ucated natives
into Kafiristan. He was sure the meeting would heartily join in giving
a vote of thanks to Mr. McNair for his interesting paper.

It will be noticed by those who read the paper closely flow remarkably
absent from it are all allusions to personal experiences, such as
fatigue, weariness, physical discomfort, sense of disappointment, or
other of the necessary incidents of so toilsome an effort and long
sacrifice. As was the character of the man, so is his paper, simple,
direct, without any of the exaggerations of peculiar features in the
exploration or rhetorical artifices of description to enhance the
effect of the discoveries of the traveller, and with an entire
suppression of himself. For all that appears in the paper, he might
have been engaged in the most enjoyable pursuit, free from all personal
risk or daily discomfort.

I desire to testify rather to what I knew of the man himself during a
close friendship of over eighteen years.

In youth he was very ardent and affectionate, but as he advanced in
years the hardships of his life and the long periods of solitude he
passed through seemed to mellow the natural demonstrativeness of his
nature, and he appeared to me to have suffered that chastening which
all men derive as their blessed portion from communion with Nature in
her loving and silent moods; the very ruggedness of mountain solitudes
speaking to the heart of man with a solemnity no tongue can reach. A
subtle writer in the London _Spectator_ of the 14th September last, in
the course of an article on "Clouds," has attempted to describe the
idealising lesson of her works to the spirit of man as "the tranquil
rhythm of this fair Nature, the hurrying throb of the human interests
it measures, there is the eternal poem of human life." In this wise, a
subdued sweetness in William McNair's nature remained, which was a
transfiguration of his ardent, buoyant, somewhat impulsive early
manhood.

On the cricket-field he was in his heartiest element. Men would make a
scratch team at the sound of his voice, just to be led by him as
captain. No mean field or batsman, he excelled in bowling. His resource
in taking wickets was only equalled by the good temper with which
adversaries walked away from the field with their bats after that
terrible McNair had done for their score, or their hopes of one. I have
seen him demoralise a whole team by the way in which he would take
wicket after wicket, within an hour, by