78 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



Alma Mater, to that lovely land where cluster the fair lakes of 

 Cumberland and Westmoreland. Having selected a home on the 

 banks of Windermere, we find him there in the prime of youth, 

 with that keen nature of his alternating between light and shade, 

 and every possible humor attendant on the impulses of an ardent 

 heart, yet uneasy with a burden which there was none other to 

 share. Possibly the restless life he led began in a hope of self- 

 forgetfulness ; yet there was at the same time, in the conscious 

 possession of so much bodily strength, and that unceasing activity 

 of spirit, an irrepressible desire to exercise every faculty. To 

 many his life in Westmoreland may appear to have been one of 

 idleness, but not to those who, with a kindly discernment of human 

 nature, see the advantages which varied experience gives to a 

 strong mind. 



We now follow him to Elleray. For a description of this beau- 

 tiful spot I gladly avail myself of the striking description of Mr. 



De Quincey :* — 



" With the usual latitude of language in such cases, I say on 

 Windermere ; but in fact this charming estate lies far above the 

 lake ; and one of the most interesting of its domestic features is the 

 foreground of the rich landscape which connects, by the most gen- 

 tle scale of declivities, this almost aerial altitude [as, for habitable 

 ground, it really is] with the sylvan margin of the deep water 

 which rolls a mile and a half below. When I say a mile and a 

 half, you will understand me to compute the descent according to 

 the undulations of the ground ; because else the perpendicular ele- 

 vation above the level of the lake cannot be above one-half of that 

 extent. Seated on such an eminence, but yet surrounded by fore- 

 grounds of such quiet beauty, and settling downwards towards the 

 lake by such tranquil steps as to take away every feeling of pre- 

 cipitous or dangerous elevation, Elleray possesses a double charac- 

 ter of beauty rarely found in connection ; and yet each, by singular 

 -rood fortune, in this case, absolute and unrivalled in its kind. 

 AVithin a bowshot of each other may be found stations of the 

 deepest seclusion, fenced in by verdurous walls of insuperable for- 

 est heights, and presenting a limited scene of beauty — deep, solemn, 

 noiseless, severely sequestered — and other stations of a magnifi- 



* Letter addressed to the Edinburgh Literary Gazette, 1829, a forgotten newspaper, of which 

 there were only two vols, published. 



