Notices oj the Life of Professor Wilson. 1 87 



the sacredaess of medicine as a profession and scientific life in 

 general, more lofty than have alraost been heard even from the 

 pulpit, and to have illustrated them in practice ; to have enforced 

 the subjection of all knowledge to one Name, the highest in earth 

 and heaven ; to have conquered by faith in a life-long struggle 

 with pain and suffering ; and to have wrought out the work of the 

 day placidly and devoutly till the night came; — these, in any, and 

 especially in the leaders of science, are processes and results 

 greater than can be described in the transactions of any society, 

 or preserved in any museum." 



AVc conclude these notices from the North British Review with 

 a beautiful tribute of affection from the pen of his brother Dr. D. 

 Wilson of Toronto, published in the *' Canadian Journal," for 

 March. 



" Death has been busy of late among Edinburgh men whom I 

 counted my personal friends. Dr. Samuel Brown, Professor Ed- 

 ward Forbes, and Hugh Miller, have followed one another to the 

 grave within a brief period, and ere the past year drew to a close. 

 Dr. George "Wilson was added to the number of those who live 

 only in honored memory. Dying at the early age of forty-one, 

 when a career full of rich promise appeared only opening before 

 him, and his mind seemed to be ripening in many ways for a great 

 life-work : those who knew his capacity and his genius regard all 

 that he had accomplished as insignificant indeed when compared 

 with what he would have done if spared to those years in which 

 men chiefly fulfil the promises of youth. Yet what he did accom- 

 plish, amid many and sore impediments to progress, is neither poor 

 nor of small amount. Nor is it a light thing now to remember 

 that one whose years of public life have been so few, and even 

 these encroached on by the ever increasing impeiiments of failing 

 health, has been laid in his grave amid demonstrations of public 

 sorrow such as have rarely indeed been accorded, in that native 

 city of his, to Edinburgh's greatest men. This was due even 

 more to the genial kindliness and worth of a noble Christian man, 

 than to the unwearied zeal of a popular public teacher, and an 

 enthusiastic student of science. His loss to his university is great, 

 but to his friends it is irreparable. In him the faith of science, 

 and the nobler faith of the Christian, were blended into perfect 

 harmony : for no doubt springing from half-revealed truths of 

 science ever marred the serene joy of his faith while looking at 



