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Thomas de Quincy – Confessions of an English Opium Eater

Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure.

But, says a friend, a succession of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic characters; I can attach no ideas to them.  Ideas! My dear friend! There is no occasion for them......

 ….a chorus of elaborate harmony [results in the display] before me, as in a piece of arras work, the whole of my past life – not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music; no longer painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualised and sublimed.

All this was to be had for five shillings – that being the price of admission to the gallery...