like grounds, we feel ourselves
bound most earnestly to condemn. Let all honour be paid to those who in
our time have laboured to search out and to make known such evils of our
social condition as Christian sympathy may in some degree relieve or
cure. But we do not believe that any good end is to be effected by
fictions which fill the mind with details of imaginary vice and distress
and crime, or which teach it--instead of endeavouring after the
fulfilment of simple and ordinary duty--to aim at the assurance of
superiority by creating for itself fanciful and incomprehensible
perplexities. Rather we believe that the effect of such fictions must be
to render those who fall under their influence unfit for practical
exertion; while they most assuredly do grievous harm in many cases, by
intruding on minds which ought to be guarded from impurity the
unnecessary knowledge of evil.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE

In the early days of the nineteenth century Edinburgh certainly aspired
to prouder eminence as a centre of light and learning than it has
continued to maintain. Tory energy, provoked by the arrogance of
Jeffrey, had found its earliest expression in London, but the northern
capital evidently determined not to be left behind in the game of
unprincipled vituperation. _Blackwood_, unlike its rivals in infancy,
was issued monthly, and its closely printed double columns add something
to the impression of heaviness in its satire.

JOHN WILSON
(1785-1854)

There is admittedly something incongruous in any association between the
genial and laughter-loving Christopher North and the reputation incurred
by the periodical with which he was long so intimately associated. He
had contributed--as few of his confederates would have been permitted--
to the _Edinburgh_; but he was Literary Editor to _Blackwood_ from
October, 1817, to September, 1852. Originally a disciple of the Lake
School, at whom he was frequently girding, he migrated to Edinburgh
(where he became Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1820), and attracted
to himself many brilliant men of letters, including De Quincey.

The "mountain-looking fellow," as Dickens called him, the patron of
"cock-fighting, wrestling, pugilistic contests, boat-racing, and
horse-racing" left his mark on his generation for a unique combination
of
boisterous joviality and hardhitting. Well known in the houses of the
poor; more than one observer has said that he reminded them of the
"first man,