202 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VIII. 



Church. If the test cannot be wholly abolished, he pleads, 

 at least, for mitigation of its rigour. Happily a few more 

 years brought about its abolition ; and whether his pam- 

 phlet aided this result or not, it, at all events, served to 

 call forth expression of the estimation in which he was 

 held by the general public, and to show the striking union 

 in him of unflinching boldness in a right cause, with the 

 modest simplicity and gentleness which more usually cha- 

 racterised him. He was by this time recognised as " one 

 of two brothers who rank among the most distinguished 

 savans of Edinburgh. One of the two is the author of the 

 most learned and judicious antiquarian work which has of 

 late years been produced in Scotland. The other is a well- 

 known chemist, and the contributor, if we mistake not, of 

 most of those articles on scientific subjects in the ' British 

 Quarterly Review,' which we have read with so much 

 delight." In an article on the " Scottish University Tests 

 and the Glasgow Professorship of Chemistry," the " Spec- 

 tator " says, " Dr. George Wilson comes forward as one of 

 the most eminent British chemists, one who, though a young 

 man, has already achieved high scientific and literary repu- 

 tation, and has been for years engaged in teaching his special 

 science, to inform the Secretary for the Home Department, 

 in whose gift the appointment to the Glasgow chair prac- 

 tically rests, that because of these tests he cannot offer 

 himself as a candidate. Here is both hardship positive 

 and hardship comparative ; a hardship to be excluded, a 

 double hardship to be excluded when others to whom the 

 same objection applies, find themselves not thereby de- 

 barred." l The allusion here may be to devices for over- 

 coming the difficulty in the way, mentioned in the pam- 



1 "Spectator," September n, 1852. 



