be presented, than to Wilson,--the student, the
Bohemian, the bookworm, the sportsman, the professor, the kindliest,
merriest, and most entertaining of genial companions,--the great hero of
the "Noctes Ambrosianae."

Not even Lamb--the quaint and merry companion, so full of quips and puns
that laughter lingered with any company he graced with his pathetic
little body and quizzical countenance--could rival Christopher as a
fountain of merriment and eternal good-cheer. His humor was not quiet
and subtle like Lamb's, but broad, rich, bordering on farce, and of
"imagination all compact." And Lamb could by no means rival him in
splendor of description, vivacity of retort, energy of criticism, or in
riotous and uproarious mirth. De Quincey alone could match the splendor
of his diction when describing outward sights and sounds, and De Quincey
had not a tithe of his intense love of Nature, and appreciation of her
glory and magnificence. Ruskin alone equals him in this, and he scarcely
reaches the height of rhetorical eloquence to which Wilson soars so
easily.

In these same "Noctes" we have descriptions of some of those nights
when, as Carlyle would have said, "there was much good talk." And Wilson
was mainly the talker. The chief characteristic of his discourse was its
prodigality of humor and its infinite variety. His imagination too ran
riot, and his wit sparkled ever and anon with a radiance all its own.

His memory was prodigious, and in his conversation he taxed it for
anecdotes and illustrations drawn from the four quarters of the globe,
and from the most remote and unusual stores of literary hoarding. His
mind was many-sided as well as keen, and he kept all his faculties in
full play, not excepting his sympathies, which were as broad as the
world of men.

Can we wonder that those who crowded the table where he sat, lingered on
till the daylight drove them from the board? or that no man who had had
him for a boon companion could ever be satisfied with another? Can we
wonder that the students who crowded his lecture-room after he became a
professor thought every other lecturer commonplace and dull? Not that he
gave them more information than others--perhaps he did not give them as
much; but he excited and inspired them. He quickened their minds, and
wakened their dormant faculties. Some of the white heat of his own
enthusiasm he communicated to their colder natures, and they enjoyed the
unusual warmth. Those who liste