NOTES
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH
"In October 1849 there appeared in Blackwood's Magazine an article entitled The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion. There was no intimation that it was to be continued; but in December 1849 there followed in the same magazine an article in two sections, headed by a paragraph explaining that it was by the author of the previous article in the October number, and was to be taken in connexion with that article. One of the sections of this second article was entitled The Vision of Sudden Death, and the other Dream-Fugue on the above theme of Sudden Death. When De Quincey revised the papers in 1854 for republication in volume iv of the Collective Edition of his writings, he brought the whole under the one general title of The English Mail-Coach, dividing the text, as at present, into three sections or chapters, the first with the sub-title The Glory of Motion, the second with the sub-title The Vision of Sudden Death, and the third with the sub-title Dream-Fugue, founded on the preceding theme of Sudden Death. Great care was bestowed on the revision. Passages that had appeared in the magazine articles were omitted; new sentences were inserted; and the language was retouched throughout."—MASSON. Cf. as to the revision, Professor Dowden's article, "How De Quincey worked," Saturday Review, Feb. 23, 1895. This selection is found in Works, Masson's ed., Vol. XIII, pp. 270-327; Riverside ed., Vol. I, pp. 517-582.
1 6 HE HAD MARRIED THE DAUGHTER OF A DUKE: "Mr. John Palmer, a native of Bath, and from about 1768 the energetic proprietor of the Theatre Royal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those days of the means of intercommunication between Bath and London, wand his own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succession of good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improvement of the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of locomotive machinery generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the property of private persons and companies, by a new system of government coaches, in connexion with the Post-Office, carrying the mails and also a regulated number of passengers, with clockwork precision, at a rate of comparative speed, which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour. The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous; coach proprietors, innkeepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all against Mr. Palmer; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore. Pitt, however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its feasibility; on the 8th of August 1784 the first mail-coach on Mr. Palmer's plan started from London at 8 o'clock in the morning and reached Bristol at 11 o'clock at night; and from that day the success of the new system was assured.—Mr. Palmer himself, having been appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, took rank as an eminent and wealthy public man, M. P. for Bath and what not, and lived till 1818. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that he "had married the daughter of a duke," and in a footnote to that paragraph he gives the lady's name as "Lady Madeline Gordon." From an old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was first married, on the 3d of April 1789, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the 25th of November 1805, to Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, Esq. If Debrett is right, her second husband was not John Palmer of Mail-Coach celebrity, and De Quincey is wrong."—MASSON.
1 (footnote) INVENTION OF THE CROSS: Concerning the Inventio sanctae crucis, see Smith, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. I, p. 503.
2 4 NATIONAL RESULT: Cf. De Quincey's paper on Travelling, Works, Riverside ed., Vol. II, especially pp. 313-314; Masson's ed., Vol. I, especially pp. 270-271.
3 13 THE FOUR TERMS OF MICHAELMAS, LENT, EASTER, AND ACT: These might be called respectively the autumn, winter, spring, and summer terms. Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, is on September 29. Hilary and Trinity are other names for Lent term and Act term respectively. Act term is the last term of the academic year; its name is that originally given to a disputation for a Master's degree; such disputations took place at the end of the year generally, and hence gave a name to the summer term. Although the rules concerning residence at Oxford are more stringent than in De Quincey's time, only eighteen weeks' residence is required during the year, six in Michaelmas, six in Lent, and six in Easter and Act.
3 17 GOING DOWN: Cf. "Going down with victory," i.e. from London into the country.
3 30 POSTING-HOUSES: inns where relays of horses were furnished for coaches and carriages. Cf. De Quincey on Travelling, loc. cit.
4 3 AN OLD TRADITION… from the reign of Charles II: Then no one sat outside; later, outside places were taken by servants, and were quite cheap.
4 9 ATTAINT THE FOOT: The word is used in its legal sense. The blood of one convicted of high treason is "attaint," and his deprivations extend to his descendants, unless Parliament remove the attainder.
4 14 PARIAHS: The fate of social outcasts seems to have taken early and strong hold upon De Quincey's mind; one of the Suspiria was to have enlarged upon this theme. Strictly speaking, the Pariahs is that one of the lower castes of Hindoo society of which foreigners have seen most; it is not in all districts the lowest caste, however.
5 6 OBJECTS NOT APPEARING, ETC.: De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex, a Roman legal phrase.
5 16 "SNOBS": Apparently snob originally meant "shoemaker"; then, in university cant, a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman." Cf. Gradus ad Cantabrigiam (1824), quoted in Century Dictionary: "Snobs.—A term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the honour of being members of the university; but in a more particular manner to the 'profanum vulgus,' the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate on the sedgy banks of Camus." This use is in De Quincey's mind. Later, in the strikes of that time, the workmen who accepted lower wages were called snobs; those who held out for higher, nobs.
7 33 FO FO… FI FI: "This paragraph is a caricature of a story told in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy to China in 1792."—MASSON.
8 4 ÇA IRA ("This will do," "This is the go"): "a proverb of the French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the streets, &c., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary songs, 'Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira.'"—MASSON.
8 18 ALL MORALITY,—ARISTOTLE'S, ZENO'S, CICERO'S: Each of these three has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. Aristotle wrote the so-called Nicomachean Ethics. According to his teaching, "ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards the mean [to méson] proper for us… Bravery is the mean between cowardice and temerity; temperance, the mean between inordinate desire and stupid indifference; etc." (Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 169). Zeno, who died about 264 B.C., founded about 308 the Stoic sect, which took its name from the "Painted Porch" (Stoa poklae) in the Agora at Athens, where the master taught. The Stoics held that men should be free from passion, and undisturbed by joy or grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. Such austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of the Eudæmonist, who sought happiness as the end of life. Cicero was the author of De Officiis, "Of Duties."
9 9 ASTROLOGICAL SHADOWS: misfortunes due to being born under an unlucky star; house of life is also an astrological term.
9 24 VON TROIL'S ICELAND: The Letters on Iceland (Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, Vol. I, p. 621), containing Observations … made during a Voyage undertaken in the year 1772, by Uno Von Troil, D.D., of Stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. Such a chapter had appeared, however, in N. Horrebow's (Danish, 1758) Natural History of Iceland: "Chap. LXXII. Concerning snakes. No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the whole island." In Boswell's Johnson, Vol. IV, p. 314, Temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion, which may have been in De Quincey's mind: "Langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: 'Chap. LXXII. Concerning Snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.'"
9 25 A PARLIAMENTARY RAT: one who deserts his own party when it is losing.
10 16 "JAM PROXIMUS," etc.: Æneid, II, lines 311-312: "Now next (to Deiphobus' house) Ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes!"
11 27 QUARTERINGS: See p. 47, footnote, and note 47 2.
11 32 WITHIN BENEFIT OF CLERGY: Benefit of clergy was, under old English law, the right of clerics, afterward extended to all who could read, to plead exemption from trial before a secular judge. This privilege was first legally recognized in 1274, and was not wholly abolished until 1827.
12 9 QUARTER SESSIONS: This court is held in England in the counties by justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and to administer the poor laws, etc.
12 26 FALSE ECHOES OF MARENGO: General Desaix was shot through the heart at the battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800); he died without a word, and his body was found by Rovigo (cf. Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, London, 1835, Vol. I, p. 181), "stripped of his clothes, and surrounded by other naked bodies." Napoleon, however, published three different versions of an heroic and devoted message from Desaix to himself, the original version being: "Go, tell the First Consul that I die with this regret,—that I have not done enough for posterity." (Cf. Lanfrey, History of Napoleon the First, 2d ed., London, 1886, Vol. II, p. 39.) Napoleon himself was credited likewise with the words De Quincey adopts. "Why is it not permitted me to weep" is one version (Bussey, History of Napoleon, London, 1840, Vol. I, p. 302). Cf. Hazlitt, Life of Napoleon, 2d ed., London, 1852, Vol. II, p. 317, footnote.
12 (footnote) THE CRY OF THE FOUNDERING LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIP "VENGEUR": On the 1st of June, 1794, the English fleet under Lord Howe defeated the French under Villaret-Joyeuse, taking six ships and sinking a seventh, the Vengeur. This ship sank, as a matter of fact, with part of her crew on board, imploring kid which there was not time to give them. Some two hundred and fifty men had been taken off by the English; the rest were lost. On the 9th of July Barrere published a report setting forth "how the Vengeur, … being entirely disabled, … refused to strike, though sinking; how the enemies fired on her, but she returned their fire, shot aloft all her tricolor streamers, shouted Vive la République, … and so, in this mad whirlwind of fire and shouting and invincible despair, went down into the ocean depths; Vive la République and a universal volley from the upper deck being the last sounds she made." Cf. Carlyle, Sinking of the Vengeur, and French Revolution, Book XVIII, Chap. VI.
12 (footnote) LA GARDE MEURT, ETC.: "This phrase, attributed to Cambronne, who was made prisoner at Waterloo, was vehemently denied by him. It was invented by Rougemont, a prolific author of mots, two days after the battle, in the Indépendant."—Fournier's L'Esprit dans l'Histoire, trans. Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, p. 661.
13 25 BRUMMAGEM: Birmingham became early the chief place of manufacture of cheap wares. Hence the name Brummagem, a vulgar pronunciation of the name of the city, has become in England a common name for cheap, tawdry jewelry. Cf. also Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, sc. iv, 1. 55:
False, fleeting, perjured Clarence.
13 27 LUXOR occupies part of the site of ancient Thebes, capital of Egypt; its antiquities are famous.
14 9 BUT ON OUR SIDE… WAS A TOWER OF MORAL STRENGTH, ETC.: Cf. Shakespeare, Richard III, Act V, sc. in, 11. 12-13:
Besides, the king's name is a tower of strength,
Which they upon the adverse party want.
14 20 FELT MY HEART BURN WITHIN ME: Cf. Luke xxiv. 32.
14 32 A VERY FINE STORY FROM ONE OF OUR ELDER DRAMATISTS: The dramatist in question has not been identified. I am indebted indirectly to Professor W. Strunk, Jr., of Cornell University, for reference to Johann Caius' Of English Dogs, translated by A. Fleming, in Arber's English Garner, original edition, Vol. III, p. 253 (new edition, Social England Illustrated, pp. 28-29), where, after telling how Henry the Seventh, perceiving that four mastiffs could overcome a lion, ordered the dogs all hanged, the writer continues: "I read an history answerable to this, of the selfsame HENRY, who having a notable and an excellent fair falcon, it fortuned that the King's Falconers, in the presence and hearing of his Grace, highly commended his Majesty's Falcon, saying, that it feared not to intermeddle with an eagle, it was so venturous and so mighty a bird; which when the king heard, he charged that the falcon should be killed without delay: for the selfsame reason, as it may seem, which was rehearsed in the conclusion of the former history concerning the same king."
15 l OMRAHS… FROM AGRA AND LAHORE: There seems to be a reminiscence here of Wordsworth's Prelude, Book X, 11. 18-20:
The Great Mogul, when he
Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore,
Rajahs and Omrahs in his train.
Omrah, which is not found in Century Dictionary, is itself really plural of Arabic amir (ameer), a commander, nobleman.
15 23 THE 6TH OF EDWARD LONGSHANKS: a De Quinceyan jest, of course. This wrould refer to a law of the sixth year of Edward I, or 1278, but there are but fifteen chapters in the laws of that year.
16 8 NOT MAGNA LOQUIMUR,… BUT VIVIMUS: not "we speak great things," but "we live" them.
17 21 MARLBOROUGH FOREST is twenty-seven miles east of Bath, where De Quincey attended school.
18 18 ULYSSES, ETC.: The allusion is, of course, to the slaughter of the suitors of Penelope, his wife, by Ulysses, after his return. Cf. Odyssey, Books XXI-XXII.
19 3 ABOUT WATERLOO: i.e. about 1815. This phrase is one of many that indicate the deep impression made by this event upon the English mind. Cf. p. 58.
19 17 "SAY, ALL OUR PRAISES," ETC.: Cf. Pope, Moral Essays: Epistle III, Of the Use of Riches, II. 249-250:
But all our praises why should lords engross,
Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross.
20 3 TURRETS: "Tourettes fyled rounde" appears in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, 1. 1294, where it means the ring on a dog's collar through which the leash was passed. Skeat explains torets as "probably eyes in which rings will turn round, because each eye is a little larger than the thickness of the ring." Cf. Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, Part I, sec. 2, "This ring renneth in a maner turet," "this ring runs in a kind of eye." But Chaucer does not refer to harness.
21 2 MR. WATERTON TELLS ME: Charles Waterton, the naturalist, was born in 1782 and died in 1865. His Wanderings in South America was published in 1825.
23 11 EARTH AND HER CHILDREN: This paragraph is about one fifth of the length of the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in Blackwood. For the longer version see Masson's ed., Vol. XIII, p. 289, note 2.
24 14 THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE: The present office was opened Sept. 23, 1829. St. Martin's-le-Grand is a church within the "city" of London, so named to distinguish it from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which faces what is now Trafalgar Square, and is, as the name indicates, outside the "city." The street takes its name from the church.
28 10 BARNET is a Hertfordshire village, eleven miles north of London.
29 33 A "COURIER" EVENING PAPER, CONTAINING THE GAZETTE: A gazette was originally one of the three official papers of the kingdom; afterwards any official announcement, as this of a great victory.
30 17 FEY: This is not a Celtic word; it is the Anglo-Saxon faege retained in Lowland Scotch, which is the most northerly English dialect. The word appears frequently in descriptions of battles, the Anglo-Saxon fatalistic philosophy teaching that, certain warriors entered the conflict faege, "doomed." Now the meaning is altered slightly: "You are surely fey," would be said in Scotland, as Professor Masson remarks, to a person observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament,—the notion being that the excitement is supernatural, and a presage of his approaching death, or of some other calamity about to befall him.
31 27 THE INSPIRATION OF GOD, ETC.: This is an indication—more interesting than agreeable, perhaps—of the heights to which the martial ardor of De Quincey's toryism rises.
33 13 CÆSAR THE DICTATOR, AT HIS LAST DINNER-PARTY, ETC.: related by Suetonius in his life of Julius Cæsar, Chap. LXXXVII: "The day before he died, some discourse occurring at dinner in M. Lepidus' house upon that subject, which was the most agreeable way of dying, he expressed his preference for what is sudden and unexpected" (repentinum inopinatumque praetulerat). The story is told by Plutarch and Appian also.
35 13 BIATHANATOS: "De Quincey has evidently taken this from John Donne's treatise: BIATHANATOS, A Declaration of that Paradoxe or Thesis, That Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never be otherwise, 1644. See his paper on Suicide, etc., Masson's ed., VIII, 398 [Riverside, IX, 209]. But not even Donne's precedent justifies the word formation. The only acknowledged compounds are biaio-thanasia, 'violent death,' and biaio-thanatos, 'dying a violent death.' Even bia thanatos, 'death by violence,' is not classical."—HART. But the form biathanatos is older than Donne and is said to be common in MSS. It should be further remarked that neither of the two compounds cited is classical. As to De Quincey's interpretation of Cæsar's meaning here, cf. Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire, Chap. XXI, where he translates Cæsar's famous reply: "That which is least expected." Cf. also Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, Act II, sc. ii, 1. 33.
37 25 "NATURE, FROM HER SEAT," ETC.: Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, Book IX, 11. 780-784:
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.
38 2 SO SCENICAL, ETC.: De Quincey's love for effects of this sort appears everywhere. Cf. the opening paragraphs of the Revolt of the Tartars, Masson's ed., Vol. VII; Riverside ed., Vol. XII.
39 4 JUS DOMINII: "the law of ownership," a legal term.
39 14 JUS GENTIUM: "the law of nations," a legal term.
39 30 "MONSTRUM HORRENDUM," ETC..: Æneid, III, 658. Polyphemus, one of the Cyclopes, whose eye was put out by Ulysses, is meant. Cf. Odyssey, IX, 371 et seq.; Æneid, III, 630 et seq.
40 1 ONE OF THE CALENDARS, ETC.: The histories of the three Calenders, sons of kings, will be found in most selections from the Arabian Nights. A Calender is one of an order of Dervishes founded in the fourteenth century by an Andalusian Arab; they are wanderers who preach in market places and live by alms.
40 10 AL SIRAT: According to Mahometan teaching this bridge over Hades was in width as a sword's edge. Over it souls must pass to Paradise.
40 12 UNDER THIS EMINENT MAN, ETC.: For these two sentences the original in Blackwood had this, with its addition of good De Quinceyan doctrine: "I used to call him Cyclops Mastigophorus, Cyclops the Whip-bearer, until I observed that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head, upon which I changed his Grecian name to Cyclops Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer). I, and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. And also take this remark from me as a gage d'amitié—that no word ever was or can be pedantic which, by supporting a distinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or which fills up a chasm for the understanding."
41 1 SOME PEOPLE HAVE CALLED ME PROCRASTINATING: Cf. Page's (Japp's) Life, Chap. XIX, and Japp's De Quincey Memorials, Vol. II, pp. 45,47,49- 42 11 THE WHOLE PAGAN PANTHEON: i.e. all the gods put together; from the Greek Pantheion, a temple dedicated to all the gods.
43 2 SEVEN ATMOSPHERES OF SLEEP, ETC.: Professor Hart suggests that De Quincey is here "indulging in jocular arithmetic. The three nights plus the three days, plus the present night, equal seven." Dr. Cooper compares with this a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. But it seems doubtful whether any explanation is necessary.
43 17 LILLIPUTIAN LANCASTER: the county town of Lancashire, in which Liverpool and Manchester, towns of recent and far greater growth, are situated.
44 (footnote) "Giraldus Cambrensis," or Gerald de Barry (1146-1220), was a Welsh historian; one of his chief works is the Itinerarium Cambrica, or Voyage in Wales.
47 2 QUARTERING: De Quincey's derivation of this word in his footnote is correct, but its use in this French sense is not common. De Quincey, however, has it above, p. 11.
49 8 THE SHOUT OF ACHILLES: Cf. Homer, Iliad, XVIII, 217 et seq.
50 10 BUYING IT, ETC.: De Quincey refers, no doubt, to the pay of common soldiers and to the practice of employing mercenaries.
52 1 FASTER THAN EVER MILL-RACE, ETC.: the change in the wording of this sentence in De Quincey's revision is, as Masson remarks, particularly characteristic of his sense of melody; it read in Blackwood, "We ran past them faster than ever mill-race in our inexorable flight."
52 15 HERE WAS THE MAP, ETC.: This sentence is an addition in the reprint. Masson remarks "how artistically it causes the due pause between the horror as still in rush of transaction and the backward look at the wreck when the crash was past."
53 18 "WHENCE THE SOUND," ETC.: Paradise Lost, Book XI, 11. 558-563.
54 3 WOMAN'S IONIC FORM: In thus using the word Ionic, De Quincey doubtless has in mind the character of Ionic architecture, with its tall and graceful column, differing from the severity of the Doric on the one hand and from the floridity of the Corinthian on the other. Probably he is thinking of a caryatid. Cf. the following version of the old story of the origin of the styles of Greek architecture in Vitruvius, IV, Chap. I (Gwilt's translation), quoted by Hart: "They measured a man's foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the column a similar proportion, that is, they made its height six times the thickness of the shaft measured at the base. Thus the Doric order obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty from the human figure. With a similar feeling they afterward built the Temple of Diana. But in that, seeking a new proportion, they used the female figure as a standard; and for the purpose of producing a more lofty effect they first made it eight times its thickness in height. Under it they placed a base, after the manner of a shoe to the foot; they also added volutes to its capital, like graceful curling hair hanging on each side, and the front they ornamented with cymatia and festoons in the place of hair. On the shafts they sunk channels, which bear a resemblance to the folds of a matronal garment. Thus two orders were invented, one of a masculine character, without ornament, the other bearing a character which resembled the delicacy, ornament, and proportion of a female. The successors of these people, improving in taste, and preferring a more slender proportion, assigned seven diameters to the height of the Doric column, and eight and a half to the Ionic."
55 3 CORYMBI: clusters of fruit or flowers.
55 28 QUARREL: the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square, or four-edged head (from Middle Latin quadrellus, diminutive of quadrum, a square).
58 20 WATERLOO AND RECOVERED CHRISTENDOM! Cf. note 19 3.
61 20 THEN A THIRD TIME THE TRUMPET SOUNDED: There are throughout this passage, as Dr. Cooper remarks, many reminiscences of the language of the Book of Revelation. Cf. this with Revelation viii. 10; cf. 61 28 with Revelation xii. 5, and 62 5 with ix. 13.
63 29 THE ENDLESS RESURRECTIONS OF HIS LOVE: The following, which Masson prints as a postscript, was a part of De Quincey's introduction to the volume of the Collective Edition containing this piece:
"'THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH.'—This little paper, according to my original intention, formed part of the 'Suspiria de Profundis'; from which, for a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the actual execution.
"Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an appalling scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most terrific to two young people whom I had no means of assisting, except in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even that not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.
"Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this paper radiates as a natural expansion. This scene is circumstantially narrated in Section the Second, entitled 'The Vision of Sudden Death.'
"But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third, entitled 'Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death.' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail,—the scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in ghostly silence,—this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared; all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself; which features at that time lay—1st, in velocity unprecedented, 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in the official connexion with the government of a great nation, and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described circumstantially in the First or introductory Section ('The Glory of Motion'). The three first were distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature of the 'Dream-Fugue' which my censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. If not—if there be anything amiss—let the Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision—viz. an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's horn, again—a humble instrument in itself—was yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many great national events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow the warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party."