e day succeeding to that on
which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good
spirits.

With respect to the torpor supposed to accompany the practice of
opium-eating, I deny that also. The primary effects of opium are always,
and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. But, that
the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy
the faculties of an Englishman, I shall mention the way in which I
myself often passed an opium evening in London during the period between
1804 and 1812. I used to fix beforehand how often within a given time,
and when, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than
once in three weeks, and it was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday
night; my reason for which was this: in those days Grassini sang at the
opera, and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever
heard. The choruses were divine to hear, and when Grassini appeared in
some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul
as Andromache at the tomb of Hector, etc., I question whether any Turk,
of all that ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half
the pleasure I had.

Another pleasure I had which, as it could be had only on a Saturday
night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera. The pains of
poverty I had lately seen too much of; but the pleasures of the poor,
their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can
never become oppressive to contemplate. Now, Saturday night is the
season for the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest for the poor.
For the sake, therefore, of witnessing a spectacle with which my
sympathy was so entire, I used often on Saturday nights, after I had
taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or
the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of London to which the
poor resort of a Saturday night for laying out their wages.

Sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards by fixing my eye on the Pole
star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of
circumnavigating all the capes and headlands I had doubled in my outward
voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such
enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's riddles of streets without
thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and
confound the intellects of hackney coachmen. For all this I paid a heavy
price in distant years, wh