,392 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



are afraid to recommend coughy, which the honest grocers spell 

 coffee." At another time he speaks of his "everlasting cough, 

 a Malakhoff which neither French nor English are likely to 

 take." 1 A coughing performance, in which he is engaged at 

 intervals, through the night as well as day, " excites," he says, 

 " so much applause, that it is invariably encored." 



Excitable temperaments like his cannot but have times of 

 depression, but these he concealed so well that they were often 

 unsuspected. " Cheer up, my good friend/' he replies to a de- 

 sponding letter, " I can say, ' De profundis clamavi ;' I look back 

 with great horror at some of the dark and dreary images which 

 an overworked brain doomed me to have for daily and nightly 

 visitants, for weeks together, since Christmas onwards. Only 

 now [in April] is the heaving black sea of gloom beginning to 

 smooth its waves, and the horror of great darkness to pass away. 

 The fault lies in great part with the body, and that I hope to 

 mend by a week in the country." " My roving fancy," he tells 

 John Cairns, "is ever building castles in the air, or digging 

 dungeons in the nether depths. Well ! well ! there is a cure 

 even for that, and for the benefit of poor dreamers like me it 

 has been written, that ' neither height nor depth ' shall be able 

 to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

 You need not tell me I am wrong in my exegesis ; if I were 

 right, I should not say it to such a dweller in the Interpreter's 

 house as you. But I am right, so far as regards myself, at this 

 present moment." 



The two letters which follow are given nearly entire, the first 

 being addressed to a literary friend, and the second to Mr. 

 Daniel Macmillan :- - 



" It is always difficult to write to a distant friend, for one 

 cannot know but very generally how he is, and the tone of a 

 letter may be all out of keeping with his condition. 



" A strong feeling of this makes me reluctant to write this 

 evening, for I remember too well my own risings and fallings, 

 and wayward changes when ill, to be at all confident that I can 

 say anything that will be acceptable to you. Yet if I should 



1 Written during the siege of Sebastopol, with its Malakhuft' tower yet uiiattacked. 



