distinctly conscious of having written a previous one. It was no
uncommon thing for him to forget his own writings. In one case it is
known that for a long time he persisted in disowning his production. His
American editor--a fact which is little known--selected, from among the
mass of periodical writings in the various magazines for which De
Quincey wrote, those which, having no other clue to guide him than,
their peculiar style, he judged to have proceeded from De Quincey's pen.
In one instance,--as to the "Traditions of the Rabbins,"--after
considerable examination, he still hesitated, and finally wrote to De
Quincey, to set himself right. The latter disowned the essay: he had
forgotten it. Mr. F., however, after another examination, concluded,
that, notwithstanding De Quincey's denial of the fact, he _must_ have
written it; accordingly, at his own risk, he published it. Afterwards De
Quincey owned up, and ever after that referred all disputed cases of
this nature to his Boston publishers.]

"Klosterheim" is from beginning to end only the development, through
regular stages, of an intricately involved mystery of this subtile
nature. Oftentimes De Quincey deals with the horrid tragedy of murder;
but the mere fact of a murder, however shocking, was not sufficient to
arrest him. With the celebrated Williams murders, on the contrary, he
was entirely taken up, since these proceeded in accordance with designs
not traceable to the cursory glance, but which tasked the skill of a
decipherer to interpret and reduce to harmony. Here were murders that
revolved musically, that modulated themselves to master-principles, and
that at every stage of progress sought alliance with the hidden
mysteries of universal human nature. I know of no writer but De Quincey
who invests mysteries of this tragic order with their appropriate
drapery, so that they shall, to our imaginations, unfold the full
measure of their capacities for striking awe into our hearts.

This sort of mystery is always connected with dreams. They owe their
very existence to darkness, which withdraws them from the material
limitations of every-day life; they are shifted to an ideal
_proscenium_; their _dramatis personae_, however familiar nominally, and
however much derived from material suggestions, are yet in all their
motions obedient to an alien centre as opposite as is possible to the
ordinary centre about which the mere mechanism of life revolves. We
should therefo