It is not to be expected that we can fully traverse and explore this vast section of De Quincey's writings; that would be a task beyond our present resources; and, consequently, we are compelled to pass unnoticed keen dissections of history; ingenious, although sometimes untenable, theories regarding the Essenes, the supposed expressions for eternity in the Scriptures, the character of Judas Iscariot, the doctrine of demons, the principles of casuistry, style, and rhetoric; the discussions of various points in philosophy and logic; the prodigality of erudition displayed in the articles on Plato, Homer, Dinner Real and Reputed, Bentley; the transcendent critical skill revealed in the little paper entitled 'The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,' in the essays on Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Lamb, and others; the minute dissections of feeling and passion scattered broadcast throughout his writings. We shall content ourselves with merely adducing another illustration of our author's extremely speculative and metaphysical cast of mind, and then close this section of the review. This is taken from that touchingly beautiful chapter in the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' entitled 'The Afflictions of Childhood.' De Quincey, even in his childhood, was profoundly sensitive, and capable of forming the most ardent attachments. Tender and absorbing was the love which had sprung up between himself and his sister Elizabeth; she was the joy of his life--she was supreme in his affections. At the age of nine years she suddenly sickened and died; De Quincey, although younger by three years, was overwhelmed with unspeakable agony. When his sister had been dressed for the grave, he stole silently and alone into her chamber to look once more upon her beautiful face, to kiss once more her sweet lips: while standing by the bedside he is suddenly struck down in a trance, and his description of the scene is one of the noblest prose poems in the English language. But even here, amid the absorbing disclosures of a frantic sorrow, when the mighty swell of passion had reached its culmination, and a solemn Memnonian wind, 'the saddest that ear ever heard,' began to arise, and the seals of a heavenly vision were about to be unloosed--even here he pauses, philosophically to 'explain why death, other conditions being equal, is more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year'!