see slumber at her post, but let her be prepared to march, if possible, proudly in the van. Will she do it? head of the Republic managed these things, it may cause some to .reflect upon the vast difference existing between the noble legacy left us by our fathers, so simple in form, yet so grand and effective in its results, compared with the majestic farce in France, which has, for the past few years excited the contempt and ridicule of all true republicans throughout the civil THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. The French Republic-as it has been termed, since the advent of Louis Napoleon and the flight of Louis Philippe; has finally come to its legitimate ter-ized world. minus for the present, in the establish- One of the reviews, in question, ment, officially, of a military despo- took place in the Champ de Mars; tism. And to those who have viewed and the different regiments, quartered with any attention the condition of throughout Paris began to debouch inthings in that country for the past year, to the immense field, about noon. It the result is not such as ought to excite was a magnificent scene. Squadron any surprise! Nothing has been more after squadron of cavalry, battalions apparent, even to the casual observer of infantry, artillery, &c., &c., the there, than the necessity existing for bands of each body playing merrily, some stringent rule, some power strong were constantly making their appearenough to overawe faction, and pre- ance, some by the quays on the South vent those terrible excesses which have side of the Seine, others by the bridges so often deluged France in blood. leading from the Champs Elysees, and And whether that power makes itself the Place de la Concorde,-until the apparent-felt, under one name or an immense space was spangled with the other, seems pretty much immaterial; different bodies of troops, the multisince of true, rational, practical re- tudes forming the population of Paris, publicanism, there seems, alas, little meanwhile thronging every avenue to or none, The government has been get a good view of the vast pageant. called a "Republic," and this, whilst On every side of the field, they hoverthe press, an instrument to be dreaded only by tyrants, has been effectually shackled, and every thing almost that savors of freedom, scouted in practice. ed in clouds; the workman in his blue blouze, old soldiers, the inmates of the Hospital des Invalides in their long blue coats and cocked hats, whilst the dandy of the Boulevards, or the English cockney, in Paris for the first time, elevated their eye-glasses and uttered exclamations of impatience, or admiration, as they were jostled to and fro, or some novel manœuvre excited their attention. To the looker on in Paris, from this side of the Atlantic, it has appeared a singular condition of things, that a free government-a government as suming to be created by, and dependent upon the will of the people, should require an hundred thousand soldiers Meanwhile, from the bridge leading at its back, on the alert all the time from the direction of the Presidential to keep it in existence; the pomp and palace, a troop of dragoons were on pageantry of military reviews, of lev-duty, keeping open the way for the adees, and the other appliances of king ly governments being in active operation all the time, to dazzle or overawe the masses, the more easily to keep them in subjection. Suppose we turn back a leaf, to the Paris of last summer, whilst Louis Napoleon was reviewing the troops quartered there, as it may interest our readers to learn the way in which the 1 vance of Louis Napoleon; and finally, a heaving forward of the multitude indicated his approach. Onward he came, mounted on a superb charger, and clad in the splendid uniform of a field marshal; he who had never fought a battle, riding at the head of grim old soldiers, nearly the whole of whose existence had been passed amidst the din and carnage of the tented field. A brilliant cortege was that Presi- flect upon late events, the farce of dential staff, in truth; but mark one the republic has been well played out; feature in the pageant! About the a little sooner, to be sure, than was length of their horses, in advance of probably at first intended, and we hear the President, rode two stalwart dra- the final act termed a Coup d'état! goons, in brass helmets and cuirasses; Rather, it has been the veriest trick of each holding up in his right hand a State! the single marvel, being, that it cocked pistol!-What a sight for a Re- was so well concealed. The condipublic-what a comment upon the po- tion in which France has been left by sition of the President, upon the loy- it may last sometime, too; at least, alty of the people! And yet, behind as long as the army can be tied to Louis these, the little man trotted along, ap. Napoleon by favors always at his comparently unconcernedly, whilst the mand, or the gulled millions be made blue blouzes ran alongside, answering to remember that he is the shadow of a the faint shout from the brilliant array, great name. At any rate, looking to of "Vive Napoleon," with the fierce the changes-the ridiculous changes in cry- Vive Liberté!" We looked in the political atmosphere of France the face of this man, so favored of for during even the last twenty years, all tune, to discover there if possible some thinking minds must come to the conindication of alliance by intellect or clusion; that where a people know so litby blood, to the wonderful demolisher tle in practice of what constitutes ra of thrones, and setter up of kings, tional liberty, one government so far with whose mere name he was sustain- as the name is concerned, is about as ing himself upon the lofty pinnacle of good for them as another. They call power where he had chanced to alight; it a Republic, and crush with iron heel but could see nothing in his counten- the power of the press-they call that ance remarkable, either for valor, or freedom, which is upheld by, and demind, or great deeds; and then we won-pendent upon the surveillance of a mil dered at those freaks of fortune, or de- itary police! The true the avowed crees of Providence, which had elevated so very a puppet to control for the time the destines of one of the greatest nations of the old world. The review progressed, the President and his train stirring up the usual quantity of dust, as they rode hither and thither; until the show being finally ended, back he came once more, the scene reacted on the bridge, the cries the same, as with his guards he wended his way to the palace. Reviewing, the "review," what can be expected of a people who in the outset, are contented with the forma tion of such a government-with king ly power in effect, under the name of a Republic? despots of Europe, do no more than this; and France, a Republic only in name, thus injures the cause of free progress more by her example—a thou sand fold more than if the kingly cha racter of that despotism she really practices, was put to the credit of another form of government. In the meantime, the world will be astonished but little, at any thing she may chance to do. The instrument of more subtle minds than his own, Louis Napoleon may float upon the surface for a long time to come. By the very nature of things, too, as an alternative to anarchy and bloodshed, he is view ed by many clever and patriotic men there, as a sort of political necessity, With the army bound to him by hon- at the present time; and thus he forces ors, so considered--and favors dis- a reluctant support from those, who untributed by his own hands, the military der other circumstances, would move to overawe the Capital as well as all every thing to hurl him from power. disaffected points in France, he holds At all events, the people of other coun on to his position, a despot as contemp-tries, more favored, may well come to tible perhaps in character, as ever sat the conclusion in view of what has reupon the shoulders of any people cently taken place, that so long as the known to history. And when we re- French "Republic" will practice its gymnastics with so little damage to the ved, might, by possibility, appear to a necks and limbs of the French people, common mind, under the circumstances; the whole thing will only be looked up- yet the power be wanting to present on as a pretty good play, quite as amus- them to others. But here, nothing, aping, as otherwise. For the sake of free parently, is lacking. As if grasping principles, however, the word "Repub- with his hands, lightnings, and sunlic" should not be so abused by them; beams, and shadows, as if he had seizand dropping that, no one will much ed and retained the fearful spectres object to any extra's they may feel in conjured up by the terrible agent he clined to practice in the way of setting had called into exercise, he has given up or pulling down their rulers,-in us the beings of the mind," as if they sustaining such as chance has given were active and powerful realities; he them, or doing their best to get rid of has set up his wondrous productions, these for others, who, they may fancy, as if they were sculptured in marble or will answer their purposes better in in gold; until we feel that it was not maintaining the "glory" of France! more remarkable to create them-to dream such dreams-than it was to give them to us afterwards in an enduring form. DE QUINCY'S CONFESSIONS. And it is not merely as a matter of One of the most remarkable produc- speculative delight, that we would call tions as we consider it-ever given attention to the writings in question. to the learned world, is the volume of But, inasmuch as the mind and its marDe Quincy, containing the "Confes- vellous attributes, are the noblest study sions of an English Opium Eater," and of all rational beings-inasmuch as he their sequel, the "Suspiria de Profun- who knows most of the subtler essence dis." And although it has been long which approximates Divinity, surpassbefore the public-the first part since es his kind, so is it essential to our 1821, the last since 1845, we cannot improvement that we contemplate the resist the temptation, with our first light thrown upon its workings from any number, to cull for our readers some of and every quarter, if we would turn life the passages which will never cease to to its true uses, if we would be what the astonish and delight all who feel any Creator intended us to be, when he said interest in the workings of the human "Let us make man in our image, afmind. As a wonderful analysis of its ter our likeness." powers, as well under excitement as under depression, as a subtle description of its hidden mysteries-hidden until some weird fire illumes its "chambers of imagery," the writings in question appear to us never to have been surpassed. For ourselves, we feel profoundly grateful to De Quincy for these beauti ful, although terrible revelations; we regard him as having borne a torch before us, to bring out of darkness the thousand mysteries of our being, which else would never have seen the light; and although to him, fraught with sorrow, and woe unspeakable, yet the recesses so lighted up in the heart of man, will remain for the student of his kind, shrines of wonder, and of beauty, forever. Fancy a mind of the highest order of cultivation, and naturally acute an imagination, resplendant, even in its quiet moments, with all that can vivify and make beautiful whatever it may dwell upon, suppose a felicity of expression a power of delineation, In tampering with opium, or similar that can graduate every tint in the pic- agents affording the means of excite tures presented, until the beholder sees ment, it may safely be considered, as a as it were with the rapt vision of the general rule, that the depression followpainter, and then suppose such a mind, ing any excess, is in about the same such an imagination, wrought up al- ratio as that of the exciting cause; and most to madness, by the workings of if the gifted martyr in this instance had opium. The tremendous images evol- bequeathed nothing but this single leg acy to his generation and race, his gift wished to keep him at school when he would have been priceless, as a warn- desired to enter college, he ran away; ing to beware of the perils and sufferings and for a long period, wandered about, born of such experience. In the pre- half starved, in various parts of Engsent day, fortunately, and in a Chris- land and Wales, until from excessive tian community, the habit of opium hunger he contracted the infirmity, or eating to excess is considered a sin, to disease, which finally drove him to the be classed with intoxication from spir use of opium as a palliative. We its, gluttony, or any other similar abuse need not follow him through this part of the system; and in escaping from the of the narration; but he tells us that terrible spell which had been thrown "it was not for the purpose of creating around him; in rending the strong mesh pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the es that had been woven by indulgence, severest degree, that he first began to the wonder is that the frail tenement use opium as an article of daily diet.” did not yield to the fearful struggle He was then in the "twenty-eighth did not perish in the fierce encounter. year of his age," and living in LonThere is something singularly touch- don. He first gives us an essay upon ing in the Preface to his "Confessions," the "Pleasures of Opium;" devoting a where he alludes to the motives which subsequent one to the "Pains of Opi induced him to publish them. He says; um. Attacked with excruciating rheu "Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from matic pains of the head and face which public notice: they court privacy and solitude; and, even in hardly gave him any respite for about from the general population of the church-yard, as if de- twenty days, some friend recommended clining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, to him the use of opium! wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth) the choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves Humbly to express A penitential loneliness. But on It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all that it should be so; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings: nor in act or word do any thing to weaken them. the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible that if it did, the benefit resulting to others, from the record of an experiance purchased at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not. by necessity, imply guilt. They approach or recede from, the shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it in act or in effort was earnest to the last. ******** If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded of any other man, it is no less true, that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man-have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Not to insist, that, in my case, the self conquest was unquestiona ble, the self indulgence open to the doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure. Guilt, there fore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in consideration of the service which I may truly render to the whole class of opium-eaters." "Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! 1 had heard of it as I had heard of manna or ambrosia, but no further; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time! what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart quaking vibrations of sad and hap Py remembrances! * "Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole ert and mystery of opi um-taking and what I took, I took under every disad vantage. But I took it; and in an hour,-0 Heavens what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects, which had opened before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. * *The pleasure given by wine is always mounting, and tending to a crisis, af ter which it declines; that from opium when once gener ated, is stationary for eight or ten hours; the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a ease cỈ scute, the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a tame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main dis tinction lies in this; that whereas, wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary, (if taken in a proper manner,) introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation and harmony. Wine robs a nan of his self-possession; opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation to the con tempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds, of the drinker, opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active and pas give; and with respect to the temper and moral feck ings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of antedeluvian health.” We extract the above passage, in the outset, to show those of our readers who These are nice distinctions in speak. have never read the "Confessions," ing of the use of these two tremendous the views of the author in submitting agents; and the reader must remember them to the world. Of an eccentric that the author of the "Confessions" turn, from childhood, and early distin- is thus dwelling upon the "pleas guished for his fine scholarship, upon ures" of opium eating, not upon a disagreement with his guardians who "pains;" and perhaps there is not upon its "Now, then, I was again happy; I took only one thousand drops of laudanum per day, and what was that? A fore." * "I will here lay down an analysis of happiness; and as the most interesting mode of communicating it, I will record in the language, a more sparkling tribute to any thing than the follow-latter spring had come to close up the season of youth; ing gem, in its way. Wonderful in my brain performed its functions as healthily as ever be deed is it, as an evidence of the overwhelming beauty of expression of which De Quincy is capable, and of which many other specimens occur in his writings: "O just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for the "the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balin;-eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, and, to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood, and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged; that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the umphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteousjudges-thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, beyond the splendor of Babylon and Hekatompylos; and "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep" callest into sunny light the faces of long buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the "dishonors of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!” give it, not didacticly, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening, during, the intercalary year, when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixer of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness, altogether, and pass to a very different one,-THE PAINS OF OPIUM." The Paradise of a scholar is so beautifully pictured in what follows, that we cannot avoid giving it nearly at length. He continues. "Let there be a cottage standing in a valley eighteen miles from any town; no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three quarters of a mile in average width, tri--the benefit of which provision is, that all the families resident within its circuit, will compose, as it were, one larger household personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let the moun tains be real mountains, between three and four thou sand feet high, and the cottage, a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it.) "a cottage with a double coach house;" let it be, in fact, (for I must abide by the actual scene,) a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around the windows through all the months of spring, summer, aud autumn; beginning, in fact with May roses, and ending with jessamine. Let it, however, NOT be spring, nor summer, nor autumn; but point in the science of happiness. And I am surprised to tion that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I put up a petition annually, for as much snow, hail, frost, or storms of one kind every body is aware of the divine pleasures which attend rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind What a thrilling apostrophe to the better qualities of his fierce tormentor -how around the loathsome features of the foul and persecuting fiend a halo of beauty kindled by the hand of genius is made to beam, as rays of light might sparkle from jewels placed upon the brow of disease and death. Seeing in it only evil, habitually used, recurring to the tyranny it swayed for long years. over the gifted author, we "confess" we can scarcely tolerate the slightest tribute paid to the subtle foe, we would wage unrelenting war upon it as upon one of the most insidious and terrible enemies of the man of genius. winter in its sternest shape. This is a most important see people overlock it, and think it matter of congratula or another, as the skies can possibly afford us. Surely a winter fireside, candles at four o'clock, warm hearth and rain are raging audibly without, And at the doors and windows seem to call * But here to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description. I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Paint me then a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader. is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the drawing room; but being contrived "a double debt to pay," it is also and more justly, Eight years passed by, and our au- termed the library: for it happens that books are the onthor had become a confirmed opium there I have about five thousand, collected gradually ly property in which I am richer than my neighbors. eater, he had arrived, too, at a fearful since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as crisis in his career; his usual allowance with books; and furthermore, paint me a good fire; and many as you can into this room. Make it populous per day, being three hundred and twen-furniture, plain and modest, befitting the unpretending ty grains of opium, or eight thousand drops of laudanum! Suddenly he reduced it to forty grains, or one eighth part. Let him; however, tell the story, as he almost always does, eloquently: cottage of a scholar. * * * * * The next article brought forward should naturally be golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" lying beside him * myself a picture of the opium-eater, with his "little |