Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey
page 14 of 113 (12%)
silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the
remainder of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the
trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the carrier's; then,
"with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel
with some articles of dress under my arm; a favourite English poet in one
pocket, and a small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of
Euripides, in the other.

It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both from
the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts. Accident,
however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps
towards North Wales.

After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and
Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B---. Here I
might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions were
cheap at B---, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus produce
of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which perhaps
no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not
whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the
proudest class of people in England (or at any rate the class whose pride
is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen and their
children carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient
notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also
to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear,
adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville, Manners,
Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their own tale.
Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims
already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world by
virtue of their own obscurity: "Not to know _them_, argues one's self
DigitalOcean Referral Badge