390 Reviews and Notices of Booh. 



Teclinology as the science of the utilitarian arts, and expressed his 

 intention of at once giving a systematic course, " so that the Mu- 

 seum will minister to the Chair, not the Chair wait upon the 

 Museum." 



AS A TEACHER AND EXPOUNDER. 



" While many of Dr. Wilson's contemporaries could pursue a 

 train of research with greater ability, none perhaps could render 

 the new truth thus obtained so attractive by copious imagery and 

 varied illustration. The expansiveness of his style, which led to 

 his strictly scientific works being considered in some quarters too 

 diffuse, is a beauty in those where he appears as the illustrator of 

 our physical knowledge, for every figure tells, and every fresh 

 point of view has its own pecuhar value. His popularity as a 

 lecturer, both with his students and with the public at large, was 

 very great. This arose partly from his thorough knowledge of 

 the subjects he handled, but more from the felicity of his descrip- 

 tions, the clearness of his explanations, and the poetry and pathos 

 which rendered the whole beautiful. His little book on chemistry 

 in ' Chambers's Educational Course,' which is adapted for those 

 who desire a knowledge of the fundamental principles and leading 

 facts of the science, without entering into any great detail, has 

 already attained a sale of upwards of twenty-four thousand, and 

 that prose poem, the ' Five Gateways of Knowledge,' ^ has led 

 many to find a new world of thought and enjoyment in the old 

 region of their five senses. His treatise on Electricity and the 

 Electric Telegraph^ gives a most intelligible account of this won- 

 derful agency ; the ' Chemistry of the Stars' shows how he could 

 carry the fancy of his readers forward from the results of dry 

 analysis." 



" As instances of the extraordinary clearness with which Dr. 

 Wilson illustrated difficult points, I would refer to his exposition 

 of the numerical laws of chemistry in the educational treatise just 

 mentioned, which I think the most easily comprehensible in ex- 

 istence, and to his more popular description of the nervous system, 

 given in Dr. Reid's Life." 



" The beauty of Dr. Wilson's discourses and writings depended 

 not a little on his religion, and on his fine aesthetic taste. His 

 quotations from the Holy Scriptures, and references to spiritual 



1 



Macmillan & Co., Cambridge. 

 ^ These are printed together, and constitute Part 26 of the ' Travellers' 

 Library.' 



