In our last chapter we took a breezy morning walk amid the Lake scenery of England--more particularly that portion of it which lies between the old homes of Wordsworth and of Southey; we found it a thirteen-mile stretch of road, coiling along narrow meadows and over gray heights--beside mountains and mountain tarns--with Helvellyn lifting mid-way and Skiddaw towering at the end. We had our talk of Dr. Southey--so brave at his work--so generous in his home charities--so stiff in his Churchism and latter-day Toryism--with a very keen eye for beauty; yet writing poems--stately and masterful--which long ago went to the top-shelves, and stay there. We had our rough and ready interviews with that first of “War Correspondents”--Henry Crabb Robinson--who knew all the prominent men of this epoch, and has given us such entertaining chit-chat about them, as we all listen to, and straightway forget. Afterwards we had a look at that strange, intellectual, disorderly creature De Quincey--he living a long while in the Lake Country--and in his more inspired moments seeming to carry us by his swift words, into that mystical region lying beyond the borders of what we know and see. He swayed men; but he rarely taught them, or fed them. _Christopher North._ We still linger about those charmingest of country places; and by a wooden gateway--adjoining the approach to Windermere Hotel--upon the “Elleray woods,” amid which lived--eighty years ago--that stalwart friend of De Quincey’s, whose acquaintance he made among the Lakes, and who, like himself, was a devoted admirer of Wordsworth. Indeed, I think it was at the home of the latter that De Quincey first encountered the tall, lusty John Wilson--brimful of enthusiasm and all country ardors; brimful, too, of gush, and all poetic undulations of speech. He[12] was a native of Paisley--his father having been a rich manufacturer there--and had come to spend his abundant enthusiasms and his equally abundant moneys between Wordsworth and the mountains and Windermere. He has his fleet of yachts and barges upon the lake; he knows every pool where any trout lurk--every height that gives far-off views. He is a pugilist, a swimmer, an oarsman--making the hills echo with his jollity, and dashing off through the springy heather with that slight, seemingly frail De Quincey in his wake--who only reaches to his shoulder, but who is all compact of nerve and muscle. For Greek they are fairly mated, both by love and learning; and they can and do chant together the choral songs of heathen tragedies.