56 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



can only be regarded with indifference by those who are dead to 

 the influence of all deep and worthy emotions. The best and 

 brightest spirits have shown how their lives were ennobled by the 

 passion of love, the faith and purity of which in one heart were the 

 6pring of the finest song that ever immortalized genius, and the 

 highest compliment that ever was paid to woman. Should it some- 

 times happen, when the heart is overburdened with its weight of 

 sorrow, that comfort and forgetfulness are sought in the tumultu- 

 ous excitements of life, it does not always follow that nature be- 

 comes lowered, any more than that love is quenched ; for nothing 

 in reality can soothe an unfeigned grief but resolution to bear it. 

 Those who can endure a sorrow, whatever its cause, elevate thereby 

 their moral being, experiencing soon that all comfort from outward 

 sources is but vanity. A strong and uncorrupted soul rises ere 

 long above the aid of idle pleasures, and gratefully turns to the 

 wisdom that teaches submission, believing, 



" Tal pose in pace uno ed altro disio." 



So was it with John Wilson, to the story of whose early love we 

 now again turn. The reader may have ere this imagined that it 

 was to be heard of no more ; that Oxford and its varied excite- 

 ments had deadened the recollection of Dychmont and Bothwell 

 Banks. So little was it thus, that from all the evidence which let- 

 ters supply, there seems to have been no portion of his time, during 

 the seven years preceding his permanent settlement at Elleray, in 

 wmich his love for Margaret did not influence the tenor of his exist- 

 ence, inspiring him at one time with ardent hope, oftener sinking 

 him into the deepest anguish, from which he at times sought escape 

 in assumed indifference or reckless dissipation. It shows how little 

 the outward life of such a man can reveal of his whole nature and 

 actual history, that but for these letters we could not have had even 

 a glimpse of what was in reality the dominant thought of his life 

 at Oxford, nor ever known of the trial which brought out so 

 strongly the nobleness of his nature and the depth of his filial love. 

 Had it not been that so many years of his life were spent in the 

 indulgence of a fond hope and engrossing passion, ending in a 

 sacrifice to duty such as few men of spirit so impetuous have ever 

 made, this tale had not been told. It may well move the admira- 

 tion of all who reverence the power of self-control in tutoring the 



