But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his successors. The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however, remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings. But above the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster. For just here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family freshly grounded upon a second heritage,--one sublime in its order above that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever imperishable,--namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought under distinct illumination for all time to come. These are the vast acres over which human pride must henceforth soar,--acres that have been, through the mighty realizations of human genius, built out into the mysterious ocean-depths of chaotic Nature, and that have in some measure bridged over infinite chasms in thought, and by just so far have extended the fluctuating boundaries of human empire. And for De Quincey himself, in view of that monumental structure which rises above the shattered wrecks of his poor, frail body, as above the mummied dust of Egyptian kings remain eternally the pyramids which they wrought in their lifetime, we find it impossible to cherish a single regret, that, possibly, by the treasonable slip of a predecessor, he may have been robbed of an earldom,--or even that, during a life which by some years overlapped the average allotment to humanity, and through which were daily accumulating the most splendid results in the very highest departments of philosophy and art, these accumulations nevertheless went on without any notable recognition from a court the most liberal in all Europe; no badge of outward knighthood coming to him through all these years, as formerly to Sir Thomas Browne for his subtile meditations, and to Sir William Hamilton for his philosophic speculations. The absence of such merely _nominal_ titles excites in us no deep regret; there is in them little that is monumental, and the pretty tinsel, with which they gild monuments already based on substantial worth, is easily, and without a sigh, exchanged for that everlasting sunshine reflected from the loving remembrances of human hearts.