14 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



" And many at last were the kind — some the sad — farewells, ere 

 long whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them 

 rest for ever silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, 

 not heard — its blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate 

 prayer !" 



CHAPTER II. 



GLASGOW COLLEGE. 

 1797-1803. 



" Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand in hand 

 with our golden-haired sister ! Long, long, long ago, the day on 

 which she died ; the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that 

 can now darken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, 

 slowly into the horrid clay, and we were borne, deathlike and wish- 

 ing to die, out of the churchyard, that from that moment we 

 thought we could never enter more." That touching reminiscence 

 of his golden-haired sister, which came back among the visions of 

 a merry Christmas long after,* points to what was probably John 

 Wilson's first deep experience of sorrow ; and it is no imaginary 

 picture of the scene it recalled. For even in those early years, and 

 still more as life advanced, he was intensely susceptible to emotions 

 of grief, as well as of gladness. A heavier trial awaited him at the 

 threshold of the new life on which he was to enter after leaving 

 the manse of Mearns in his twelfth year. He had seen the yellow 

 leaves fall, on to the close of that last memorable autumn which 

 finished his happy school-time, and now he was summoned home to 

 see his father die. As he stood at the head of the grave, chief 

 mourner, and heard the dull earth rattling over the coffin, his 

 emotions so overcame him that he fell to the ground in a swoon, 

 and had to be carried away. Such an effect, on a frame more than 

 commonly robust, indicated a depth of feeling and passion not 

 often seen in our clime among boys, or, in its outer manifestations 



* "Christmas Dreams," Wilson's Works. 



