]
10. L. STEPHEN. _Hours in a Library_. Vol. I. New York, 1892.
11. W. MINTO. _Manual of English Prose Literature_. Boston, 1889.
[Contains the best general discussion of De Quincey's style.]
12. L. COOPER. _The Prose Poetry of Thomas De Quincey_. Leipzig,
1902.
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH
SECTION I--THE GLORY OF MOTION
Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,
at that time M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to
do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by
eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had
married the daughter of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great
a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same
thing, [Footnote: "_The same thing_":--Thus, in the calendar of the
Church Festivals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother
of Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express
consciousness of sarcasm) as the _Invention_ of the Cross.]
discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to
mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time,
but, on the other hand, who did _not_ marry the daughter of a duke.
These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a
circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in
developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams: an agency which they
accomplished, 1st, through velocity at that time unprecedented--for
they first revealed the glory of motion; 2dly, through grand effects
for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads;
3dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class
of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious
presence of a central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances
[Footnote: "Vast distances":--One case was familiar to mail-coach
travellers where two mails in opposite directions, north and south,
starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met
almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total
distance.
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