And this allusion to Vulcan reminds us that Byron, in addition to all his other early mishaps, had also the identical clubfoot of the Lemnian god.  Among the guardians over Byron’s childhood was a demon, that, receiving an ample place in his victim’s heart, stood demoniacally his ground through life, transmuting love to hate, and what might have been benefits to fatal snares.  Over De Quincey’s childhood, on the contrary, a strong angel guarded to withstand and thwart all threatened ruin, teaching him the gentle whisperings of faith and love in the darkest hours of life:  an angel that built happy palaces, the beautiful images of which, and their echoed festivals, far outlasted the splendor of their material substance.

“We,—­the children of the house,—­” says De Quincey, in his “Autobiographic Sketches,” “stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences.  The prayer of Agur—­’Give me neither poverty nor riches’—­was realized for us.  That blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low.  High enough we were to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes.  Amply furnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with extra means of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand we knew nothing of its social distinctions.  Not depressed by the consciousness of privations too sordid, nor tempted into restlessness by privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for pride.  Grateful, also, to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan, simplicity of diet,—­that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants.  And if (after the manner of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration:  that I lived in a rural solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church.”

Let the reader suppose a different case from that here presented.  Let him suppose, for instance, that De Quincey, now arrived at the age of seven, and having now at least one “pugilistic brother” to torment his peace, could annul his own infancy, and in its place substitute that of one of the factory-boys of Manchester, of the same age, (and many such could be found,) among those with whom daily the military predispositions of this brother brought him into a disagreeable conflict.  Instead of the pure air of outside Lancashire, let there be substituted the cotton-dust of the Lancashire mills.  The contrast, even in thought, is painful.  It is true that thus the irrepressible fires of human genius could