248 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



smile which is extorted by excruciating pain, and forms the fit ac- 

 companiment of a groan, but he smiles with joy as he chants his 

 death-song. He thinks with pride and joy on the heroic deeds he 

 has performed ; how he has roamed from sunset to sunrise through 

 the forest depths, and changed the sleep of his foemen into death. 

 He beholds on all sides dancing around him the noble spirits of his 

 heroic ancestors; and nearest to him, and almost, he imagines, 

 within reach of his embrace, he sees the ghost of his father, who first 

 put into his hand and taught him the use of the scalping-knife and 

 tomahawk ; who has come from the heavens far beyond the place 

 of mountains and of clouds to quaff the death-song, and to welcome 

 to the land of the great hereafter the spirit of his undegenerate son. 

 The chief is inflamed with a glorious rapture that exalts him beyond 

 the sensation of pain, and conquers agony. " He holds no parley 

 with unmanly fears." 



" The son of Alcnomon has ceased to endure ; 

 He consented to die, but he scorned to complain." 



" ' It seems a duty incumbent on us all to think well of ourselves 

 and of our powers. But then comes the question, Where falls the 

 limit to be fixed at which this feeling must cease ? We answer, 

 Nature and the real necessities of life discover to a man the actual 

 extent of his powers. Nature, reality, and truth, are the only 



u 'To show that the innate consciousness of power often sustains 

 a person amidst severely trying difficulties, we may relate a well- 

 authenticated anecdote of Nelson. When a very young man in the 

 rank of midshipman, he was returning from India on sick leave, with 

 his health broken by the climate, and his spirits depressed by the 

 feeling that he was cast off from his profession, and that he could 

 never rise further in it. Sitting one day solitarily, meditating on all 

 this, his thoughts reverted to the great naval heroes who had fought 

 and won his country's battles, and gained for England the empire 

 of the deep ; when a bright ray of hope seemed to shine before him, 

 that filled his soul with intense pleasure, and made him exclaim : " I 

 will be a hero ; England will not cast me off; England's king will 

 be my patron and my friend." He often after spoke of this ray 

 which did indeed blaze forth, and lighted his path to renown, till 

 the noble watch-word of Trafalgar insured his last and crowning 



