own little theory clean in the face of nature; to judge matters which are a world above us by the limited standard of what is possible to ourselves; to make an explanation of things too big for our own contracted understanding by guesses of the wildest and most fabulous character, infinitely harder to believe, and more impossible to explain, than the original difficulty; to draw largely upon the credulity of our audience in behalf of theories openly inconsistent with all the everyday truths of nature and principles of humanity-this style of reasoning, find it where we will, is equally contrary to all nobleness, candour, and generosity of mind. We cannot understand Shakespeare; cannot enter into the big overflowing existence of that one plentiful and simple soul; therefore we invent half-a-dozen entirely unbelievable people, wrapped in a solemn and mysterious silence, for which nobody can give any reason -ghosts of an unaccountable Hades, on which no light has ever shone; or pile another mountain-weight of unclaimed and uncongenial fame upon a head already crowned and radiant, whose sole title to this additional load of honour is, that he never made the slightest pretence to it, and that his lawful ownership of the same is about the most unlikely thing in the world. And we do not understand Scott; cannot make out how he found time, much less how he found genius, for works which in their kind are as hard to match and rival as the Plays of Shakespeare. Wherefore we incontinently find out some extraordinary relatives for the pretended author, persons of such fabulous and unparalleled generosity as are not to be found even in the Arabian Nights. It is perfectly true that there are scores of good people, quite willing to be amused by this clever folly, who would shrink with genuine horror from the idea of carrying the same principle into higher re and applying it to God. But whe applied to the lesser or to the gre subjects, the system is the same. We make no imputation upon any dividual-it is the kind and spe of criticism, to which we call the tention of our readers-a syste blind to all the great and unives truths which stand established the lifelong experience of the w beyond all theory-a mode of reas ing which can deal only with s perficial bits of fact, and scraper expression capable of travestya species of intellect which can preciate nothing in heaven or ear bigger than itself. Yet hold! a thought dawns su denly upon us-what if half laughter, half our admiration, har been spent in vain a possibi suggests itself with force to our in gination. Most strange the thought has occurred to us in en nection with we cannot tell ev many of the cleverest and me serious productions of current liter ture; stayed our hand when were half way through the cleve pages of Paul Ferroll, puzzled or criticism at the end of Balder, and now arrests us, with a compunction when we have made an end of our admiring perusal_of_the_Waverley pamphlet of W. J. F. What if it were a clever bit of burlesque after all-an experiment upon the cred lity of the literary world? for lo! the preface with that cunning date, 2d of April, shining full in our bewildered eyes. Do you suppose we ought to make an instant apology, kindest reader? do you really think with us that a delicate implication of the first of April is contained in this equivocal date? Admirable critic! cleverest caricaturist! speak but one word if it is so, and we lay not our apologies only, but our sincerest homage, at your feet! Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCCXCIV. DECEMBER 1856. VOL. LXXX. A RECENT CONFESSION OF AN OPIUM-EATER, THERE is no necessity for telling the reader how I came into the company with which he will find me associated in the ensuing narrative; and there are several reasons why he need not be informed on that point. In the first place, he has no right to inquire; for I hold, and always have held, and maintained, both in argument and practice, that a man is responsible only to himself for the company he chooses to keep. 2dly, Supposing he had the right to ask (which, as already stated, I deny), still it would be inconvenient for me to tell him. 3dly, Supposing he had the right, and I were willing to acknowledge it, it would nevertheless be useless to the purpose of the story I am about to narrate, and therefore a crime against art. 4thly, Because any consistency and completeness which the narrative might gain by the relation of the circumstances antecedent to the position, at once intensely horrible and highly amusing, whither they conducted me, are sufficiently attained by the mention of the fact that, while enjoying with the full appreciation of a refined and extremely sensitive nature the appliances of luxury and wealth, I have never shrunk from studying the aspect of humanity in the Rembrandtlike chiaroscuro of vice and crime. In search of the harmonies which slumber in the soul of man, I have VOL, LXXX.-NO. CCCCXCIV. sounded the base string of society. Leaving the splendours and decencies of the upper regions of our social atmosphere, I have voluntarily descended into depths filled with fetid and noxious exhalations, and I have ever returned to the light of common day with an intensified sense of the unfathomable mysteries and the unutterable melodies hidden in the profoundest abysses of our nature. Some of my readers will probably remember that particular epoch in the history of crime when murder became the handmaid of medical and surgical science, whose requirements, at that time greatly extended by the ardour of discovery, were by no means satisfied either by the legal offerings of the bodies of criminals, or the more adventurous, though less legitimate, contributions of surreptitious exhumation. The impulse communicated to that branch of study which deals with the mysteries of our physical nature, by the great anatomists and physicians who stand in conspicuous array on the line which separates dusky empiricism from luminous science, had awakened cravings in the minds of our students which could no longer be stilled by such eleemosynary and desultory aid. To satisfy these cravings, a race of miscreants arose, whose peculiar province in the field of assassination may be denominated enlightened Thuggism. 2 U But their atrocities, though serving The scene, then, is a squalid and deep-set, small, grey, and inexorable His head, phrenologically speaking. was not bad, being of sufficien height, though the forehead was con cealed by straight black locks the countenance, widest at the forehead and narrowing almost to a point at the chin, was of a pale clay-colour and the sole expression was one of truculent vigilance and resolution On William's right was seated a more commonplace miscreant, whose coarseness of appearance and coversation betokened atrocity unre deemed by refinement, and who name of Squabby (by which his com panions addressed him) was not with out a certain philological fitness, One of those external indications d character which garments often con vey, appeared in the contrast afforded by the dress of these men; for while Bill's shabby, scanty, and closebuttoned black coat rather exagger ated the unfavourable impression made by his thin angular form and cadaverous countenance, and seemed to show that he despised those lit tle ameliorations in costume which are within reach of the humblest, Squabby's gaudy waistcoat, and gar geous jewellery of glass and cop per, showed all the inclination without the power to be what in these latter days is denominated "a swell." The word dandy, which, at the time I speak of, was the generic term for all who cultivated ostentatiously, with whatever degree of success, the art of costume, fails to convey the idea of exuberance and floridity expressed in the newer appellation. Squabby, therefore, was a vulgar swell. Their female companion-faded, though still young-possessed, nevertheless, a face whose expression frequently drew my gaze. This was owing not so much to her beauty, which could never have been of a striking character, as to the likeness she bore to a young girl with whom I had some years before been cunously, intimately, and most romanti cally connected. Ah Catherine! even now, when I summon from the dim past thy angel face, with the mild imploring look I last beheld there imploring a speedy return, where fate was even then writing, with iron pen, the stern decree that for me to thee there should be no return-even now, as those eyes so beseechingly beam on me through the distance of many lustres, my heart owns that there are sympathies over which time has no control. That likeness, faint as it was, perhaps altogether fanciful, awoke feelings which, as they arose, brought with them a crowd of memories-and hence the charm which a face, to others, perhaps, commonplace, had for me, though there was nothing in the manner, appearance, or conversation of this young woman which distinguished her as in any way very superior to the scene and the society in which the reader finds her. It must not be imagined that we had no other occupation in this dreary and ill-lighted apartment than that of looking at each other. Another bottle, besides that which officiated as candlestick, stood on the table; or, I should rather say, paced round it, for it seldom halted much longer than was necessary for the filling of the cracked glass which stood before each of us. Our liquor was port, a choice made at my suggestion, and Long-nosed Bill had coincided with a hearty cordiality which his appearance did not certainly promise, but the motive of which I afterwards divined. He had sent the girl out for a dozen bottles; and though almost abstaining himself, and restraining also the manifest inclination of Squabby for the generous liquor, he pressed it on me with a hospitality that seemed incapable of being repressed or chilled. Meanwhile the conversation did not flag. Squabby, finding in me an interested and attentive auditor, talked much and loudly, but with a certain coarseness which would have disgusted me had not his loquacity perpetually started subjects which the sagacious William treated with a masterly terseness, such as I have seldom heard equalled. But the great charm of his conversation was its mystery. The numerous adventures in which he appeared to have been engaged had neither beginning nor end. Of secret expeditions, of hairbreadth escapes, of rapid flights, there were sufficient to set up a modern novelist for several seasons but the spring and motive of all these were wanting. Why these expeditions were planned, what pursuers he had escaped from, and why flight was necessary, were questions which I had to call in my imagination and invention to respond to, and thus to string on theories of my own the broken links of his narrative. Equally mysterious, though more boisterous, was the conduct of Squabby, who frequently made jesting allusions to their peculiar vocation, which, though to me utterly devoid of meaning, caused a cynical smile to flit across the astute physiognomy of his friend, while the woman responded with a low and musical laugh generally smothered in the corner of her shawl. This mystery veiling the subject of their conversation, without concealing its main outlines, lent to it the interest which awakened and baffled curiosity has always excited in my mind from my earliest days. My part was not, however, merely that of a listener or a guesser. I hesitated not to exchange sentiments and experiences with these humble friends, who granted me the same attention which I in my turn gave to them; and I remember regarding it as a striking proof that no eloquence, if genuine, is beyond the appreciation of the rudest minds, when on one occasion I having delivered a magnificent quotation in a manner (as I flatter myself) to do full justice to its sonorous flow, and having told them the words were those of the great Burke, they heard his name with startled interest, and were silent for some moments after. However, I now conjecture there might be other reasons for the agitation caused by that glorious name. I had probably drank about two bottles of wine to my own share, Squabby nearly as much, and the abstemious Bill perhaps about a bottle, when I thought I perceived a diminution in the cordiality of this latter entertainer. I am naturally extremely sensitive in such mattersindeed so morbidly alive to the faintest indications of failing hospitality, as sometimes to conceive suspicions regarding the sincerity of my welcome, which I am subsequently satisfied are groundless. However, in the Bill, with the watchful prudence which his countenance betokened, seened perpetually on his guard to prevent the slightest familiarity between her and Squabby. Notwithstanding all his vigilance, I observed, however, that, whenever his attention was dis tracted by the friendly office of filling my glass, or whenever he grew so interested in any of his narratives as to relax his watchfulness for a moment, the woman, stealthily pas ing her hand behind him, clasped that of Squabby extended to meet it. To a philosopher and student of himan nature this slight incident was amply sufficient to reveal a tale of passion-a tale which it saddened me to read. I saw in Long-nosed Bill an instance of the insufficiency of the most astute and powerful intellect to restrain the erratic propensities of the female heart. Here was this great man, who had lavished perchance his whole heart, staked his whole faith, on the woman beside him, while she, like the base Judaan throwing this pearl away richer than all her tribe, bestowed in secret her love upon one conspicuously Bill's inferior in every respect, except that his personal appearance was rather less revolting. Miserable mistake! accursed error ! yet one to which the feminine nature is peculiarly liable. present instance, there could be no doubt that Long-nosed Bill not only ceased to talk himself, but listened to me with manifest impatience, and sometimes exchanged glances with his two companions, while those he cast on me bore rather the character of animosity than cordiality. Under these circumstances I considered it due to myself, as well as to my hosts, to rise and bid them good-night. This sudden move of mine produced an instantaneous change in the manner of Long-nosed Bill, who pressed me to stay with more than his former hospitality, while, at a wink from him, Squabby placed himself between me and the door, and, with boisterous but good-humoured reproaches on my breach of good-fellowship, refused to let me pass. All this, however, would have had small effect in inducing me to remain after the change in Bill's manner towards me; but just then the woman also joined her entreaties to his. In so doing she used a tone and gesture which at once arrested me. They were such as recalled vividly the tone and gesture which a young girl had unconsciously assumed some years before when I was parting from her in anger. Ah, Emily! potent indeed was the charm of thy pleading over my offended and recusant spirit. Hard indeed would it have been to turn from those eyes-to repel that offered embrace. Years had passed, Emily, since I had seen thee many feelings and many memories had crowded in between-but the voice and look of a stranger recalling thine, showed that even the faint and distant echo of thy powerful spell could still enchain me. I need scarcely say I resumed my seat. Long-nosed Bill now became more agreeable and hospitable even than at first, relating passages in his career still more marvellous, and passing the wine with increased rapidity, insisting at each round of the bottle on filling my glass himself, and calling out pleasantly, No heeltaps," before doing so. For a time this amused me; and I was also interested in watching a little by-play carried on by Bill's companions. The woman was no doubt united to him in bonds more or less hallowed, and gave the The remembrance of such an error, of which I was myself the victim, is still as a dagger to my heart. For thee, Augusta! for thee my nights were nights of sleeplessness-my days, days of reverie; to thee I thoughts of my philosophic soul And how didst thou requite me! With undoubting faith and untiring constancy?-No! On the night that ever memorable ball-a ball which still haunts my remembrance as if peopled with spectres and demons-there flitted before thine inconstant eye that gaudy figure rich indeed in scarlet and embroidery and clanking spurs, but poor, beyond all measure of poverty, in that philo sophic refinement which constitutes true wealth. From that moment I was forgotten, and since then a permanent shadow has settled on my soul. This train of thought naturally made me melancholy; and my spirits |