620 ON THE EFrECrrS OP CERTAIN MENTAL 



Chinese appears to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Eng- 

 lishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, 

 cannot hut shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have 

 flowed apart and refused to mix through such immemorial tracts of 

 time ; nor can any man fail to be awed by the mere names of the 

 Ganges and Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that 

 Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, that part of 

 the earth most swarming with human life ; the great " qfficina 

 gentium." Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires, also, 

 into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, 

 give a further sublimity to all oriental thoughts and images. In 

 China, besides what it has in common with the rest of this quarter 

 of the earth, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, 

 the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy, placed be- 

 tween us by feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live 

 with lunatics, or brute animals. All this, and much more than I 

 can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into, before he can 

 comprehend the unimaginable horror which my dreams of oriental 

 imagery and mythological torture impressed upon me. Under the 

 connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sun-lights, I brought 

 together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, 

 usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and 

 assembled them together in China or Hindostan. From kindred 

 feelings, I soon brought Egypt and her gods under the same law. 

 I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by 

 paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for cen- 

 turies at the summit, or in secret rooms ; I was the idol ; I was the 

 priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath 

 of Brahma, through all the forests of Asia ; Vishnoo hated me ; 

 Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris. I 

 had done a deed, they said, which the Ibis and the Crocodile trem- 

 bled at. I was buried, for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with 

 mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal 

 pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses, and laid confounded 

 with all unutterably slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud."* 



• Confessions of an English Opium Eater, p. 169, London, 1823. The whole 

 of these dreams are worthy of attention ; they form, in the language of the 

 author, an "iliad of woes." If the pleasures of an Imagination excited by 

 opium, detailed in the first Lecture, should have induced any one to adopt so 

 baneful a practice, as that of opium eating, which the Editor of the Chelten- 

 ham Journal seems to fear, let them be warned in time to discontinue a habit 

 which, in the sequel, will be productive of a load of mental misery and will 

 render night and day alike wretched. 



