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He did not, however, live to enjoy that honour long. 

 From the year 1872, when a serious illness compelled 

 him to winter in the south of France, his health had 

 been broken. Yet he did not spare himself. He some- 

 times wrote three articles a day for weeks together, and 

 often in such pain that he had to write his " copy " 

 kneeling, because he could neither sit nor stand. For 

 the disease from which he suffered was angina-pectoris, 

 which contracts the chest with paroxysms of acutest 

 agony. But the end came suddenly, and it was with a 

 feeling of shocked surprise that on July i8th, 1876, 

 Edinburgh learned that the great journalist was dead. 

 The next day the news was all over the kingdom, and 

 as I have already said, nowhere out of Scotland did it 

 create such profound sensation as in London. For many 

 London pressmen were familiar with that big, burly figure 

 with the broad, unshapely shoulders, the enormous head 

 with the hat well on the back of it, the ruddy, spectacled 

 face with the tip-tilted nose and the clever, searching, 

 canny look. The late Mr. R. H. Hutton, of The Spectator, 

 in his way as remarkable a force in journalism as Russel 

 himself, said of him : " Russel of The Scotsman looks like 

 three of Dickens' best characters rolled into one with 

 the bald, benevolent head and spectacles of Pickwick, 

 the shrewd expression of Sam Weller, and the abrupt 

 enunciation of Alfred Jingle." 



To Alexander Russel, as a bluff, hearty hater of all 

 humbug and cant, as a humourist of the first water, 

 above all as a King among Anglers, I give my unqualified 

 admiration, and I think all broad-minded sportsmen who 

 read these pages will do the same. 



