important, and no restrictions whatever can put it out of the reach of those who desire it. Silks, spirits, tobacco were smuggled as long as it paid to smuggle them; opium, an article of incomparably less bulk and incomparably greater value, would bring still larger profit to the importer; while the customer would not merely be attracted by cheapness or fashion, but impelled by the most imperious and irresistible of acquired cravings. Any man could smuggle through any barriers enough to satisfy his appetite for a year, enough to poison a whole battalion. That opium can become the favorite indulgence with numerous classes, and apparently with a whole people, the experience of more than one Eastern nation clearly shows. As the Oriental tea and coffee have to so large an extent superseded beer as the daily drink of men as well as women and children, so opium is calculated under favoring circumstances to replace wine and spirits as a stimulant. It might well do so even while the competition was open. Every penalty placed on the use of wine or brandy is a premium on that of opium. De Quincey is not the only opium-eater who has given his experience to the world. It is evident that the practice is spreading in America, and the records published by its victims are as terrible as the worst descriptions of the drunkard’s misery or even as the horrors of _delirium tremens_. It is noteworthy, however, how little any of these seem to know of other experiences than their own—for instance, of the numerous forms and methods in which the drug can be and is administered. Opium—the solidified juice of the poppy—is the natural product from which laudanum, the spirituous tincture of opium, and all the various forms of morphia, which may be called the chemical extract, the essential principle of opium, are obtained. Morphia, again, is sold by chemists and exhibited by doctors in many forms, the principal of which are the acetate, the sulphate and the muriate of morphia—the substance itself combined with acetic, sulphuric, or hydrochloric acid. Of these last the muriate is, we believe, the safest, the acetate and in a lesser degree the sulphate having more of the pleasurable, sedative, seductive influence of opium in proportion to their pain-quelling power. They act, in some way, more powerfully upon the spirits while exerting the same anæsthetic influence, and the injurious effects of each dose are more marked and less easily counteracted. Laudanum, containing proof spirit as well as morphine, and through the proof spirit diffusing the narcotic influence more rapidly and affecting the brain more quickly and decidedly, is perhaps the worst vehicle through which the essential drug can be taken. Again, morphine, in its liquid forms can be injected under the skin; as solid opium it can be smoked or eaten, as morphia it can be swallowed or injected. Of all modes of administration—speaking, of course, of the self-administered abuse, not of the strict medical use of the