230 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



in cultivating the true sine quibus non of independence, indi- 

 vidual or national, viz., pluck and the art of self-defence. With 

 the gloves, during his stay at Oxford, the Professor is reputed to 

 have been a stunning hand ; and had the chirothecce or ccestus- 

 lined gauntlets been then in vogue, the hide of the Phalerian bull 

 or rhinoceros, instead of the soft chamois-covered mufflers 

 sported nearly a century before by Jack Broughton, many the 

 cerebrum that would have needed a numskull's share of the os 

 frontis to keep it together in phrenological compactness. In 

 leaping, wrestling, running, yachting, and rowing, John Wilson 

 also excelled. To his pre-eminence in these exercises, Mrs. 

 Gordon, in the admirable Memoir of her father, frequently refers, 

 recording with filial pride, among other feats, the remarkable one 

 of clearing on a dead level twenty-three feet at a single leap. 

 ' This achievement,' it is stated, ' took place in the presence of 

 many spectators, at a bend of the Cherwell, a tributary of the 

 Isis, where it glides beautifully through the enamelled meads of 

 Christ Church, the leap being taken across the stream.' 



In respect to speed of foot, there is fresh on my memory an 

 instance of the Professor's superiority, shown at a period of his 

 life when active exercise of every kind had been laid aside, in 

 exchange for literary pursuits and sedentary habits. It was on 

 the occasion of a short, good-humoured contest, provoked by a 

 member of the Edinburgh Six-foot Club, whom nature had pro- 

 vided with a pair of stilts that looked as if they might almost 

 have kept pace with the seven-league boots of fairy romance. A 

 practised runner, at the zenith of his speed, and the Professor's 

 junior by at fewest twenty years, the odds were mightily in his 

 favour ; and there could be no doubt, judging from the self-reliant 

 alacrity with which he pounced upon the challenge, half-jestingly 

 and half -seriously made, that he so considered them. The whole 

 affair was proposed, arranged, and executed in the course of a 

 few minutes, on a piece of high-road within three miles of Edin- 



