pened to be the strongest argument that ever picked a
Bramah-lock against the unknown writer of 'Junius'; apply this, and if
it fits the wards, oh, Gemini! my dear friend, but you are
right--righter--rightest; you have caught 'Junius' in a rabbit-snare.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] 'Six thousand per annum,' viz., on the authority of his own
confession to Pinkerton.

EDITOR'S NOTE.--De Quincey is guilty of a slight lapse of memory in
reference to 'The Castle of Otranto' and Onuphrio Muralto. It was
not in the first sentence of the preface, but on the title-page,
that Walpole so plainly attributed the work to another. The
_original_ title-page, which, of course, was dropped out when it
became known to all the world that Walpole was the author, read
thus: 'The Castle of Otranto: a Story. Translated by William
Marshall, Gent. From the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto,
Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto. London: printed
for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet Street. 1765.'

_XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL._

With a single view to the _intellectual_ pretensions of Mr. O'Connell,
let us turn to his latest General Epistle, dated from 'Conciliation
Hall,' on the last day of October. This is no random, or (to use a
pedantic term) _perfunctory_ document; not a document is this to which
indulgence is due. By its subject, not less than by its address, it
stands forth audaciously as a deliberate, as a solemn, as a national
state paper; for its subject is the future political condition of
Ireland under the assumption of Repeal; for its address is, 'To the
People of Ireland.' So placing himself, a writer has it not within his
choice to play the fool; it is not within his competence to tumble or
'come aloft' or play antics as a mountebank; his theme binds him to
decency, his audience to gravity. Speaking, though it be but by the
windiest of fictions, to a nation, is not a man pledged to respectful
language? speaking, though it is but by a chimera as wild as Repeal to a
question of national welfare, a man is pledged to sincerity. Had he
seven devils of mockery and banter within him, for that hour he must
silence them all. The foul fiend must be rebuked, though it were Mahu
and Bohu who should prompt him to buffoonery, when standing at the bar
of nations.

This is the law, this the condition, under which Mr. O'Connell was
speaking when he issued that recent address. Given such a case,