ise to light in his young forerunner, which now perhaps he does not
share; he looks indulgently upon errors of the understanding, or
limitations of view which now he has long survived; and sometimes, also,
he honours in the infant that rectitude of will which, under _some_
temptations, he may since have felt it so difficult to maintain.

The particular case to which I refer in my own childhood, was one of
intolerable grief; a trial, in fact, more severe than many people at _any_
age are called upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands to my
latter opium experiences, is this:--Those vast clouds of gloomy grandeur
which overhung my dreams at all stages of opium, but which grew into the
darkest of miseries in the last, and that haunting of the human face,
which latterly towered into a curse--were they not partly derived from
this childish experience? It is certain that, from the essential solitude
in which my childhood was passed; from the depth of my sensibility; from
the exaltation of this by the resistance of an intellect too prematurely
developed, it resulted that the terrific grief which I passed through,
drove a shaft for me into the worlds of death and darkness which never
again closed, and through which it might be said that I ascended and
descended at will, according to the temper of my spirits. Some of the
phenomena developed in my dream-scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeat the
experiences of childhood; and others seem likely to have been growths and
fructifications from seeds at that time sown.

The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account of a "passage" in
childhood, to this record of a dreadful visitation from opium excess,
are--1st, That, in colouring, it harmonizes with that record, and,
therefore, is related to it at least in point of feeling; 2dly, That
possibly it was in part the origin of some features in that record, and so
far is related to it in logic; 3dly, That, the final assault of opium
being of a nature to challenge the attention of medical men, it is
important to clear away all doubts and scruples which can gather about the
roots of such a malady. Was it opium, or was it opium in combination with
something else, that raised these storms?

Some cynical reader will object--that for this last purpose it would have
been sufficient to state the fact, without rehearsing _in extenso_ the
particulars of that case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness
(for a surly reader is alway