Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

BEHIND THE SCENES. 315
two of his own, would not be very indulgent towards
Miss Margaret and her party, on that occasion at
least.
These scraps of hasty letters take us behind the
scenes, and let us see how hard it was to keep all
in working order : and bow doubly hard to drive a
winged steed in the vehicle which is to carry your
eggs to market, over all the rough roads and harsh
macadam of the half-made ways. It is much steadier
driving nowadays, when the teams are so much tamer,
and the roads crushed smooth by endless merchan-
dise. And yet perhaps it was a different rate of
going, with all its risks and continual danger of
upsetting, in the old heroic days.
It is not necessary here to enter into the details of
Wilson's private history, which have already formed
the subject of a biography—well and modestly done, so
far as he was concerned, though with many mistakes
in regard to other people—by his daughter ; nor of his
legend—the myth and tradition of Christopher North
—his crutch, his convivialities, the symposia in which
he was the chief figure, which originated in the earliest
days of the Magazine, and continued so long. He
lived to be an old man—one of the landmarks of
the faithful city which has a knack of turning its
favourites into demigods. A Norse demigod, not a
Greek, was Wilson, with his yellow locks hanging
about his great shoulders. It is one of the recollec-
tions of my early days to have been taken to see
him—a young writer, much abashed with so novel a
character—when he was near the end of his life.
My companion and patron was Dr Moir, the gentle
"Delta" of Blackwood, the well -beloved physician,