s of privations too sordid, nor tempted into restlessness by
privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for
pride. Grateful, also, to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all
things else, we were trained to a Spartan, simplicity of diet,--that we
fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if
(after the manner of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks
to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation,
these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration: that I
lived in a rural solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my
infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by
horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and
loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church."

Let the reader suppose a different case from that here presented. Let
him suppose, for instance, that De Quincey, now arrived at the age of
seven, and having now at least one "pugilistic brother" to torment his
peace, could annul his own infancy, and in its place substitute that of
one of the factory-boys of Manchester, of the same age, (and many such
could be found,) among those with whom daily the military
predispositions of this brother brought him into a disagreeable
conflict. Instead of the pure air of outside Lancashire, let there be
substituted the cotton-dust of the Lancashire mills. The contrast, even
in thought, is painful. It is true that thus the irrepressible fires of
human genius could not be quenched. Nay, through just these
instrumentalities, oftentimes, is genius fostered. We need not the
instance of Romulus and Remus, or of the Persian Cyrus, to prove that
men have sometimes been nourished by bears or by she-wolves.
Nevertheless, this is essentially a Roman nurture. The Greeks, on the
contrary, laid their infant heroes on beds of violets,--if we may
believe the Pindaric odes,--set over them a divine watch, and fed them
with angels' food. And this Grecian nurture De Quincey had.

And not the least important element of this nurture is that of perfect
_leisure_. Through this it is that we pass from the outward to the
subjective relations of De Quincey's childhood; for only in connection
with these has the element just introduced any value, since leisure,
which is the atmosphere, the breathing-place of genius, is also cap and
bells for the fool. In relation to power, it is, like solitude, the open