went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey's comment of rich meditative eloquence become so fascinating. Unfortunately, though he managed to write recollections which are, in their way, unique, he never achieved anything at all comparable to his autobiographic revelations. Vague thoughts passed through his mind of composing a great work on Political Economy, or of writing a still more wonderful treatise on the Emendation of the Human Intellect. But he never seems to have made any decided steps towards the fulfilment of such dreams, and remained to the end of his days a melancholy specimen of wasted force. There is nothing, unfortunately, very uncommon in the story, except so far as its hero was a man of genius. The history of Coleridge exemplifies a still higher ambition, resulting, it is true, in a much greater influence upon the thought of the age, but almost equally sad. Their lives might be put into tracts for the use of opium-eaters; and whilst there was still hope of redeeming them, it might have been worth while to condemn them with severity. Indignation is now out of place, and we can only grieve and pass by. When thousands of men are drinking themselves to death every year, there is nothing very strange or dramatic in the history of one ruined by opium instead of by gin. From De Quincey's writings we get the notion of a man amiable, but with an uncertain temper; with fine emotions, but an utter want of moral strength; and, in short, of a nature of much delicacy and tenderness retreating into opium and the Lake district, from a world which was too rough for him. He uttered in many fragmentary ways his views of philosophy and politics. Whatever their value, De Quincey has of course no claim to be an originator. He not only had not strength to stand alone, but he belonged to a peculiar side-current of English thought. He was the adjective of which Coleridge was the substantive; and if Coleridge himself was an unsatisfactory and imperfect thinker, his imperfections are greatly increased in his friend and disciple. He shared that belief which some people have not yet abandoned, that the answer to all our perplexities is to be found in some of the mysteries of German metaphysics. If we could only be taught to distinguish between the reason and the understanding, the scales would fall from our eyes, and we should see that the Thirty-nine Articles contained the plan on which the universe was framed. He had an acquaintance, which, if his own opinion were correct, was accurate and profound with Kant's writings, and had studied Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. He could talk about concepts and categories and schematisms without losing his head amongst those metaphysical heights. He knew how by the theoretic reason to destroy all proofs of the existence of God, and then, by introducing the practical reason, to set the existence of God beyond a doubt.