GLASGOW COLLEGE. 25 



"31st. — Stayed at home all day ; wrote an account of the Mas- 

 sacre of Glencoe." 



"September 19th. — Stayed at home all day, and wrote an essay 

 upon the Stoical Philosophy." 



The notion of John Wilson having been at any time of his life an 

 idle man, must have seemed absurd to those who knew him, though 

 perhaps, for people who think that a hard worker must necessarily 

 be dull and tiresome, natural enough. Even in his boyhood my 

 father was no idler ; and there remains still more convincing proof 

 of his assiduity and love of study to be shown in his career when at 

 Oxford. There is yet some short time to be accounted for, spent in 

 Glasgow ; and of his friendships formed at College, something may 

 be said in this place. Boys generally combine themselves when at 

 public schools, and other seminaries of education, into select co- 

 teries, and are as frequently judged by the qualities of their com- 

 panions as by their own. The very high character of the Glasgow 

 professors at that time almost insured a certain number of first-class 

 youths, especially as several of them received into their own houses 

 young men whose education was privately, as well as in their 

 classes, under their superintendence. 



Mr. Alexander Blair, to whom my father dedicated an edition of 

 his poems, was an Englishman, and with him he began, at Glasgow, 

 an intercourse that ripened into a lifelong friendship. This gentle- 

 man has been deterred from acquiring a prominent position in the 

 world as a philosopher and scholar, solely by the modesty and diffi- 

 dence of his character. He was my father's companion both at 

 Glasgow and at Oxford, and in after life the Professor derived most 

 valuable aid in his philosophical investigations from this friend, 

 whose correspondence with him for many years was uninterrupted. 

 It is much to be regretted that letters of so interesting and elevated 

 a character should, with one or two exceptions, have perished. 

 Another of those early companions was Robert Findlay of Easter 

 Hill, grandson of an accomplished and learned doctor of divinity 

 well known and beloved in Glasgow. He too continued a friend 

 until death ; and from him there have come to me many treasured 

 memorials of an afiection on both sides like that of brothers. Be- 

 sides these two, the most intimate associates of John Wilson in 

 those days were Mr. William Horton Lloyd, an Englishman of large 

 fortune (whose beautiful sister married Mr. Leonard Horner), Mr! 

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