Who shall combat the succession of Thomas de Quincey to this vacant throne? Shall it be Coleridge, 'the noticeable man with large, gray eyes,' or the stately Macaulay, or Carlyle, with his Moorish dialect and sardonic glance, or hale old Walter Scott, or Lamb, or Hazlitt, or Christopher North? The time was when Coleridge's literary fame was second to that of no other man. But he has suffered a disastrous eclipse; it has been articulately demonstrated that the vast body of his most valuable speculations, both in the department of philosophy, and also in that of poetry and of the fine arts generally, were so unblushingly pirated from Schelling and other German writers, that all defence, even that which was merely palliative, has signally failed. That fact silences absolutely and forever his claim. Nor can the pretensions of Macaulay or Carlyle be tolerated; in neither of them is found in any marked degree what has been aptly called 'double-headed' power--in neither are combined the antagonistic resources of profound thought and brilliant imagination. Macaulay, unapproachable in the delineation of character and in the mastery of stately narrative, seems to be shorn of his wonted power in the presence of the higher philosophical and moral questions--the flight that is elsewhere so bold and triumphant, droops and falters here. As for Carlyle, to say nothing of other faults, we vainly search his writings for anything positive; he is a blank destroyer, breathing out everlasting denunciation and regret. No man can possess the highest order of talent or genius whose powers are essentially negative. Mere demolition--demolition which is not the first step in the advance of reform and reconstruction, the preliminary removal of ancient rubbish for the erection of newer and nobler structures--is worse than futile. But we will not pursue farther this phase of our subject. We take our stand upon the position, and think it can be maintained against all comers, that these writers, and others which might be named, although supreme in certain departments, fail in _range_ of power; in other words, that they have specialities outside of which they attain no remarkable excellence. Scott, for instance, is unsurpassed in the drama of fiction; but in the more transcendent sphere of poetry his success is open to a very serious demur. But how is the case with De Quincey? Did he ever write a poem? No; but he was nevertheless a poet of the first rank. Did he ever publish a treatise on metaphysics? No. His great work 'De Emendatione Humani Intellectus,' was never completed, but he was, notwithstanding, an acute philosopher. The author of no complete history, he was not the less a divine master of historic narration, grave or gay, sententious or impassioned. No one is more profoundly convinced than ourselves that mere rhetorical declamation, and the sepulchral voice of fulsome eulogy can never establish claims of such vast magnitude. What has Mr. de Quincey