" Cbrtetopber Hortb" 



difficult to wean one's affections from the weapon which 

 one has constantly handled up to, say, mid-manhood. I 

 confess myself that I would rather to-day shoot with the 

 good old double muzzle-loader, which was my familiar 

 friend forty years ago, than with the very latest improve- 

 ment in breech-loaders. I don't say that there is any 

 comparison between the two ; there is not a point in 

 which the breech-loader is not immeasurably superior to 

 the muzzle-loader. But as a matter of sentiment I still 

 cling to the old friend of my youth, just as Christopher 

 did to his beloved flint-lock. 



On March 29th, 1837, Professor Wilson suffered an 

 irreparable loss in the death of his wife, whom he idolised. 

 I doubt whether he ever really recovered from that shock, 

 which for a time almost deprived him of reason. The 

 world was dark to him henceforth, and there were only 

 stray gleams of sunshine. 



George Borrow, describing in " Lavengro " the death of 

 his father, a man of vast frame and great bodily strength, 

 remarks : " The strongest forms do not endure the longest, 

 the very excess of the noble and generous juices which 

 they contain being the cause of their premature decay." 

 John Wilson affords an illustration of the truth of that 

 remark, as indeed did George Borrow himself, for the 

 " mighty Lavengro," whose physique when I knew him 

 at the age of fifty was magnificent, fell into a melancholy 

 wreck of manhood for some time before his death. 



It was in 1850, when he was but sixty-five, that the 

 fatal stroke fell which shattered the splendid frame of 

 Christopher North for ever. One of his pupils thus 

 describes the painful scene ; 



