Il8 LIFE OP GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VI. 



dullest feel enamoured of it. Some of those early lectures 

 are still vividly remembered, notwithstanding the lapse of 

 time. A sweet clear voice added to the charm; and 

 foreign students, with an imperfect knowledge of English, 

 were often advised to attend him in preference to other 

 teachers, as being more easily followed. As the judgment 

 of contemporaries is more to be relied on than that sup- 

 plied from memory, and perhaps tinged by influences of 

 later years, we shall give Edward Forbes' s opinion in 1844, 

 as communicated in a letter to his friend Dr. Percy : 

 " Wilson is one of the best lecturers I ever heard, remind- 

 ing me more of the French school than our humdrum 

 English, and is a man of high literary taste, and great 

 general knowledge. Of his chemical views I know that 

 Graham here [London] speaks in the highest terms, which 

 he does not bestow on any other Edinburgh man." Had 

 his health and strength enabled him, he would have long 

 been a most successful teacher ; but general feeble health, as 

 a friend has truly said, " made his life of public teaching one 

 long and sad trial. How nobly, how sweetly, how cheerily 

 he bore all those long baffling years ; how his bright, active, 

 ardent, unsparing soul lorded it over his frail but willing 

 body, making it do more than seemed possible, and as it 

 were by sheer force of will ordering it to live longer than 

 was in it to do, those who lived with him and witnessed 

 this triumph of spirit over matter, will not soon forget. It 

 was a lesson to every one of what true goodness of nature, 

 elevated and cheered by the highest and happiest of all 

 motives, can make a man endure, achieve and enjoy." 1 



Of the relaxation obtained in some degree by the return 

 of summer, we have specimens in one or two letters, 

 forming pleasant episodes in his outer life. 



1 "Horse Subsecivse," Second Series, p. 105. .. 



