1844-54. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



LECTURER AND AUTHOR. 



"Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit." 

 " He illuminated the Book of Nature as they did the Missals of old." 



IN the ten years that follow, we find the most important 

 part of George Wilson's life, so far as literary work is 

 concerned. The amount done seems more befitting one 

 strong in body, than the invalid on whose behalf our 

 sympathies have been excited. But one secret of his 

 unresting diligence lay in the belief that his life would be 

 a short one. " Don't be surprised," he said to a friend in 

 1845, "if any morning at breakfast you hear I am gone." 

 So with the shadow of death close at hand, he ever worked 

 as one whose days were numbered. At first this seems a 

 gloomy thought, but that to him it was far otherwise we 

 cannot doubt. " To none," he says, " is life so sweet as 

 to those who have lost all fear to die." l They who have 

 large store of health and strength are apt to lavish them 

 thoughtlessly on various objects, but such as he, husbanding 

 their strength for work alone, are frequently able to realize 

 what their stronger brethren only dream of. 



From this period to its close, his life was one long 

 sacrifice of pleasure to duty. While lecturing ten, eleven, 



1 " Life of John Reid," p. 264. 

 G.w. N 



