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avoid swearing, but whatever they say is
firmer than an oath. And, although tor-
tured, "yet could they not be made to flat-
ter their tormentors, or to shed a tear,
but they smiled in their very torments.'
In all these traits, and in others, we see
the early Christians living their life to the
letter. But where can any other sect be
found that we can identify? The Chris-
tians had to baffle, and they did baffle,
even Josephus. He did not recognize
them, but we do, by the very signs which
he gives us. We know better than he
the meaning of his report. We have the
key of the lock which he could not pick.
We must give one specimen of De
Quincey's subtlety in criticism. It is from
the famous paper on the "Knocking at
the Gate in Macbeth:"

the good fortune to sit with the "old man
eloquent," by winter fire-light or summer
twilight, in his Lasswade home, and who
have seen the grief-worn face grow glori-
fied, the immortal spirit within the thin,
weak, mortal form kindling its clay, soar-
ing for a while triumphant over all the
Strange light
suffering and the pain.
would stream through the rents of ruin;
strange music come from unknown sources,
till the listener felt himself caught up into
an enchanted place, where the touch of
transfiguration had fallen on both. He
was not a talker like Coleridge, who, as
Hazlitt said, consented at any time to lose
the ear of posterity for the sake of a
chance listener. In his early years he
had quite neglected the power of conver-
sation, and looked upon it, he tells us, as
one of the dull necessities of business.
He thought the world talked too much
already for him to swell the hubbub. Yet,
as it was vain to try and persuade the
world into adopting his view of the mat-
ter, he re-studied the subject on principles
of art. A new feeling dawned on him, of
a secret magic lurking in the life, quick-
ness, and ardor of conversation, quite
which belonged to books,
apart from any
arming a man with new forces, and not
old ones. "I felt that, in the electric
merely with a new dexterity in wielding
kindling of life between two minds, there
sometimes arise glimpses and shy revela-
tions of affinity, suggestion, relation, anal-
ogy, that could not have been approached
through any avenues of methodical study.
Great organists find the same effect of in-
spiration, the same result of power, crea-
tive and revealing, in the mere movement
and velocity of their own voluntaries, like
the heavenly wheels of Milton throwing
off fiery flakes and bickering flames."
Having fathomed the secret capabilities
of conversation as an art, he looks round
for the great artist, but does not find the
He shows felicitously
perfect master.
enough why Dr. Johnson must have been
for ever maimed as a great conversation-

"All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible by reaction. Now, apply this to the case of Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in; and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured: Lady Macbeth is 'unsexed;" Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman; both are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable? In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated-cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs-locked up and sequestered in some deep world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested, laid asleep, tranced, racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds; the knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced, the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish, the pulses of life are begin-alist: ning to beat again, and the reestablishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first make us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them. O mighty Poet!"

recess; we must be made sensible that the

We are tempted to add, "O great and
surprisingly subtle commentator!"

De Quincey was a wonderful talker, as
those of our readers know who ever had

"He had no eye for the social phenomena rising around him. He had little interest in man; no sympathy with human nature in its struggles, or faith in the progress of man. And desponding taint in his blood. It is good to the reason that he felt thus careless, was the be of a melancholic temperament, as all the ancient physiologists held; but only if the melancholy is balanced by fiery aspiring quali

ties, not when it gravitates essentially to earth. Hence the drooping, desponding character, and the monotony of the estimate which Dr. Johnson applied to life. We are all, in his view, miserable, scrofulous wretches; the ‘strumous diathesis was developed in our flesh, or soon would be; and but for his piety, which was the best indication of some greatness latent within him, he would have suggested to all mankind a nobler use for garters than any which regarded knees. In fact, I believe that but for his piety he would not only have counseled hanging in general, but hanged himself in particular. Now, this gloomy temperament, as a permanent state, is fatal to the power of brilliant conversation."

Tory through blindness, but because the tendencies of revolution in his time aroused all conservative instincts. He belonged to a class of thinkers in politics who dwelt apart from the tumult of party warfare, and do not contend for its prizes in the arena. But they silently influence their own circles, each in his own way, and send forth ripples of power that go to the outermost edge of society. They are as springs of healing, watering the roots of the national life; sooner or later they bring the world round to them, and mould its final thought and feeling. The practical efficiency of their creed can not be gauged on the surface of things; down in the deeps we may see it constitutes just the element that enriches our country beyond all blessings of a purely democratic form of government, and is of more value than the eternal see-saw of Whig and Tory which is popularly supposed to preserve the balance of power.

De Quincey has been falsely charged with a proneness to attack old friends when he was only biting playfully. For example, speaking of Wordsworth's great good luck and felicitous fortune, he says: "So true it is, that just as Wordsworth

of that place or fortune was immediately served with a notice to surrender it. So certainly was this impressed upon my belief as one of the blind necessities, making up the prosperity and fixed destiny of Wordsworth, that for myself, had I happened to know of any peculiar adaptation in an estate or office of mine to an existing need of Wordsworth's, forthwith, and with the speed of a man running for his life, I would have laid it down at his feet. Take it,' I should have said; 'take it, or in three weeks I shall be a dead man.'"

De Quincey could not find his great artist, we say; others will fancy they found such an one in himself; for he felt the necessary interest in man, all his hopes, as well as fears. He talked from the heart as well as the head; and his conversation sprang like a fountain of earnestness. He never talked without having something to say; nor was he afflicted with what Coleridge called the "mouth diarrhea;" neither was his conversation an apotheosis of self-assertiveness. In whatsoever direction he turned, whether to speak or write, he had the power of vitalizing with new life, and enrich-needed a place and a fortune, the holder ing all he looked upon. No matter into what solitude or wilderness he penetrates, there will be the movement of new life at once visible, and a glow as of dawn in the desert. He has a shrewd eye for "keeking" into corners, and the patience of spirit that can wait long in ambush to pounce on the error as it passes by. No shepherd ever better knew the face of a particular sheep that he wanted from the flock, than De Quincey knows the lie that is trying to pass muster for truth. He has an eye almost Shakspearian for detecting the true features of a man who may stand afar off, half-hidden under the veil of distance. He has a sure grasp of reality, and can estimate at their true value the glitter and graces, the tinsel and powder, and fluttering affectations of the teacup times." Pope feels hollow in his grip. And although a genuine Tory, De Quincey could judge between Milton and Johnson, and assign to each his proper pedestal. He had no favorites merely because of their politics, nor were his own politics of the kind that forms a science of expediency. He loved England, and all that was genuinely English. That was the tap-root of his Toryism. He was not a

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In conclusion, we have done no justice to our author's learning or humor; to his conjectural audacity and hypothetical felicities; or to his estimates of antique character. But we trust that we have written enough to make his works more widely known. In a time when we have so much sham brilliancy and false vivacity, deadlyliveliness, and forcible-feebleness-when the penny-a-liner sits in the high places of literature-we turn to these books with a pleasant sense of relief. We are heartily sick of the smell of Cockneydom; its slang and smartness; its knowingness and insincerity, and find it delightful to renew acquaintanceship with the style of a writer

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who is not smart nor fast, but always an exalt the deliverer Joan d'Arc, or abase
English gentleman, with a stately touch the pretensions of a Parr. Accordingly,
we welcome him as one of the great lead-
of the school in which manners are a sort
of surface Christianity. He can be play-ers in literature, and, instead of regretting
ful without losing his own dignity, and what he has not done, we rejoice in what
natural without forfeiting our respect. he has bequeathed to us, and would have
By his innate nobility of thought and others share in our joy.
chivalry of feeling, as well as by his
wealth of learning, he is the very man to
lead us into the lofty society of the good
and great-poets and patriots; fit to

We owe the first edition of De Quincey's collected works to the perseverance and research of Mr. Fields, the Boston publisher.

From the Leisure Hour.

THE INFLUENCE OF RAILWAY TRAVELING ON HEALTH.

A LITTLE brochure* has lately been published, which goes far to charge upon the railway system of this country cerebral diseases, nervous affections, and spinal and visual weakness to an extent of which few but those of the medical profesIt sion can have had the least notion. would appear from this little book, that medical men have often been asked whether they consider railway traveling prejudicial to health; it was found that "there had been gradually gaining on the public mind a suspicion of dangers from railway traveling, widely different from those apprehensions with which the thoughts of travelers were at first uneasily burdened; and, in consequence of this state of feeling gaining ground, a medical commission was for some time engaged in an extensive inquiry, and the result is here set down.

As might be expected, however, the evidence, as well as the results arrived at, are sometimes very conflicting. From cases stated of two persons afflicted with the same disease, one is able to endure a long railway journey with ease: the other suffers so much from the same journey, that she does not recover for several days. A "leading physician" gives evidence that the season - ticket holders on the Brighton line " appeared to him to grow old with a rapidity which amazed him,"

* The Influence of Railway Traveling on Health, reprinted from The Lancet. Hardwicke, London.

and, on account of his observations, had
discountenanced daily railway journeys as
much as possible. And yet the commis-
sion appear to have ignored altogether
the class of commercial travelers, who as
a rule travel more, and are healthier and
longer lived than their predecessors who
went their journey in coach or gig. In
the course of the inquiry, the case of the
traveling employés of the post-office is
frequently adduced; and it would be im-
possible to obtain better or more conclu-
sive evidence on the subject than that
which is here afforded. Hundreds of
post-office officials are making long rail-
way journeys almost daily in post-offices
fitted up like railway saloon carriages,
where the work of sorting letters is per-
formed previous to the arrival of the train
at the different stations. The result of
the inquiry made in this department es-
tablishes the fact of a positive benefit to
be derived from railway traveling, by
persons in the enjoyment of good health.
The postmaster-general in his ninth Re-
port, the last issued, (May, 1863,) states
that the sickness and mortality among the
traveling officers is certainly not greater
Dr. Waller Lewis, the
than that among the officers of station-
ary post-offices.
medical officer on the establishment, sup-
plies us with a number of cases which
have come under his immediate notice,
where incessant, and in fact excessive
traveling, does not seem to have been at
all prejudicial to the health of those so

2. Persons who take to habitual rail-ing suffocated. Foreigners on the contiway traveling after the age of twenty-five or thirty, are more easily affected than those who begin earlier.