The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1860-01-12

that horror? Could we say aught else than
this: He is mad take him awayl And Beale
Lioyd's case is not less salient in inexpicable
circumstances, unless we say of him ALSO He
is madi f
Was he then 50 insane as to be irresponsible
in every respect? the reader will ask. By no
means; for, If he we're, we would have no right to
introduce him upon these pages. The mans
mind was strong and vigorous his moral nature
vas acutely sensible, and, withal, he was suffer
ing from a disease which tended to call out all
his faculties-irregularly, of course-morbidly,
with terrible starts and jerks, that threatened to
visit irreparable damage upon the whole ma
| chine. This disease we may call flor lack of
comprehensive world remorse for positive
crime, complicated with shame for a proud soul
disgraced. And our interest in the man consists
in our study of the progress of this disease, the
analysis of ITS effects upon him and those con-
nected with him, and the portraying of our rea-
sonable doubts as TO whether the disease will
conquer the man, or the man will fling off the
disfsSe. 1t is alphabetically a historic interest
having due regard to the relations of moral and
physical causes with moral and physical effects
But, besides his asork, the occupant of the
Ottbtiette has other matters of concern for in
| stance, his thoughts. Brave company for him
were those thoughts as he sat there, day after
day, night after night, his jaw sunk, his lip
quivering, his brow clouded-brave company
indeed ha! ha what a mad dance they were
ever wooing him to join What bursts of wild
est revelry they shouted at his ear, aud asked
him to contribute voice tol And how, when
he would refuse, they wreaked their vengeance
upon him by night, coming in troops, like
fairies to revel, tumbling over him, pricking,
pinching, biting him, propping open his eye
lids, and robbing him of sleepi Brave com
panyi Night after night they came till at
last he was beginning to laugh with them, and
shout, and dance, and revel with them, and to
be in every way as mad as they, when---a
friend came to his aid, and, saving him for the
nonce, straightway took possession of him, as
the sold Man Of the Sea" assumed manorial
rights over Sindhbad the Sailor.
| So, strictly speaking, we were wrong when
we said Mr.. Lloyd was alone in the Oubliette,
behind the iron-studded door. Yes indeed,
quite TO the contrary. Leaving his thoughts
out of the question, he had company-most
excellent, distinguished, and honorable compa-
ny, indeed A Chief Guest, namely, who had
at his beck and nod an innumerable retinue
of servants and followers; a Guest to whom he
was under real obligations, equally for services
rendered, and, he fancied, for the pleasure
itself of his company; aGuest who had Toasted
4
had kept company with Mahommed in the
| desert, when he wrote the Koran who had
whispered in the ear of Paracelsus, lecturing
to students at Basil, and consoled him, dying
in the hospital of Salzburg who says to the
weary courier in India, Forward / am with
thee!" and to the idle Turk in Stamboul,
Resti | am by thy side I" a Guest who has
sustained the mild benevolence of Wherefore,
and helped out the logic of stately LANDAU ;
who has oiled the wings of De Quincey's rhetoric
for its unexampled fights, and Owed deeper
than ever plummet sounded" into the fathom-
less abysses of Coleridge's speculations. A
mighty magician was this Guest, whose wand
was supreme over the realms of dream and
vision, and at whose bidding all the panoply
and pomp of Fancy would take on gorgeous
array, and move before the eye with the stately
4 splendor and inhnitesimal variety of cloud.
forms passing athwart the sky OfRest, too,
was he the seeming Master; and therefore
most cherished by the citizen of that dark on
biiette. A Guest, however, not easily to be got
rid Of; who demanded, in return for his par
tial favors, the supremacy claimed by that ty-
raunical Old Man of the Sea; who could haunt
with spectres, as he could endow with dreams ;
and who, for the temporary Rest which he
gave, eXacted the base allegiance of slave.
And this Guest, who saved Beale LLOYD from
the mad dance Of Thought gave him Rest, and
mounted upon his shoulders, was, after all, but
villainous, dark hued Bottle Imp, a malicious,
grinning fend, an Homunculus, whose name
was-OPIUMl
"No claws, no tail I" says the Orthodox
speaking ,of Oberon, in that wild Latermezz0
in Faust" Yet it stands beyond doubt,
that, even as the gods of Greece, so is he, too
a devil" And we may assert the same thing
10. IL. NJ. Iol Il.
his bosom, deeming him a friend and benefac
tor. However he may disguise and mask him.
SELF we cannot long enjoy his company with.
out this terrible discovery of the clovenfoot
True, he had advantaged the banker so far
that, by his timely interpostion, the unhappy
man was saved from immediate insanity. But
in so doing, he charmed the man with his sub
tie, serpent charm, and, taking advantage oil
that fascination, assumed the mastery over his
life; and, once supreme, led him much
farther into the realm of horrors than he had
ever been dragged before. Out went they in
fact into the very Blocksberg of Fantasy, where
for time the Faust of our story danced, ali
ensnared and fascinated with the fend, the
fair one, the Lilith, who talked to him of lovely
apples, and seemed the incarnation of every
queenly virtue, the well spring of all frm-based
happness-but, suddenly" ali in the mid
die of her song, sprang a red mouse out of her
mouth |" After that, there was no need Of
further disguise, as there was no possibility Of
it-and Llith punished his disgust by trans
forming herself into-Medusa.# Do you re-
member that couplet in the Ancient Mar
iner2"
| "The Nightmare Life-in- Death she,
Who thicks mans blood with Geld"
I think Coleridge meant opium then. Now
we may lay it down as general principle, that
the injury resulting from the habitual use OF
this drug consists in the fact that it PAMPERs
achaterer IS most morbid in each Of as. He
that thinks beer, will dream beer" says De
Quincy; but he will dream of flagons fit for the
Berserk's use in Valhalla, of kegs huge as the
great tun of Heidelberg, of froth like the foam
of stormlashed sea, and barrooms wide as
space. Invariably, this foul 6end, having got
ten the mastery of us, finds out and perverts to
his own use, our leading thought, our principal
trouble; our ruling perpexity, our most lament
able failing. This, in his possession, is sure to
be made the subject of his malicious manipula-
ton !; to be warped, twisted, turned like glove,
pulled this way and that way awry, localized
or brutalized--always somehow exaggerated
and perverted, but always made to retain some
recognizable feature of its original self, and so
continued ever in its close relations to ourselves
In this way, the grinning Fiend, after fattering
Lloyd with some hours of rest, soon pampered
up his misery, both waking and in dreams
until, finally, his last state was worse than the
first. And when he would have reproached it,
the Fiend, dragging him eyer on relentless,
among the foul scenes of Rlocksberg, and rush.
ingly, despairingly, past the gibbet-mounted
Rd6enstein of his lost hopes, laughingly said
to him, in the words of 4ephistophiles snow
again we are at our wits end, and so soon !
4
ping always with oyerstrain when you have got
| tan so far Why dost thon enter into fellow.