256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF gTR DANIEL WILSON. 



By HORATIO HALE. 



THE late President of Toronto University was distinguished 

 not only for his educational work and his achievements in 

 science, literature, and art, but also for the happy combination in 

 his mind and character of qualities which are commonly deemed 

 incongruous. An ardent votary of science, prepared to follow 

 every investigation of Nature to the utmost limit of actual knowl- 

 edge, and to welcome every accession to this knowledge, he was 

 equally firm in maintaining his belief in the religion which ex- 

 plained to him those mysteries of the universe that lay beyond 

 this limit. Strongly conservative of ancient landmarks in his 

 quality of artist and antiquary, he was in education and in poli- 

 tics fearlessly liberal and progressive. Endowed with an energy 

 of will and an intellectual power which inevitably brought him 

 to the leadership of any enterprise or institution in which he took 

 part, he was at the same time utterly devoid of personal ambi- 

 tion, and shrank from titular honors with the same earnestness 

 with which some are wont to seek them. Generous almost to a 

 fault and careless of the arts of money-making, his natural fore- 

 sight and indefatigable industry preserved him from the pecun- 

 iary troubles by which scholars and writers are too often ham- 

 pered, and secured for him throughout his life that good fortune 

 for which poor Burns vainly sighed, "the glorious privilege of 

 being independent." 



Sir Daniel Wilson was born in Edinburgh on the 3d of Janu- 

 ary, 1816. His father, Archibald Wilson, was a merchant of that 

 city ; his mother was a woman of rare natural gifts, who fostered 

 in her children the love of knowledge which they inherited from 

 her. Of a large family, only four two sons and two daughters 

 survived to mature age. The sons, George and Daniel, both 

 proved to possess talents which insured them early distinction. 

 George, a physician, became Regius Professor of Technology in 

 the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Industrial Mu- 

 seum of Scotland. Though he died at the early age of forty-two, 

 he had already gained a European reputation. To his biography, 

 written by his sister, Daniel contributed reminiscences which are 

 of interest as indicating the existence in childhood of tastes which 

 afterward became prominent. " Edinburgh," he writes, " was the 

 scene of all our youthful years, and that itself was no unimpor- 

 tant element in life's training. Among my earliest recollections are 

 scramblings on Arthur's Seat, where we knew every cleft and gul- 

 ly. A Saturday's ramble carried us away to old Roman Cramond, 

 where the sculptured eagle of the legionaries of the second cen- 



