between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our fancied retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its accumulated violence,—­as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread alternative,—­it is interesting to note how this same family, separated by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for refuge,—­a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.

But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his successors.  The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however, remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings.  But above the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster.  For just here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family freshly grounded upon a second heritage,—­one sublime in its order above that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever imperishable,—­namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought under distinct illumination for all time to come.  These are the vast acres over which human pride must henceforth soar,—­acres that have been, through the mighty realizations of human genius, built out into the mysterious ocean-depths of chaotic Nature, and that have in some measure bridged over infinite chasms in thought, and by just so far have extended the fluctuating boundaries of human empire.  And for De Quincey himself, in view of that monumental structure which rises above the shattered wrecks of his poor, frail body, as above the mummied dust of Egyptian kings remain eternally the pyramids which