94 NIM ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



son pre-eminent both as to seat and hand ; and although he 

 may have lost a little of the dash that seldom accompanies us 

 beyond our fortieth year,* 1 have reason to believe, that take 

 him for all in all 



" O'er the plains, or in the dell, 

 O'er the mountain's savage swell," 



there is no man in Scotland who rides nearer to hounds than he 

 does, the whole season throughout. And considering the number 

 of years he has been with hounds, and the nature of the country 

 in which he has followed them, he has been particularly lucky 

 in his falls, of which no doubt he has had his share. He never 

 broke more than one bone, and that was in a fall on the road, a 

 very few seasons back, and I will give his account of the acci- 

 dent, and the treatment he received after it. Having pitched 

 on the point of his shoulder, as well as from certain sensations 

 he experienced, he apprehended a fracture to have taken place. 

 The country doctor could find none, and the consequence was, 

 twelve days of -severe suffering, and as many nights without 

 sleep. " This will not do," said the duke to him. " You must 

 go immediately to Edinburgh and let Listen see you. 77 That 

 skilful surgeon soon detected a fracture close to the shoulder- 

 joint, and having reduced it, sent his brother sportsman*!* home 

 to Dalkeith in his own carnage, quite free from pain. Having 

 said this, it is scarcely necessary to state that Williamson made 

 one of the very numerous party at the dinner given to his skilful 

 surgeon, and brother sportsman, on his quitting Edinburgh for 

 the English metropolis, of whom the following anecdote is told 

 relative to his practice : 



A female patient had the misfortune to lose her nose, and he 

 made her a new one, by the late clever invention of drawing 

 down the skin of the forehead and filling it with some soft sub- 

 stance. " Now is your time," said he, as he was forming it ; 

 " will you have a Roman or a Grecian nose ?" " Non cuicunque 

 datum est habere nasum," some people, says Martial, are 

 denied this feature altogether ; and if its only use was to curl it 

 in scorn or in pride, as he (Martial) implies, its absence might 

 be dispensed with in the human race, however indispensable in 

 the canine. 



* I take Williamson's age to be about forty-five, hut I omitted ascer- 

 taining the fact. In what is called a " hill run," I believe all men take 

 their hats off to him. His light weight of course tells. 



1" Mr. Listen was for many years a constant attendant on hounds in 

 the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, particularly on those hunted by 

 Williamson. 



