176 r MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VII. 



me, or more tenderly remembered in connexion with happy 

 childhood (perhaps indeed for that very reason), it moved 

 me almost to tears. I felt the hysterica flassio, the gulp in 

 the throat, and should have fairly wept had I attempted to 

 read it aloud. The dignity, simplicity, and pathos of the 

 scene have never, I imagine, been excelled, and the won- 

 derful way in which the old romantic story momentarily 

 reveals God himself shaping all its events to the most im- 

 portant but far-distant issues, and yet leaves the human 

 interest in the tale to go forth unchecked by the awe or 

 even sense of the supernatural, struck me to-day as it never 

 did before. I spent two hours, which fleeted away, in 

 reading the account and thinking over it, ending with the 

 grand prophecy of Jacob as to the destinies of his de- 

 scendants, which always seems to me to resound like the 

 triumphal march of an army going forth conquering and to 

 conquer. For the blessing of Jacob on Ephraim and Ma- 

 nasseh I have another and a more subdued feeling. Many 

 a time, when I was a child, and in early youth, has mother 

 invoked on my head and my twin-brother's, as we slept 

 together, the benediction, 'The Angel which redeemed 

 me from all evil, bless the lads.' That prayer has been 

 answered in full for one of them, who bade me farewell 

 some twelve years ago, in assured hope of a blessed resur- 

 rection, and the other rejoices to know that he is the child 

 of many prayers." 



A pleasant week, at the close of the holidays, was spent 

 at a farm-house in East Lothian, where he "made the 

 acquaintance of a great many nice dogs," and was touched 

 to learn that his own terrier took his absence sorely to 

 heart, and refused food. " Give the dear beast," he writes, 

 " a taste of cream, or something good, in reward thereof ; " 

 and so back to town and to work. 



