earth that should tell mightily
on the nerves of this umbratilous tiger in the heavens. But since we are
neither Hindoos nor Egyptians, nor skittish heathen of any sort, we take
defiant attitudes and look through smoked glasses. At any rate, it is
only at such times that we pay particular attentions, by way of
courtesy, to foreign worlds. And of all the creatures of God which come
within the circle of human knowledge or notice, which is it that may be
said to enjoy the most continuous round of attentions, and to live in
excitement the most nearly approaching to perpetual? It is the comet,
which no sooner gets out of reach of _our_ flying compliments than she
becomes the pet of Jupiter's magnificent citizens, or calls forth
deprecating murmurs from our shy sister Venus, and Mercury, our milder
brother, who, from all such mischiefs, creeps as nearly as possible
under the paternal wings of the Sun. No one of these erratic visitors
can remember the time when she was not making a stir somewhere in the
universe, or when a cloudy night, intercepting her from vision, would
not have been as surely execrated as are the colds which afflict _prima
donnas_.

Strikingly similar to our interest in these heavenly bodies is that
which we manifest in mortal men. Here, too, it is the darkened orb or
the eccentric comet that bespeaks especial notice. Judged by this
interest, considered in its vulgar aspects, De Quincey would suffer
gross injustice. Externally, and at one period of his life, I am certain
that he had all the requisite qualifications for collecting a mob about
him, and that, had he appeared in the streets of London after one of his
long sojourns amongst the mountains, no unearthly wight of whatever
description, no tattered lunatic or Botany-Bay convict, would have been
able to vie with him in the picturesque _deshabille_ of the whole
"turnout." Picture to yourself the scene. This "king of shreds and
patches"--for, to the outward sense, he seems that now--has been "at
large" for days, perhaps for two or three weeks; he has been
unkennelled, and, among the lawless mountains, has felt no restraint
upon his own lawlessness, however Cyclopean. Doubtless he has met with
panthers and wolves, each one of whom will to its dying day retain
impressive recollections of the wee monster, from which they fled as a
trifle too uncanny even for them. As to his subsistence during these
rambles, it would be very difficult to say how he managed