“I often fell into such reveries after taking opium, and many a time it has happened to me on a summer night, when I have been seated at an open window, from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could, at the same time, command a view of some great town standing on a different radius of my circular prospect, but at nearly the same distance—that from sunset to sunrise, all through the hours of night, I have continued motionless, as if frozen, without consciousness of myself as of an object anywise distinct from the multiform scene which I contemplated from above. Such a scene in all its elements was not unfrequently realised for me on the gentle eminence of Everton. Obliquely to the left, lay the many languaged town of Liverpool; obliquely to the right, the multitudinous sea. The scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of Liverpool represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, yet brooded over by dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind, and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance aloof from the uproar of life, as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife were suspended; a respite were granted from the secret burdens of the heart, some sabbath of repose, some resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm; tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms, infinite activities, infinite repose.” And now let us follow him to the Opera. “The late Duke of Norfolk used to say, ‘Next Monday, wind and weather permitting, I propose to be drunk;’ and, in like manner, I used to fix beforehand how often, within a given time, when, and with what accessory circumstances of festal joy, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks, for at that time I could not have ventured to call every day (as afterwards I did) for ‘a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar.’