AND ANGLING SONGS. 187 



apologist, intent, not on the elucidation of some historic ques- 

 tion, but on the swerve and bearings of his float or top-piece 

 which, in that water of dearth, so rarely indicated the toyings of 

 a trout or finnock with the worm it superintended. A stolen 

 march, once or twice in the course of the twelvemonth, to the 

 Eachaig in Argyleshire, or other river in the same quarter, is, I 

 am told, all that survives in evidence of an affection buried, like 

 the regards of literary fame, once so active in his heart's heart, 

 under the pressure of professional expediency. 



Prominent among the anglers connected with St. Ronan's 

 Club was its chieftain and ruling spirit, whose ' wildly regal 

 countenance,' as it has been termed, would have formed an 

 appropriate frontispiece to the records of a more chivalrous age 

 than the one he lived in. By all who recollect Professor Wilson 

 in those days, and they were those of his intellectual manhood, 

 the felicity of this descriptive expression will be fully appre- 

 hended. On the brow, unadorned by art, there seemed ever to 

 rest a crown of majesty, which, at times, when the imagination 

 was at work within, dilated, so as to form a luminous halo recog- 

 nisable to the eye of sense, and indicative of his privileged com- 

 munion with the world spiritual. Artists and sculptors by the 

 dozen have in vain attempted to depict these rapturous trances 

 or moods of inspiration as they seized upon and illuminated the 

 features of this great and gifted man. I have scanned the repre- 

 sentations of the best of them, of Raeburn, Watson Gordon, 

 Duncan, Lauder, Fillans, and Steell, but the living material, as 

 it was wont to be kindled up by the ideal element, has passed 

 away from us unrepresented. The breadth and massive grandeur 

 of the brow, the flash and fire of the eye, combined with the 

 quivering of the eloquent lip and lion-like nostrils, are but 

 feebly brought back to our recollections in the works of the 

 pencil, the etching-tool, and the chisel ; in the portraits, engrav- 

 ings, and busts which remain to perpetuate what he appeared 



