could have found no deeper place in our hearts. We look
at the hatless sleeper among the mountains: his face seems utterly blank
and meaningless, and to all intents and purposes he seems as good as
dead; but let us ascend with him in his dreams, and we shall soon forget
that under God's heavens there exists mortality or the commonplace uses
of mortality.

As we ascend from grotesque features to such as are more intellectual,
that peculiarity of his character which most strikes us is his
inimitable courtesy. Mr. F.,--to whom I am indebted for the most novel
and interesting portions of this memorial,--from his own personal
interviews with the man, among many other things, retains this chiefly
in remembrance,--that De Quincey was the perfectest gentleman he had
ever seen.

I take the liberty here of particularizing somewhat in regard to one
visit which this friend of De Quincey's paid him, particularly as it
introduces us to the man towards the last of his life (1851). Mr. F.,
curious as it may seem, found but one person in Edinburgh who could
inform him definitely as to De Quincey's whereabouts. In return to a
note, giving De Quincey information of his arrival, etc., the latter
replies in a letter which is very characteristic, and which may well be
highly prized, so rarely was it that any friend was able to obtain from
him such a memento. The style, perhaps, is as familiar as it was ever
his habit to indulge in; and it shows how impossible it was for him,
even on the most temporary summons, to dispense with his usual
regularity of expression or with any logical nicety of method. The
letter runs thus:--

_Thursday evening, August 26, 1851_.

"My dear Sir,--The acccompanying billet from my daughter, short at
any rate under the pressure of instant engagements, has been cut
shorter by a sudden and very distressing headache; I, therefore,
who (from a peculiar nervousness connected with the act of writing)
so rarely attempt to discharge my own debts in the letter-writing
department of life, find myself unaccountably, I might say
mysteriously, engaged in the knight-errantry of undertaking for
other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute
refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate
of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded,
I am affecting the large bounties of supererogation. I appear to be
vapori