1 857-5 8 - LABORIOUS CORRESPONDENCE. 315 



Museum, he urges "the duties which Merchant Companies 

 have to discharge, and its claims on their interest, protec- 

 tion, and encouragement. Most heartily did the Edinburgh 

 Merchant Company respond to the appeal, lending influen- 

 tial aid to the success of the Museum, and giving ready 

 co-operation to the schemes of " their own professor," as 

 they were wont to call Dr. Wilson. The delay in erecting 

 the promised buildings for the Museum a session of Par- 

 liament having passed without a vote of money for this 

 purpose was an intense disappointment, not only to the 

 Director himself, but to many public bodies, whose interest 

 he had secured, and from which memorials and deputations 

 had been sent. The site originally purchased was too 

 small for the necessary buildings, and much harassing 

 delay took place before even a promise of more ground 

 could be obtained. " No amount of business-writing," he 

 says to his brother, " seems to do otherwise than multiply 

 letters, and the endless labour I have had to go through 

 in reference to a better site for the Industrial Museum, 

 makes me sorry for myself. If Argyle Square be purchased 

 by Government, and a noble building erected there, whisper 

 into your grandchildren's ears, after I have become his- 

 torical, that Uncle George had a hand in that." To his 

 young nieces in Canada, Uncle George was an occasional 



founded originally at the suggestion of the Professors of the Edinburgh 

 University, and so warmly welcomed by the public, has been suppressed, 

 the link closely uniting Commerce and Manufactures to Science thus 

 being broken. "We require perpetually to transfer knowledge from 

 the wise to the unwise ; from the more wise to the less wise ; and such 

 a chair as this, with its associated Museum, is what, in commercial 

 language, would be called an entrepot^ or exchange for effecting such 

 transfers." ("What is Technology?" Inaugural Lecture for 1855-56, 

 p. 15.) It is evident no want of success attended this Chair, though 

 unendowed. 



