avail to redeem a man from his sins, surely Coleridge fully atoned for all the fault that could be imputed to him for taking opium. His course ought to satisfy the most exacting now, as it should have done in his own age. But prejudice! Alas! who or what is equal to it? His getting into opium was without fault upon his part. He was afflicted with rheumatism, and all who have read his life know why. A medicine, called the "Kendal Black Drop," was prescribed for rheumatism in a medical work which he had read. He obtained the medicine, and it worked wonders; his swellings went down, and his pains subsided. It was a glorious discovery, and he recommended it wherever he went. The pains would come back, however, so he kept the medicine handy. It is unnecessary to pursue the phantom any further; the ever-effectual remedy was nothing but opium, and Coleridge was into the habit before he knew what he was about. And for such a nature as Coleridge's to get out of opium, when once in it, is not among the things that happen. De Quincey took laudanum for the toothache, and afterwards continued it at intervals for the pleasure it gave him, until finally, his stomach giving way, he was precipitated into the daily use of it. Which of these men was the most to blame in getting into the habit, is not the object of these present remarks. I agree, however, with Coleridge, that De Quincey's work, entitled, "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," tends rather to induce others into the habit, "through wantonness," than to warn them from it. Coleridge said as much in a couple of private notes, which were printed, after his death, in his "Life" by Gillman. He likewise used the following significant language in one of the said notes: "From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free, as far as acts of my free will and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work ('Confessions of an English Opium Eater'), I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had, even then, to _deter_, perhaps, not to forewarn." This raised the ire of De Quincey, who animadverted very freely upon Gillman's "Life of Coleridge," Coleridge and Gillman, in a paper entitled, "Coleridge and Opium Eating," which is, in my opinion, far more creditable to the parties attacked than to its author. In this paper he also attempts to give some excuse for writing his "Confessions," in the doing of which he makes a most startling blunder, by assuming that Milton's "Paradise Lost" is the true history of our first parents; and then, on the strength of that, proving that laudanum was known and used in Paradise! See a separate note at the end of this work, in which this unlooked for, though unmistakable, evidence and result of having too freely "eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner," is fully discussed. His excuse for writing his "Confessions" I give in his own words: