I844-S4' HIS POWER AS A SPEAKER. l8l 



cough after he got into the carriage oh, Jessie ! what a 

 contrast it made at the time, and now, that part is over for 

 ever." One of our gifted men of letters, Dr. W. B. Hodg- 

 son, in a letter of January 1860, speaks of the " element of 

 childlike wonder which animated George Wilson, and which 

 he so well knew how to transfuse into others, or rather, 

 which he transfused into others without knowing how, and 

 by the mere force of sympathy. In listening to Wilson, 

 you not only increased your knowledge, your store of facts, 

 but you were delighted with the beauty and harmony of their 

 relations and interdependence; and few indeed are the 

 sermons that can leave so deep an impression of reverence 

 for Him whose works science interprets, as did the simplest 

 of George Wilson's compositions. There was such a charm- 

 ing play of fancy about his lectures, adorning but never 

 obscuring the accuracy of his observations, or the close 

 method of his arrangement. . . . He was one of the most 

 learned of our men of science, at once the most practical 

 and the most poetical, the most attractive lecturer and 

 effective teacher ; and never did a purer, gentler, kindlier 

 being exist in human shape." 



"In his hands," Professor Macdougall 1 remarks, "every 

 subject was felt to become not intelligible only, or even in- 

 teresting, but almost enchanting. The value and attractions 

 of knowledge were not merely understood, but intimately 

 felt and appreciated, when exemplified in the joyous activity 

 and happy dispositions of one, who drew so evidently and 

 so largely from knowledge the aliment of his energies, and 

 the materials of varied and exquisite enjoyment." 



In the spring of 1846, he was requested by the Young 

 Men's Society to give a short course of lectures on the 

 " Relation of Physical Science to the doctrines mooted in 



1 Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. 



