

It may be remarked here, that the mind makes up its visions from its own materials. Whatever the memory contains of beautiful, horrible, and fantastic images, the frenzied mind revives and combines in a thousand ways, sublime, or grotesque, or terrible, giving the picture a clearness of outline and a vividness of coloring akin to the true testimony of the senses. Those who have never heard of crocodiles, cockatoos, and pyramids, would see none, and no quantity of the drug could give De Quincey's visions to those whose memories are not stored as was his, or who lack his native strength of imagination. A man of scanty ideas and no fancy might be as much exhilarated in the first stage of intoxication, and as miserable in the second, as was De Quincey; but his fantasia would be narrow and common-place. Instead of soaring to an ideal Paradise, and reveling in its beauty, and afterward sinking into sublime horrors, he might possibly be regaled on unlimited quantities of visionary beef and beer, and then be kicked by a spectral boot.

ALCOHOL is another cerebral stimulant, the use of which is only too well known. It constitutes the intoxicating principle of the vari'ous beverages which are capable of producing drunkenness. The different varieties of brandy, rum, whisky, and gin, contain about fifty per cent. of pure alcohol. Wine contains from ten to twenty, and cider from six to twelve per cent. of alcohol. The devotee of any one of these drinks often lays great stress upon the taste of his favorite; but this is often self-deception or hypocrisy. The charm

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