POETRY. "Under the Cloud and Through the Sea," 578. When thou Sleepest, 578. Retirement, 578. Lament for Earl Russell, 600. Kingdom of God, 600. Refuge, 600. The Comet, 620. Frederick Barbarossa, 639. "E Pluribus Unum," 640. The Organ, 640. The Living Dead, 640.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Mr. Sheffield's donation to Yale College, 599. English Pensions, 599. Sacred Mysteries, 599. Germany, 636. Recipe for rendering muslin dresses incombustible, 636. Treaties for the surrender of fugitives from justice, 636. First printed copy of Lord Byron's Poems, 636. Christians in posts of honor in Turkey, 638. The noiseless sewing machine, 638.

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From The Quarterly Review. children, and, if his own reminiscences are Selections, Grave and Gay, from Writings to be credited, was a warm-hearted but muspublished and unpublished by Thomas De ing, imaginative, and rather weakly child. Quincey. Edinburgh and London, 1854- The death of two elder sisters before he had 60. 14 vols. 12mo. completed his sixth year left a lasting imTHE position of De Quincey in the litera-pression on his mind; and he has described, ture of the present day is remarkable. We in language of great force and beauty, his might search in vain for a writer who, with sensations at the funeral of one, and the sinequal powers, has made an equally slight im-gular dreams with which his first experience pression upon the general public. His style of death inspired him. His father died when is superb his powers of reasoning are unsur-Thomas was in his seventh year, leaving passed his imagination is warm and bril-Greenhays, with a fortune of £1,600 a year, liant, and his humor both masculine and del-to his widow. This father the child had icate. Yet with this singular combination scarcely ever seen. Business kept him conof gifts, he is comparatively little known stantly abroad; and the only means by which outside of that small circle of men who love he contrived to see his family at all was by literature for its own sake, which, in propor-meeting them occasionally at a wateringtion to the population, is not an increasing place, to which Thomas was considered too class. Of the causes which contributed to young to be taken. But Mr. De Quincey's this result, such as depended on his own death brought back another comparative character will develop themselves in the stranger to the family hearth, in the shape course of our remarks. Of the others, it is of the eldest boy, then about twelve years sufficient to point out these two, that he of age, who had been educated at Louth neither completed any one great work, nor Grammar School. The advent of this brother enjoyed the advantage of being represented precipitated De Quincey's "Introduction to by any great periodical; a circumstance the world of strife," an initiation which he which has sometimes given permanence and admits was not without considerable advanunity to a writer's reputation as effectively tage both to his moral and physical constias independent authorship. That his essays tution. His natural addiction to loneliness are not, in general, upon popular subjects, is and dreaming, combined with grief for his of course another element in the case; al- sisters' loss, was generating in him an unthough they only require to be read to show wholesome condition of both mind and body, how easily a man of genius can lubricate the which his brother's arrival rudely, but opporgravest topics by his own overflowing humor, tunely, dissipated. De Quincey says himwithout making the slightest approximation self, in reference to this period of his childto either flippancy or coarseness. As we hood, that he thanks Providence for four fancy, however, that even less is known of things-first, that he lived in a rustic solihis birth, parentage, and education, than of tude; secondly, that the solitude was in his literary remains, we shall endeavor to England; thirdly, that "his infant feelings make our sketch of him complete by pref- were moulded by the gentlest of sisters," acing our critical remarks with a brief memoir instead of "horrid pugilistic brothers ;" of his earlier career as far as it can be ex- finally, that he and they were members of tracted from the fragmentary materials which "a pure, holy, and magnificent church." he has left us. But our readers must not suppose that De Quincey had any real doubt about the paramount utility of a public school education; though at the age of six years "the whole world of strife," as opened to him by his elder brother, proved any thing but soothing to his feelings. This brother seems, in all respects, to have been a remarkable boy. He read lectures on physics to the rest of the nursery. He endeavored to construct an apparatus for walking across the ceiling like a fly, first on the principle of skates,

The subject of this article was born at "The Farm," a country house occupied by his father near Manchester, on the 15th of August, 1785. But his earliest recollections were of "Greenhays," a villa near the same town, where he was brought up in all the comfort and elegance of the household of an opulent English merchant. His family was of Norwegian origin, but, as he assured George III., had been in England since the Conquest. Thomas was the fifth of eight

and subsequently upon that of a humming-broon, threatened, not remotely, with annextop. He was profound on the subject of ation, by the superior potentate his brother. necromancy, and frequently terrified his "How, and to what extent," my brother young admirers by speculating on the pos- asked, "did I raise taxes on my subsibility of a general confederation of the jects? At this question the model young ghosts of all time against a single genera-prince was staggered. He abhorred taxation of men. He made a balloon; and tion of all kinds. But then he knew that, wrote, and, in conjunction with his brothers if he said as much, his ambitious neighbor and sisters, performed two acts of a tragedy, would jump to the conclusion that he had no in which all the personages were beheaded standing army-an idea which he felt would at the end of each act, leaving none to carry be fatal to his own independence. But though on the play, a perplexity which ultimately he evaded this particular difficulty, a shockcaused "Sultan Amurath" to be abandoned ing discovery was in store for him. In an to the housemaids. In all these matters, evil hour his brother became acquainted however, no especial burden was imposed on with Lord Monboddo's theory of the human Thomas. It was first in his position as race; and he presently announced the fact major-general of his brother's army, and that the inhabitants of Gombroon had not secondly as absolute monarch of the king-yet worn off their tails. This was a hideous dom of Gombroon, that he suffered the worst piece of intelligence. As absolute ruler, terrors and anxieties. The two boys went Thomas might at once issue an edict comevery morning to a private tutor's house pelling his people to sit down six hours and returned in the afternoon, on one or every day, "and so make a beginning," or both of which occasions a fight invariably he might dress them in the Roman toga, as took place with the boys of a neighboring the best means of hiding their appendages. factory, chiefly carried on with stones, and, But either alternative left the great fact unas it would appear from its bloodlessness, touched that he was king of a nation of at a safe distance. These military opera- Caudati, and he continued plunged in the tions were of course under the control of the profoundest melancholy throughout the reelder brother, who directed Thomas's move-mainder of his reign.

ments upon the flank, or rear of the enemy, At the expiration of two years his brothsometimes planting him in ambush and er's proficiency with his pencil caused him to sometimes as a corps of observation, as the be transferred to the house of the celebrated exigencies of the case required. Arriving academician, Mr. de Loutherbourg, where he at home, he issued a bulletin of the engage- died of typhus fever at the age of sixteen. ment, which was read with much ceremony Being no longer under the necessity of proto the housekeeper. Sometimes this docu-tecting his subjects from the neighboring ment announced a victory, and sometimes a potentate of Tigrosylvania, the monarch of defeat; but the conduct of the major-gen- Gombroon laid aside his crown, and retired eral was criticised without reference to the re-into private life. The ensuing four years, sult. Now he was decorated with the Bath, and now he was deprived of his commission. At one time his services merited the highest promotion, at another he behaved with a cowardice "that seemed inexplicable, except on the supposition of treachery." Once he was drummed out of the army, but "restored at the intercession of a distinguished lady" (the housekeeper, to wit). In these singular vicissitudes of fortune two whole years were passed; but, extraordinary as is the air of reality which De Quincey has thrown around this description, it is even less wonderful than the picture of his own feelings as king of the island of Gom

i.e. from his eighth year to his twelfth, were marked by no incidents particularly worthy of commemoration, except the removal of his family from Greenhays to Bath, and his own entrance at the Bath Grammar School. Here he made numerous enemies by the superiority of his Latin verses: and he was ultimately removed from the school, primarily, indeed, in consequence of an accident, but secondarily, because his mother was unwilling that he should hear so much of his own merits. From Bath he went to another school, at Winkfield, in Wiltshire, which he left in the spring of the year 1800, for the purpose of accompanying a young friend of