20 EAELY YEARS. 



This young gentleman follows the profession of a Writer 

 to the Signet (which, as I have told yon, is the name for 

 the highest class of attorneys in Edinburgh), but forms, as 

 Mr Jameson assured me, a brilliant exception to the 

 neglect with which matters of science are commonly 

 treated by the members of the profession. He is very 

 young, many years junior to his more celebrated brother, 

 and no casual observer would suspect them to be of the 

 same family. I have already described to you the exterior 

 of the poet. James is a thin, pale, slender, contemplative- 

 looking person, with hair of rather a dark coloui*, and 

 extremely short-sighted. In his manners, also, he is as 

 different as possible from his brother ; his voice is low, 

 and his whole demeanour as still as can be imagined. In 

 conversation, he attempts no kind of display, but seems 

 to possess a very peculiar vein of dry humour, which ren- 

 ders him extremely diverting. Notwithstanding all these 

 differences, however, I could easily trace a great similarity 

 in the construction of the bones of the two faces ; and, 

 indeed, there is nothing more easy to imagine than that, 

 with much of the same original powers and propensities, 

 some casual enough circumstances may have been suffi- 

 cient to decide that the one of the brothers should be a 

 poet and the other a naturalist. The parts cf the science 

 of which Mr James Wilson is fondest, are ornithology and 

 entomology — studies so delightful to every true lover of 



