assurance than that, Professor Wilson may be
rated, at the time I speak of, as the flower of all Protestant
leapers. Not having the Cardinal's foible of connecting any vanity
with this little accomplishment, knowing exactly what could and what
could _not_ be effected in this department of gymnastics, and speaking
with the utmost simplicity and candour of his failures and his
successes alike, he might always be relied upon, and his statements
were constantly in harmony with any collateral testimony that chance
happened to turn up.

Viewed, therefore, by an eye learned in gymnastic proportions, Mr.
Wilson presented a somewhat striking figure: and by some people he was
pronounced with emphasis a fine looking young man; but others, who
less understood, or less valued these advantages, spoke of him as
nothing extraordinary. Still greater division of voices I have heard
on his pretensions to be thought handsome. In my opinion, and most
certainly in his own, these pretensions were but slender. His
complexion was too florid; hair of a hue quite unsuited to that
complexion; eyes not good, having no apparent depth, but seeming mere
surfaces; and in fine, no one feature that could be called fine,
except the lower region of his face, mouth, chin, and the parts
adjacent, which were then (and perhaps are now) truly elegant and
Ciceronian. Ask in one of your public libraries for that little 4to
edition of the _Rhetorical Works of Cicero_, edited by Schuetz (the
same who edited _AEschylus_), and you will there see (as a frontispiece
to the 1st vol.) a reduced whole length of Cicero from the antique;
which in the mouth and chin, and indeed generally, if I do not greatly
forget, will give you a lively representation of the contour and
expression of Professor Wilson's face. Taken as a whole, though not
handsome (as I have already said), when viewed in a quiescent state,
the head and countenance are massy, dignified, and expressive of
tranquil sagacity.

Thus far of Professor Wilson in his outward man, whom (to gratify you
and yours, and upon the consideration that my letter is to cross the
Atlantic), I have described with an effort and a circumstantiation
that are truly terrific to look back upon. And now, returning to the
course of my narrative, such in personal appearance was the young man
upon whom my eyes suddenly rested, for the first time, upwards of
twenty years ago, in the study of S. T. Coleridge--looking, as I said
before, li