88 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



act, they agreed to lay the foundation-stone of a little fishing-hut, 

 and this they did with tears. 



" They parted there, in that dim and solemn place, and recom- 

 mended each other to God's eternal care. 



" The one brother was drowned at sea. After the first agony 

 was over, the recollection of that parting flashed upon the mind of 

 the survivor ; he at last found courage to go there, and in a state 

 of blindness and desolation sat down upon the very stone. At last 

 he opened his eyes, the tarn smiling with light ; the raven croaking 

 as before when they parted ; all the crags seem the same ; the sheep 

 are in the same figures browsing before them ; he almost expects 

 to find his brother at his side ; he then thinks of shipwreck and 

 agony of all kinds. 



" Next time he sits calmly and thinks upon it all ; he even now 

 loves the spot, and can talk of it. 



" I one sweet summer day went along with him and heard the 

 melancholy tale. 



" Then, whoever goes to that sublime solitude, muse with holy 

 feelings, and with the wildness of nature join human sympathies." 



But there were other pursuits besides poetry that formed a part 

 of my father's fife at Elleray too prominent and characteristic to be 

 passed unnoticed. Of these his various commonplace-books contain 

 not a few memoranda, strangely intermixed with matters of a 

 graver or more sentimental kind. Among the other amusements 

 with which he diversified life in the country, boating was one of the 

 principal. As may be supposed, this was a favorite diversion in the 

 lake country, and Wilson's taste for it was cultivated with a zeal 

 that, in fact, became a passion. The result was a degree of skill 

 and hardihood beyond that of most amateurs. He had a small fleet 

 on Windermere, the expense of maintaining which was undoubtedly 

 very considerable.* Of the numerous boatmen required to man 

 these vessels there was one whose name became at Elleray familiar 

 as a household word — the faithful Billy Balmer. Billy was the 

 neatest and best rower on Windermere, and knew that beauteous 

 water from head to foot, in all her humors, from sunrise to night- 



* Among the miscellaneous jottings, from which I have been extracting above, I find such 

 items as the following: — " Endeavor, and masts and sails, £160; ballast, £15-£175;" "Eliza, £30;" 

 " Endeavor, £150 ;" "Palafox, £20;" "Jane, £180;" "additional Endeavor, £25;" " Cjyde, Billy, 

 Snail, £10." The names of his sailing vessels were— The Endeavor, The Eliza, The Palafox, The 

 Eoscoe, The Clyde, The Jane, The Billy, besidos a fine ten-oared Oxford barge, called Nil Timeo. 



