72 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IV. 



death, we can but very rarely feel otherwise. All plans 

 were cast aside, and George hastily packing up his books 

 and papers, bade good-bye to the friends he had made in 

 London. Hastening to Edinburgh by way of Liverpool, he 

 reached it in time to bear a part in the last sad rites with 

 which his cousin's remains were committed to the dust, in 

 that hallowed spot, where now he and two others of the 

 group of mourners present on that April day are laid to 

 rest. 



In a letter to Daniel, written soon after his return, he 

 says : 



" Catherine was little altered ; a little more emaciated 

 than when I left her, but serene and beautiful. I thought 

 her very like her mother, as I remember her. I kissed the 

 cold, blue lips, and wished I had but been in time to have 

 bidden her farewell. Every cause of sorrow that embittered 

 her life seems to have been lessened, as she prepared for 

 death, and the kindly, affectionate feelings she had for all 

 of us were in full force. ... I remember the thousand 

 kindnesses she showed me, from her earliest days ; the 

 generous presents which afforded a thoughtless schoolboy 

 the means of gratifying many an eager desire, and the mani- 

 fold unnameable favours freely rendered to an often un- 

 gracious recipient. The dead are hallowed. To think of 

 them as they lived, is, with me, to think only of their love 

 and their noble qualities ; if the image of faults comes back 

 with their memory to me, it so swiftly reminds me of my 

 unkindness to them, that I dare not, even if I would, think 

 evil of them. Catherine suffered little before her death ; 

 she retained her intellect unimpaired to the last, and with 

 most stedfast declarations of firm hope in Christ, increasing 

 as death drew near, she sighed away her spirit, and went to 

 be with God. James was desolate and woebegone, but by 



