OCCUPATIONS. 199 



of the realm ; and many were the memorials for private 

 perusal, and many the articles appealing to periodical 

 readers, which he prepared with infinite labour, in the 

 onerous discharge of his honorary duties. 



Betwixt his stated pursuits and such occasional ser- 

 vices, the last five-and-twenty years of Mr Wilson's life 

 were abundantly and sometimes excessively occupied ; but 

 he neither made himself nor others believe that he was 

 busy. Making no fuss, and never in a bustle, the stranger 

 who found him in a public room writing rapidly, and 

 often interpolating amidst the talk a comic hit or repartee, 

 could hardly have guessed that the sheets he was so fast 

 accumulating were copy for a standard work, or that they 

 would go to the printer untranscribed and with scarcely 

 an erasure. And he himself, whilst producing manuscript 

 sufficient to supply all the zoological professorships of the 

 kingdom, simply because he pocketed no fees, and was not 

 obliged to take down his umbrella every winter's day, and 

 go forth to lecture to a class of students for an hour, used 

 to sigh over himself as one of the unproductive classes, 

 and revert betwixt mournf ulness and mirth to the days of 

 the " stickit writer ship." 



So constant were his occupations that he found it hard 

 to secure a holiday. Occasionally, however, he carried off 

 his family to Westmoreland, or some other pleasant hiding- 

 place, and occasionally, as we have seen, he consented to 



