e; and from the whole a fair conception may
be formed of what the finished work would have been had De Quincey been
able to complete it, and of the eloquence with which he would have
relieved the mere succession of dates and figures.

It is clear that in the original form, though the papers were written
for ladies, the phantasy of a definite 'Charlotte' as fair
correspondent had not suggested itself to him; and that he had recourse
to this only in the final rewriting, and would have applied it to the
whole had he been spared to pursue his plan of recast and revision for
the Collected Works, as it was his intention to have done. Mrs. Baird
Smith remembers very clearly her father's many conversations on this
subject and his leading ideas--it was, in fact, a pet scheme of his; and
it is therefore the more to be regretted that his final revision only
embraced a small portion of the matter which he had already written.

It only needs to be added that, at the time De Quincey wrote,
exploration in Assyria and Egypt, not to speak of discovery in Akkad,
had made but little way compared with what has now been accomplished,
else certain passages in this essay would no doubt have been somewhat
modified.

VI. The article entitled '_Chrysomania; or the Gold Frenzy at its
Present Stage_', was evidently written after the two articles which
appeared in _Hogg's Instructor_. Not improbably it was felt that the
readers of _Hogg's Instructor_ had already had enough on the Gold Craze,
and this it was deemed better not to publish; but it has an interest as
supplementing much that De Quincey had said in these papers, and is a
happy illustration of his style in dealing with such subjects. Evidently
the editor of _Hogg's Instructor_ was hardly so attracted by these
papers as by others of De Quincey's; for we find that he had excised
some of the notes.

VII. '_The Defence of the English Peerage_' is printed because, although
it does not pretend to much detail or research, it shows anew De
Quincey's keen interest in the events of English history, and his vivid
appreciation of the peerage as a means of quickening and reviving in
the minds of the people the memorable events with which the earlier
bearers of these ancient titles had been connected.

VIII. The '_Anti-Papal Movement_' may be taken to attest once more De
Quincey's keen interest in all the topics of the day, political, social,
and ecclesiastical.

IX. The section on literature mor