12 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



immediately after, and the drudgery of each day, so far 

 from being lessened by pleasant companionship, brought 

 him in contact with evil and profanity altogether new and 

 hateful to him. Looking back on this period of his life, he 

 says, in his opening address as President of the Society of 

 Arts in 1857, " How a youth is taught is as momentous a 

 matter for him and for the world as what he is taught. It 

 has been most justly declared by a grateful man that the 

 daily society of a good and noble woman is in itself an 

 education : such also, in its degree, is the society of a good 

 and noble man ; and the fellowship of the base and foolish 

 is the heaviest curse which can fall upon the young. All 

 our skill is acquired by imitation and practice, so that 

 instinctive mimicry and unconscious habit make us in 

 manners and acts what we are. It is no small matter, 

 then, side by side with whom the boy-apprentice works. 

 Ah me ! When I recall some of the enforced companions 

 of my apprentice days, I feel that I would make the greatest 

 sacrifices rather than permit a youth dear to me to encounter 

 similar temptations." 



His first impressions of the new scenes presented daily 

 to his view are graphically described in an Address he gave 

 to students in 1855. The portion we extract may justly be 

 reckoned autobiographical. 



" When the young student first visits the hospital, his faith 

 in God as the wise and merciful designer of man's body, 

 must, in sympathizing natures, undergo a painful shock. 



" He goes round the wards, we will suppose, with an in- 

 telligent senior, who describes to him the more important 

 cases. There is one patient propped up with pillows, and 

 panting for breath ; he has not lain, down for weeks, and 

 the dread of suffocation which looks out from his strangely 

 anxious and imploring eye compels him to snatch what 



