limpid waters, over which the sun was shedding its noonday effulgence, suggested to their minds images of herrings, fat, fresh, or salted, with their accompaniments of cask, nets, and busses; the mountains in their stern glory, with their lights and shadows and lonely recesses, to them showed forth heathburning, sheep-walks, black-faced wedders, and wool." So when these Arcades ambo touch the shore of Inch Orran, they break into no idle raptures about the water-plants, the fern, the wild flowers, the tall foxglove, the grey rocks and bright mossy stones, half hid beneath the broadleafed coltsfoot, that form the rich and variegated foreground; "for they were casting searching looks for 'black tang,' and 'yellow tang,' and 'bell wrack,' and 'jagged wrack,' and such other ingredients as enter into the composition of that valuable commodity called kelp.” Probably neither of that dual number would greatly have objected to join in the candid confession ascribed by Mrs. Southey to One who says plainly-"I confess to me Your model Manchester man, as depicted by that clerical essayist on Fraser's staff who styles himself “A Manchester Man," is one who, "like Peter Bell, sees things as they are." If he examined the coat in which Nelson died at Trafalgar, he would wonder (Mr. Lamb goes on to say) whether it were of West of England or Bradford manufacture. Of the Duke's despatch-box he would say, that it was worth so much as "old materials." If told of the marvels of Aladdin's lamp, he would inquire whether it were gilt or bronzed. “If he saw the mummy of Potiphar's wife, he would pronounce oracularly that the wrapper was flax, not cotton." Of Goethe at Strasburg, in 1770, his biographer well says that to him pictures meant something; they were realities to him, because he had the true artistic nature; whereas "to the French architects, as to the Strasburg officials, pictures were pictures-ornaments betokening more or less luxury and taste, flattering the eye, but never touching the soul." In another place, Goethe's biographer, incidentally criticising Lessing and his tendency to realism, observes that the author of the "Laokoon" loved a beautiful landscape, but, German though he was, never felt any of the soft sadness and mystic witchery felt by moderns; that he looked on Nature as a Greek looked on her, seeing nothing behind the panorama. Referring later again to Goethe's study of anatomy, and the delight with which he declared how legible the book of Nature was becoming to him, Mr. Lewes remarks by the way, "But there are minds, and these form the majority, to whom dry bones are dry bones, and nothing more." His own genial researches in science have been of a kind to acquit him of the charge, or rather to secure him against its ever being made. XVIII. About Ejurria and Gombroon: GLIMPSES OF DAY-DREAMLAND. A Ta very early period of the childhood of Hartley Coleridge, he imagined himself to foresee a time when, as his brother tells us, a small cataract would burst forth in the field next his-or rather his uncle Southey's-house; the stream thus created would soon have its banks thickly peopled; a region, a realm would arise; and the result would be an island-continent, to be called Ejuxria, with its own attendant isles—a new Australia, the history and geography of which were at one time as familiar, to say the least, to Hartley's younger brother and affectionate biographer, Mr. Derwent Coleridge, as any portion (he had almost, in his faith in Ejuxria, written it "any other portion ") of the habitable globe. The details have gradually faded from the survivor's memory, and fitly enough, as he says, no written record remains (though an elaborate map of the country was once in existence), from which they can be recovered. The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath, And these are of them. Whither have they vanished?— As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd! Taken as whole, the Ejuxrian world-this is Mr. Derwent Coleridge's account of it-presented a complete analogon to the world of fact, so far as it was known to Hartley, complete in all its parts; furnishing a theatre and scene of action, with dramatis personæ, and suitable machinery, in which, day after day, for the space of long years, he went on evolving the complicated drama of existence. "There were many nations, continental and insular, each with its separate history. civil, ecclesiastical, and literary, its forms of religion and government, and specific national character." The names of Ejuxrian generals and statesmen were familiar in the biographer's ear as household words. He witnessed the jar of faction in his brother's realm, and had to trace the course of sedition. He lived to see changes of government, a great progress of public opinion, and a new order of things. For Ejuxria, though a cloudland, was not merely a land of passing clouds; though a dreamland, it was not compact of dreams that are gone in a night. To the brothers, one of whom had created, and both of whom believed in it, it was for a large space of their childhood a continuing city. When at length, however, a sense of unreality was forced upon Hartley, and he "felt himself obliged to account for his knowledge of, and connection with, this distant land," like Mahomet and other self-asserting seers, he resorted to a preternatural medium, or consecrated agency, and got up a story, "borrowed from the Arabian Nights," of a great bird, by which he was transported to and fro. "But he recurred to the explanations with great reluctance, and got rid of them as quickly as possible." His brother once asked him how it was that his absence on these occasions was not observed; but Hartley was angry and mortified, and the sceptic never repeated the experiment. Hardly a sceptic, either; for by his own report the questioner was willingly beguiled. Hartley's usual mode of introducing the subject was—“Derwent, I have had letters and papers from Ejuxria." Then would come his budget of news, "with appropriate reflections, his words flowing on in an exhaustless stream, and his countenance bearing witness to the inspiration," so Mr. Derwent Coleridge inclines to call it, by which he was agitated. That he was utterly unconscious of invention, his brother is persuaded; and the latter believes that Hartley continued the habit mentally, from time to time, after he left school, and of course had no longer a confidant; "in this as in many other ways continuing a child;" Nature preserving for him, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. De Quincey too, in early childhood, had an Ejuxria, or imaginary kingdom of his own, to govern, the name he gave to which was Gombroon. And soon he found how uneasy lies the head that wears a crown; for his elder brother, not content with tyrannising over the counterpart dreamland himself had created, insisted on interfering with the internal economy of the realm aforesaid, so that at every step Thomas had to contend for the honour and independence of his islanders. What though the world in question was purely aërial, were all the sufferings and the combats absolutely moonshine?-to the child-creator of Gombroon that dream-kingdom, which had risen like a vapour from his own brain, was distressingly real, when thus the liberties of its denizens were imperilled. Hear him retrace his emotions at this juncture,-after mooting the suggestion that as the realm was purely the efflux of his fancy, surely by the simple fiat of his will it might be for ever dissolved, and his dis |