ALEXANDER WILSON. 27 



Being fond of music and dancing, and having been 

 invited to a ball for which he was somewhat ill 

 suited, the fashionable dress for young men at that 

 period consisting of knee-breeches, white silk stock- 

 ings, and black kutikens^ Anglice gaiters. Wilson 

 was reduced to his last pair of thread stockings, 

 worse for the wear, and impure in the colour ; and 

 being altogether deficient of the gaiters, he whitened 

 the upper portion of the leg with chalk, and com- 

 pleted the deception by painting the nether part in 

 imitation of the gaiters; and in this disguise, he 

 figured off with his usual lightness of step, without 

 being discovered. 



Disappointed and chagrined with a career so very 

 unsettled, he sunk into a state of great despondency, 

 which brought on an inflammatory attack which 

 threatened to fix upon his lungs ; yet, while labour- 

 ing under such severe distress both of body and mind, 

 he never lost sight of those religious principles which 

 appear to have been early implanted by his anxious 

 and kind parents, 



" To lift his thoughts from things below, 

 And fead them to divine." 



We give an extract from a letter written in this 

 illness to his friend Mr. Crichton, which describes 

 both his feelings and hopes from the consolations of 

 religion. " Driven by poverty and disease to the 

 solitudes of retirement, at the same period when 

 the flush of youth, the thirst of fame, and the ex- 

 pected applause of the world, welcomed me to the 



