1 68 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VII. 



After speaking of his baffled hopes in connexion with the 

 experiments alluded to, which amounted in number, at the 

 lowest estimate, to two hundred, he writes to Dr. Cairns on 

 March ist : "But what are all these things, and any 

 amount of intellectual disappointment and grief . . . com- 

 pared with the sorrow of seeing my poor cousin hopelessly, 

 fatally ill 1 He is dying before our eyes, and the doctors 

 hold out no hope of amendment. Tubercular disease, 

 phthisis (or to use the plainest word), consumption, has set 

 its fatal seal upon him. It has not yet gone far, but you 

 know that in that disease the beginning is the end. James 

 knows he is dying. In a house full of invalids like ours, with 

 the shadow of the grave always over it, great plainness of 

 speech can be used on such a matter. He is weak in body, 

 but little changed mentally. He speaks and reads very 

 little, spending the day in brooding meditation. But now 

 and then old gleams come out, and from conversation with 

 him I find that the consolations of the gospel are not failing 

 him in his time of trial. I am sure, indeed, that he enjoys 

 as perfect peace as one of his temperament, suffering from 

 his ailment, can do. Pray for us all, my dear friend. What 

 would I not give for you beside us ? ... I shall write very 

 soon. At present I am harassed exceedingly, and can send 

 only this incoherent scrawl." 



On the 2oth of the same month he gives further proof 

 that James's time on earth will be short, and adds, " For 

 all this I would have prepared you by an earlier letter, but 

 all my spare time, the very little that remains after my 

 weary, sickening, laboratory work, has been spent for you in 

 another way. I have been copying the essay [by James] on 

 Pantheism, the Trinity, etc., for you. It is addressed to 

 you, and you may consider it his last legacy. . . . Indeed, 



