58 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



to examine it. Unfortunately I had made a very great mistake 

 as to the consistence, and instead of landing on solid ground, I 

 descended to my knee in a mass of mud and green weeds and 

 water. Immediately on feeling myself sinking, I made a con- 

 vulsive spring at the window, and grasping the stone lintel with 

 supernatural energy, raised myself with the utmost ease from 

 this quagmire, although unassisted by the desperation of the mo- 

 ment, I believe I could not have made my way as I did. My first 

 feeling on reaching solid ground was amazement, succeeded by 

 involuntary laughter at the absurd mistake of thinking a ditch 

 of water terra firma. With the utmost alacrity I immediately 

 proceeded to remove the mud from my nether limbs, and an 

 adjournment to the neighbouring river soon removed all the 

 adventitious stuff I had acquired in my luckless leap. I 

 laughed a good deal on thinking of it, and soon banished it from 

 my mind, nor the whole of that day did I think of it. But at 

 night while lying alone on my bed in utter darkness, when the 

 circumstance came back on me, it awakened thoughts of a fear- 

 ful description ; for the keep might have been fourteen feet 

 deep, as well as three or four, and I might have sunk and died 

 a most horrible death, and my mysterious disappearance must 

 have been a source of great sorrow to my friends ; and when I 

 thought of all these things, I was so horrified that I eagerly 

 courted sleep to banish thoughts of so terrible a description ; 

 and even yet, after the lapse of many a month, my heart throbs 

 with unusual emotions, and the thoughts excited are still pain- 

 ful and horrible. 



" The two preceding cases are curious in showing how false 

 the common idea is, that when causes of joy or grief are over, 

 the effects will cease ; but in all minds of aify power, both will 

 be immeasurably increased by reflection deepening their hues 

 and heightening their effects, and producing deep and inefface- 

 able impressions on the heart of the thinker. 



" There is another curious thing with reference to mental phe- 

 nomena, which I note down here as very curious and interesting, 

 that in poets and men of fervid, gorgeous imaginations, whose 

 minds are essentially non-mathematical, and who do not parti- 

 cularly care for sciences or mere matters of fact, their most 



