At the end of the report of his fight with Firby, a correspondent of the _Morning Post_ thus sketches Belcher’s qualifications from personal acquaintance. “Belcher is a dashing, genteel young fellow, extremely placid in his behaviour, and agreeable in his address. He is without any remarkable appearance of superior bodily strength, but strips remarkably well, displaying much muscle. Considered merely as a bruiser, I should say he was not so much a man of science according to the rules of the pugilistic art, as that he possessed a style peculiar or rather natural to himself, capable of baffling all regular science, and what appeared self-taught or invented, rather than acquired by practice. He was remarkably quick, springing backwards and forwards with the rapidity of lightning. You heard his blows, but did not see them. At the conclusion of a round his antagonist was struck and bleeding; but he threw in his hits with such adroitness that you could not discern how the damage was done. His style was perfectly original, and extremely difficult to avoid or to withstand.” Again, “His style, like that of the great masters in every line, was truly ‘his own;’ the spectator was struck with its neatness and elegance—his opponent confused and terrified by its effects; while his gravity, coolness, and readiness, utterly disconcerted the fighting men with whom he was often opposed in mimic as well as actual combat. Add to this, that a braver boxer never pulled off a shirt, and we need hardly wonder at his eminent success, until an accident deprived him of one of the most valuable organs of man’s complex frame.” In his social hours, Jem was good-natured in the extreme, and modest and unassuming to a degree almost bordering upon bashfulness. In the character of a publican, no man entertained a better sense of propriety and decorum; and the stranger, in casually mixing with the Fancy in his house, never felt any danger of being offended or molested. It would be well if as much could be said of all sporting publicans. After his last defeat by Cribb, much of Belcher’s fine animal spirits departed. He was depressed and taciturn, and his health much broken by twenty-eight days’ imprisonment to which, with a fine, he was condemned for his breach of the peace by that battle. The old story too, for Jem was not prudent, is again to be told. His worldly circumstances had suffered with his health, and “The summer friends That ever wing the breeze of fair success, But fly to sunnier spots when winter frowns,”