between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our
fancied retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its
accumulated violence,--as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence
with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human
affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming
by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her
direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread
alternative,--it is interesting to note how this same family, separated
by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous
crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an
interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise
reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for
refuge,--a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and
under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two
antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in
battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that
could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.

But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their
prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came
suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty
traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved
in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his
successors. The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however,
remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey
tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last
vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together
with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings. But above
the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate
far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of
promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster. For just
here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family
freshly grounded upon a second heritage,--one sublime in its order above
that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever
imperishable,--namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of
Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought
under distinct illumination for all time