1 84 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



greater number of them passed from my recollection. Some, 

 however, retain a firm hold upon it, and I feel a pleasure, mingled 

 with sadness, in recalling them. There was Adam Wilson, for 

 instance, of the Six-foot Club, the prince of hammer-throwers, 

 whose fine manly figure was surpassed on the field only by that 

 of the illustrious patron of athletic sports whose surname he bore, 

 and who, on several successive occasions, by common consent, 

 directed the games and presided at the crowning festival. There 

 was his rival Scougal, the Innerleithen ox-feller, whose brawn 

 and muscle, broad shoulders and sinewy hand, drew admiration 

 and envy from many a rustic onlooker. There was H. G. Bell, 

 the senior Sheriff-substitute of Lanarkshire, another of the chief- 

 tains among the six-footers, formerly the getter-up, editor, and 

 mainspring of a periodical now defunct, but once highly popular, 

 yclept The Edinburgh Literary Journal, to which, in the days 

 of its prosperity, I enjoyed the honour of occasionally contri- 

 buting. 



H. G. B., although we have but rarely, and on most mournful 

 occasions met these many years back, I recall thee to my recol- 

 lection as one with whom I communed much in youth. Often 

 I have thought of thee as the earnest-souled aspirant after fame, 

 the bearer of the banner whose motto is Excelsior ! How labo- 

 riously thou toiledst in the field of literature ! How candidly, 

 discriminately, and disinterestedly thou performedst the critic's 

 part, thyself an author, historian, and poet, of no mean repute ! 

 But, above all, I associate with these musings the filial and 

 fraternal impulses which urged thee onward from boyhood, and 

 made thy path towards fame a path of love and of duty. That 

 thou didst well in the abandonment of a course which, ere this 

 time, might have crowned thee with immortal bays, I judge not ; 

 but never against the delicice of authorship the grand indepen- 

 dence of thought, native to a career in literature, wilt thou affect 

 to back the doubtful pleasures, I shall not call them vexations, 



