12 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



any of us." Another says : "He excited our admiration by his ex- 

 cellence in fishing;" while, in regard to "mental superiority," he 

 adds, "he was a capital scholar, and further in advance of the 

 generality of the boys at Mearns than he outshone his competitors 

 in after life." 



That, with all this many-sided ability, and the undoubted con- 

 sciousness of superior power, he was a prime favorite among his 

 fellows, is not difficult to believe, when we find how affectionate 

 and magnanimous was his nature ; a nature in which the develop- 

 ment of soul and body, of intellect and feeling, attained a harmony 

 so rare. The combination of these gifts in such goodly proportion 

 enabled him to enter, with a sympathy destitute of all affectation, 

 into the feelings and pursuits of persons of the most diverse char- 

 acter; and throughout all the exuberance of his literary activity, 

 much as there is in its earlier stages of impetuosity, and sometimes 

 even sansculottism, there is nowhere, from beginning to end, one 

 trace of malignity or envy. Even such was he in those happy boy- 

 ish days, when he " bathed his feet in beauty" by the banks of the 

 Yearn, and nourished "a youth sublime" in the pure and healthful 

 atmosphere of the dear old Manse. 



I pass with reluctance from this happy period, to which my 

 father's heart ever turned with a freshness of delight which years 

 and sorrows seemed rmly to increase. The chapter may fitly close 

 with his own account of the feelings with which he bade farewell 

 to that beloved parish, never mentioned wdthout benediction and 

 eulogium. 



" Then this was to be our last year in the parish — now dear to us 

 as our birthplace ; nay, itself our very birthplace— for in it from the 

 darkness of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away 

 from the region of cloud and mountain, Ave felt that most probably 

 never more should we return. For others, who thought they knew 

 us better than we did ourselves, had chalked out a future life for 

 young Christopher North — a lite that was sure to lead to honor, 

 and riches, and a splendid name. Therefore we determined, with a 

 strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of passion, to make the most — the 

 best — of the few months that remained to us of that, our wild, free, 

 and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled by those inexorable 

 laws, which, once launched into the world, all alike — young and 

 old — must obey. Our books were flung aside — nor did our old 



