of that future fulness of manhood known as
Christopher North of the Noctes, whose very
raiment, like Esau's, smells of the heather and
the field, and all the open-air sports of man,
growing up from that small seeding of the
minnow's cold blood on the wee fumy fingers;
as the Professor of Moral Philosophy, whose
eloquence bore down all opposition and
transformed enmity to love; and as that wandering
vagabond of the Highlands, that friend of
tinklers and gipsies, that broad-shouldered
"gangrel body" whom honest housewives would
not shelter, not knowing what devilment might
follow—JOHN WILSON, of Edinburgh and dear
and beautiful Elleray.

Every one has heard of Professor Wilson; of
that large-souled, passionate, loving man who
fainted from emotion at his father's funeral,
whose love was a storm and whose hate was a
tempest, and whose political passions,
uncompromising Tory and Jacobite as he was, were as
wild in growth and as deep in root as other men's
personal passions, and bore as full a harvest
of anguish and delight. Every one has heard of
his grandeur of form and look; of the blue eyes
that flashed like lightning in their wrath, yet
were so limpid and tender in their love; of the
waving fell of yellow hair rising up from his
brow, and falling in long loose masses over his
shoulders like a lion's tawny mane; of the strong
and powerful frame, tall, muscular, and yet so
supple; of the sweet voice, so sympathetic and
so sonorous, vibrating with passion and
tremulous with feeling; of the quick word and the
quicker hand; of the eager anger against cruelty
to dumb animals or oppression of the weaker in
any form; of the intense love for animals and
children, and the marvellous patience and gentleness
with them—marvellous especially in one
whose moral graces were not of the meeker
kind; of the thousand-and-one eccentricities
which marked, not the vain and irritable man,
who by very weakness cannot conform, but the
rich and abounding life, the strength and
luxuriance which flows out and over on all
sides, and cannot be confined to the narrow
channels cut by society and trodden in by the
timid and gregarious. For years his name was
a " household word" wherever old dun-coloured
Maga showed his face; a tower of strength and
a rallying-point for all that Tory school of the
North about which still hung old longings and
regrets, and traditions of bonnie Prince Charlie
foully deprived of his rights, and the superiority of
kilt and bonnet over trews and the traitor's hat,
and the divine ordination of the Highland clans,
and the Scotch the favoured sons of Heaven,
but subjected, like Abel, to the evil entreatings
of a false-hearted Cain down South. He clung
to his backward creed as the noisier sort of
Irishman clings to Brian Boroihme and the Pope,
and it was only when age had softened him, and
when, by his daughters' marrying among the
Whigs, he found out that the devil was not
the father of that sect, as he had all along
believed—at least, not of his sons-in-law—it was
only then that he suffered a little loosening of
the clamps and rivets in his soul, and treated
with Whiggery as something not quite so
revolting as leprosy. But before then there was
rough handling of the Liberal school in the
pages of Maga, and more than one brand struck
between the shoulders of men whose manifest
claims to respect and honour and admiration, were
flung aside because they belonged to the party of
progress and free thought, and did not make
Toryism the eleventh commandment. This was
perfectly indefensible; but we live in other
times, and have reason to be thankful for it,
and can hold our peace. In the utmost rage
and fury of faction, Wilson never allowed the
introduction of politics in his class at
Edinburgh: which, in such a warm partisan, showed
no little good sense and right feeling. Those
pages of political vehemence read strange to
us now, when party faction is infinitely weakened
among thinking men, and the terrible need of
the poor and the guilty has blent all shades of
thought into the nobler glory of action. It does
not much signify to a suffering humanity if help
comes with a blue cockade or a yellow pinned to
it; and the wayfarer who fell among thieves
did not question his deliverer as to his form of
faith, or demand proofs of the orthodoxy of
the wine and oil poured into his wounds; and
Wilson, with all his party zeal and political
passion, found before he died that these were things
of a past date, and that the world wanted now,
not unanimity of thought, but oneness of endeavour:
which are very different when analysed.

As a young man, his fame rested chiefly on
his strength, activity, and eccentricity. He beat
a well-known pugilist on a chance encounter,
and was honoured with the remark that he must
be either Jack Wilson or the devil; he could
leap twenty-three feet on a dead level, with a
run and a leap on an inclined plane an inch to a
yard; he could walk six miles fair toe and heel
within the hour, and once beat a chaise in a run
of three miles; he walked fifty-eight miles in
nine hours at most; and he could swim like a
duck and dive like a dabchick. Of eccentricity
the world was full of anecdotes; and even to
this day stories may be heard about the lakes of
how he thumped Dick, and threw Jack, and
frightened a whole boat-load of Westmoreland
men by " tummling into t' watter," dodging
round and round them under water, popping up
here and there, " at teal o' t' boat" and where
not, till at last he was dragged up by one who
caught him round the neck and kept such a
Westmoreland grip that even "lish" John
Wilson could not slip him again. He helped
much in keeping up the famous northern sports,
and gave belts and prizes for wrestling at
Ambleside, which were greatly valued; and he had
a small fleet on Windermere, and went out on
dark winter nights, sailing about with honest
Billy Balmer till they were both nearly frozen
to death, and the skiff was almost lost, and
"master had icicles a finger length hanging from
his hair and beard:" after they had been beating
about thus for hours, finding themselves not a
stone's throw from where they had embarked,