their style--reading which has been compared to walking on stepping-stones instead of a firm road. Every thing is so clear, sharp, and short, that you get irritated and provoked, and cry out for an intricate or lengthy sentence, both as a trial to your wind, and as a relief to your weariness. The best style of writing, in point of effect, is that which combines both forms of sentence in proper proportions. Just as a well-armed warrior of old, while he held the broadsword in his right hand, had the dagger of mercy suspended by his side, the effective writer, who can at one time wave the flaming brand of eloquence, can at another use the pointed poignard of direct statement, of close logic, or of keen and caustic wit. Thus did Burke, Hall, Horsley, and Chalmers. Akin to De Quincey's length of sentence, is his ungovernable habit of digression. You can as soon calculate on the motions of a stream of the aurora, as on those of his mind. From the title of any one of his papers, you can never infer whether he is to treat the subject announced, or a hundred others--whether the subjects he is to treat are to be cognate, or contradictory, to the projected theme--whether, should he begin the subject, he shall ever finish it--or into how many foot-notes he is to draw away, as if into subterranean pipes, its pith and substance. At every possible angle of his road he contrives to break off, and hence he has never yet reached the end of a day's journey. Unlike Christian in the "Pilgrim," _he_ welcomes every temptation to go astray--and, not content with shaking hands with old Worldly Wiseman, he must, before climbing Mount Difficulty, explore both the way of Danger and that of Destruction. It may be inquired, if this arise from the fertility or from the frailty of his genius--from his knowledge of, and dominion over every province of thought, or from his natural or acquired inability to resist "right-hand or left-hand defections," provided they promise to interest himself and to amuse his readers. Judging from Coleridge's similar practice, we are forced to conclude that it is in De Quincey too--a weakness fostered, if not produced, by long habits of self-indulgence.