366 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. XII. 



dismay with which the tidings had been heard, and the 

 grief with which they could not but regard the mementoes 

 around class specimens and diagrams without hope of 

 again hearing the voice that had expounded them. " Even 

 in classes never personally connected with him, the students 

 showed their sense of the common calamity, by the hushed 

 attention, and even reverence, with which they received 

 every allusion to his memory." 



For some days sorrow was felt in many hearts throughout 

 the city, not among any one class in particular, for rich and 

 poor, learned and unlearned, seemed equally affected. The 

 experience of one seemed that of all : " Though not much 

 in the habit of meeting with Professor Wilson, he felt 

 almost as if suffering from a family bereavement." 1 In 

 the Chamber of Commerce a touching allusion was made 

 by its Chairman, 2 before reading a report on the Industrial 

 Museum : " The Technological Chair promised to be one 

 of the most popular in the University ; and by none, next 

 to his own relatives and personal friends, will his loss be so 

 much deplored as by those who were more immediately 

 connected with him in his class, the laboratory, and the 

 Museum, even to their most humble dependants, who 

 worked as much from love as duty. Who, indeed, would 

 not have worked for Dr. Wilson 1 Though not a stone had 

 been laid of the building which was to be the Industrial 

 Museum of Scotland, it had obtained a name that reached 

 to distant lands, from which gifts were continually flowing 

 in to assist the Museum, established with so much diligence 

 and success." A lecture to this body had been promised 

 by Professor Wilson in the December following, the subject 



1 Mr. Charles Cowan, at a meeting of the Merchant Company, 

 Nov. 25. 



2 Mr. R. M. Smith. 



