natural intelligence, a certain fineness of fibre, and some amount of scholarly education, have to be presupposed, indeed, in all readers of De Quincey.  But, even for the fittest readers, a month’s complete and continuous course of De Quincey would be too much.  Better have him on the shelf, and take down a volume at intervals for one or two of the articles to which there may be an immediate attraction.  An evening with De Quincey in this manner will always be profitable.”

DAVID MASSON, Life of De Quincey, Chap.  XI.

REVOLT OF THE TARTARS;

OR, FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCK KHAN AND HIS PEOPLE FROM THE RUSSIAN TERRITORIES TO THE FRONTIERS OF CHINA.

There is no great event in modern history, or, perhaps it may be said more broadly, none in all history, from its earliest records, less generally known, or more striking to the imagination, than the flight eastwards of a principal Tartar nation across the boundless steppes of Asia in the 5 latter half of the last century.  The terminus a quo of this flight and the terminus ad quem are equally magnificent—­the mightiest of Christian thrones being the one, the mightiest of pagan the other; and the grandeur of these two terminal objects is harmoniously supported by the 10 romantic circumstances of the flight.  In the abruptness of its commencement and the fierce velocity of its execution we read an expression of the wild, barbaric character of the agents.  In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a 15 mark so remote, there is something which recalls to the mind those almighty instincts that propel the migrations of the swallow and the leeming or the life-withering marches of the locust.  Then, again, in the gloomy vengeance of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung upon the rear 20 and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we are reminded of Miltonic images—­such, for instance, as that of the solitary hand pursuing through desert spaces and through ancient chaos a rebellious host, and overtaking with volleying thunders those who believed themselves already within the security of darkness and of distance.

I shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this event with other great national catastrophes as to the magnitude 5 of the suffering.  But it may also challenge a comparison with similar events under another relation,—­viz. as to its dramatic capabilities.  Few cases, perhaps, in romance or history, can sustain a close collation with this as to the complexity of its separate interests.  The great outline of 10 the enterprise, taken in connection with the operative motives, hidden or avowed, and the religious sanctions under which it was pursued, give to the case a triple character:  1st, That of a conspiracy, with as close a unity in the incidents, and as much of