Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/257

221 WILLIAM BLA CKWOOD-. 22 i Lord M r was utterly beneath contempt that no professor of moral philosophy had ever been engaged in a cause of honour ; that all his friends had been representing him as a quiet, orderly man in fact, brought forward a thousand arguments which might have been of the utmost weight to a reasonable being but not just at present to Wilson ; he flung out of the room, crossed the lake, and sought a gallant naval officer, Captain Br, who, a true Sir Lucius OTrigger, said the matter was in good hands, and looked up his pistols. They adjourned to Elleray to wait the expected challenge : but on the evening of the following day, getting tired of inaction, they set out on a drive to see why the storm did not com- mence. Further search was endless. Lord M r and his friends had taken to their coach and fled ; they could not, however, get their horses out of the stables until they had paid an hotel bill of 120 and 20 to the landlord of Ullock's Hotel for damages. Thus the affair ended happily, and Wilson was able to return peaceably to Edinburgh to fulfil his new duties. Few men ever undertook so important a charge with so little preparation." " But there was," says one who listened to him, " a genius in Wilson ; there was grandeur in his conceptions, and true nobility in the tone and spirit of his lectures. I can compare them to nothing save the braying of the trumpet that sent a body of high-bred cavalry against the foe. ' Charge ! and charge home !' Wilson's action upon the better and more pure-minded of his pupils was pre-emi- nently beneficial. His lectures deeply influenced their characters for humanity, for unselfishness, for high and honourable resolve to fight the battle of