306 MEMOIR OF GEOEGE WILSON. CHAP. VII. 



the street, and in a few minutes life was extinct. The cause 

 was supposed to be aneurism of the heart. There could scarcely 

 be a more touching sight than when George, pale and feeble, 

 entered the room, and passed slowly on crutches through the 

 crowd to the bed on which the corpse had been laid, to see if it 

 were really true, and not a horrible dream. Alas ! at such 

 times our hearts know the truth, even while the senses try to 

 disbelieve it. 



James Eussell at once joined the sad circle, and spent a few 

 days with them. On his departure George wrote, according to 

 promise, to report progress : " I may dismiss myself in a sen- 

 tence," he says, " by stating that I am excellently well, and my 

 foot mending, to use a peculiarly expressive phrase." 



A few weeks later, a visitor from Glasgow having carried 

 back gloomy accounts to James, he writes re-assuringly, " I am 

 really improving ; I was half expecting I should require a touch 

 of caustic from the surgeons, but things are looking so well that, 

 in the meanwhile, I expect to dispense with their tender mercy. 

 I am out every day ; yesterday I made a tripodal journey round 

 the Willow Grove garden four times. Can I give you a better 

 proof that I am really recovering? I will hereafter always 

 honestly inform you of my state, but at present I have not seen 

 a surgeon for a fortnight and more, and I have dined out twice 

 within a week. 



" I must make fresh claims on your sympathy with me as 

 one involved in the miseries of 'flitting.' Every day reveals 

 some new and more horrible phasis of the detestable crisis we 

 are in. Blankets, table-covers, even carpets, are taking wings to 

 themselves and fleeing away ; and I have to keep a watchful 

 eye on my crutches, lest they abscond in company with some 

 migrating grate, and I be ' left lamenting.' I cannot say that I 

 am, like Niobe, ' voiceless in my woe.' Is it not one of the 

 privileges of a free Briton, and healthful to the lungs (and 

 spleen}, to grumble, and that loudly too ? I liken myself rather 

 to Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage, presenting to the 

 wdrld, nay, to the universe, the edifying spectacle of ' a great 

 man struggling against the storms of fate.' With what a deep 

 sympathy I read the answer of the colliers to the question, 'Why 



