LITERARY AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 403 



f;iinter, and then died quite away ; when two of the creatures came 

 from the circle, and took their station, one at the head, the other at 

 the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not louder than 

 the twittering of the awakened woodlark before it goes up the 

 dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The 

 flower-bier stirred ; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, 

 and in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever, the very 

 dews glittering above the buried fairy. A cloud passed over the 

 moon ; and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily 

 away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. 

 Then the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before, through 

 all her streams and falls ; and at the sudden leaping of the waters 

 and outbursting of the moon, we awoke." 



I know not what the custom of authors is with regard to their 

 own works, but this is true, that Professor Wilson never read what 

 he wrote after it was published. He never spoke of himself but 

 with the greatest humility. If egotism he possessed, it belonged 

 entirely to the playful spirit of his writings, as seen in the lighter 

 touches of the " Noctes." It was this humility that gave so great 

 a charm to his graver conversation ; and in listening to him, you 

 felt perfectly convinced that truth was the guiding principle of all 

 he said. There was no desire to produce an impression by startling 

 theories, or by careless off-hand bits of brilliancy — the glow without 

 heat. Simple, earnest, eloquent, and vigorous, his opinion carried 

 the weight with it which belongs to all in whom implicit confidence 

 rests. I never knew any one the truth of whose nature, at a glance, 

 was so evident ; not a shadow of dissemblance ever crossed that 

 manly heart. His sympathies are best understood in examples of 

 the love which gentle and simple bore to him. 



Fortunately, one of the few letters I ever received from him has 

 been preserved. It brings the reader to 1842, when it will show 

 him in one of his happiest moods. He has shaken the dust of the 

 pavement from his feet, and pitched his tent for the time being on 

 the pastoral slopes of a retired valley, the beautiful boundary of the 

 river Esk, renowned in story for the adventures of " Young Loch- 

 invar." There, in the spring of the year, he rambled, full of inter- 

 est and occupation, not angling, or loitering through day-dreams by 

 holm or shaw, but looking on with approving eye, suggesting and 

 aiding, as circumstances required, in the appointment of a new 



