CHAPTEK III. 



COLLEGE COURSE. 



WHEN the Edinburgh University session of 1827-8 

 opened, James Forbes, after an absence of one whole 

 year from College, re-entered it as a student in the Moral 

 Philosophy and Natural History classes. The former 

 class was then taught by Professor Wilson, the latter by 

 Dr. Jamieson. These two teachers were both eminent in 

 their way, but very different from each other. Professor 

 Wilson discoursed at large on his subject, if with no 

 vast learning or keen edge of subtlety, yet with a flow 

 of fervid and poetic eloquence, which fired youthful ima- 

 ginations, and helped to let loose over Scotland those 

 floods of turbid rhetoric, which from pulpit and platform 

 have deluged it for a generation, and are only now 

 abating if indeed they are abating. Dr. Jamieson, 

 plain, practical, not to say prosaic, but accurate, pains- 

 taking, and diligent as an observer, so rarely ventured 

 on figures of speech that the one or two metaphors in 

 which during the whole session he indulged were well 

 known and waited for, and when produced were wel- 

 comed with annual rounds of applause. To both of these 

 so different men James Forbes had a side of affinity. 



To the work of the Moral Philosophy he gave himself 

 in earnest, but he contrived to weave into the subjects 

 proper to it some of his own favourite knowledge. We 

 firi'l him recording in his astronomical journal, December 

 31st, 1827: 



'One considerable astronomical work I have been 

 engaged in which I have not yet recorded, an essay for 



