n awkward effort
at observing something outside of himself, or at getting a grasp of
something that he supposed actual. That he should have so supposed was
his weakness, and the retribution for the peculiar intemperance which
depraved his nature and alienated from their proper use powers which
should have made him one of the first philosophers of his age. His
singular organization was fatally deranged in its action before it could
show its best quality, and his is one of the cases in which we cannot be
wrong in attributing moral disease directly to physical disturbance; and
it would no doubt have been dropped out of notice, if he had been able
to abstain from comment on the characters and lives of other people.
Justice to them compels us to accept and use the exposures he offers us
of himself.

About the time of De Quincey's settlement at Grasmere, Wilson, the
future CHRISTOPHER NORTH, bought the Elleray estate, on the banks of
Windermere. He was then just of age,--supreme in all manly sports,
physically a model man, and intellectually, brimming with philosophy and
poetry. He came hither a rather spoiled child of fortune, perhaps; but
he was soon sobered by a loss of property which sent him to his studies
for the bar. Scott was an excellent friend to him at that time; and so
strong and prophetic was Wilson's admiration of his patron, that he
publicly gave him the name of "The Great Magician" before the first
"Waverley Novel" was published. Within ten years from his getting a
foothold on Windermere banks, he had raised periodical literature to a
height unknown before in our time, by his contributions to "Blackwood's
Magazine"; and he seemed to step naturally into the Moral Philosophy
Chair in Edinburgh in 1820. Christopher North has perhaps conveyed to
foreign, and untravelled English, readers as true a conception of our
Lake scenery and its influences in one way as Wordsworth in another.
The very spirit of the moorland, lake, brook, tarn, ghyll, and ridge
breathes from his prose poetry: and well it might. He wandered alone for
a week together beside the trout-streams and among the highest tarns. He
spent whole days in his boat, coasting the bays of the lake, or floating
in the centre, or lying reading in the shade of the trees on the
islands. He led with a glorious pride the famous regatta on Windermere,
when Canning was the guest of the Boltons at Storrs, and when Scott,
Wordsworth, and Southey were of the company; and