I0 o MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. V. 



" I am now (February i3th) spending most of my time in 

 working for my lectures, not forgetting, however, mathe- 

 matics and German, in both of which I make satisfactory 

 progress. Well, we must hope that the future will belie the 

 past, and bring us the freedom from corroding anxiety 

 which we have never yet known. What a moral lesson I am 

 teaching you ! Meanwhile our hearts will not burn the less 

 warmly than they would do if gold were ours to command. 

 In proof whereof I shall give an example of my benevolence. 

 While I was reading away at electricity I heard the sound 

 of a flute on the steps, and thereafter the voice of an Irish- 

 man singing. I went to the door to give him a penny, and 

 found a poor, but happy-like blind man, who, taking the 

 coin as his due, accosted me, ' Och, yer honor, and couldn't 

 ye spare a bit ould hat, for mine was druv off by the wind 

 when I was playing yesterday in the Kirkcaldy boat, and 

 they wouldn't wait for me, nor for yer honor naither.' Pitying 

 the poor bare-headed man, I tried to get hold of some other 

 body's hat, and failing, gave him my own old one. My four- 

 and-sixpenny gossamer must do night as well as day-work 

 now, thanks to the blind Irishman." 



As letters in the two following months are the only 

 sources of information, we give several to his brother almost 

 entire. 



"Ap 



" I am writing on the evening of a day about which you 

 will have ceased to think in England; that is, the day 

 misnamed Fast-day, because the slowest in the year. The 

 dull, sepulchral clanging of the bells, and the silence of the 

 street, made the day dull, and the exceedingly sunny bright- 

 ness of the air drew me forth from my books. I wandered 

 down to the sea-shore near Granton, and loitered along the 

 verge of the sea, singing and picking up shells and sea- 



