De Quincey's works, Volume 4

Front Cover
J. Hogg, 1854

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Page 325 - From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine ; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.
Page 317 - ... lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off; which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. Horses ! can these be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? What stir! — what sea-like ferment! — what a thundering of wheels ! — what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of trumpets! — what farewell cheers — what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting...
Page 350 - Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the...
Page 15 - In these assassinations of princes and statesmen, there is nothing to excite our wonder ; important changes often depend on their deaths ; and, from the eminence on which they stand, they are peculiarly exposed to the aim of every artist who happens to be possessed by the craving for scenical effect. But there is another class of assassinations, which has prevailed from an early period of the seventeenth century, that really does surprise me ; I mean the assassination of philosophers. For, gentlemen,...
Page 5 - Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle (as it generally is in the pulpit and at the Old Bailey), and that, I confess, is its weak side ; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it — that is, in relation to good taste.
Page 330 - Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her works," again " gives signs of woe that all is lost; " and again the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is not without probability that in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original transgression. In dreams, perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished, each...
Page 47 - Very soon, sir,' he used to say, 'men will have lost the art of killing poultry: the very rudiments of the art will have perished!' In the year 1811 he retired from general society. Toad-in-the-hole was no more seen in any public resort. We missed him from his wonted haunts — nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
Page 337 - ... which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight, and the first timid tremblings of the dawn, were by this time blending; and the...
Page 8 - ... moral purposes, let us treat it aesthetically, and see if it will turn to account in that way. Such is the logic of a sensible man, and what follows? We dry up our tears, and have the satisfaction, perhaps, to discover that a transaction, which, morally considered, was shocking, and without a leg to stand upon, when tried by principles of Taste, turns out to be a very meritorious performance.
Page 347 - Their stops and chords was seen ; his volant touch, Instinct through all proportions low and high, Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.

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