THE PROFESSOR AND HIS CLASS. 219 



triumph, and the name of Nelson was known as widely as the name 

 of England.' 



" This faint sketch taken at the time may serve, with all its im- 

 perfections, to give some idea of the substance of this noble lecture, 

 but it cannot convey to any not present the slightest conception of 

 the transcendent power and overwhelming eloquence with which 

 it was delivered, or of its electrifying elfects upon the audience. 

 The whole soul of the man seemed infused into his subject, and to 

 be rushing forth with resistless force in the torrent of his rapidly- 

 rolling words. As he spoke, his whole frame quivered with emotion. 

 He evidently saw the scene he described, and such was the sympa- 

 thetic force of his strong poetic imagination, that he made us, 

 whether we would or not, see it too. Now dead silence held the 

 class captive. In the interval of his words you would have heard a 

 pin fall. Again, at some point, the applause could not be restrained, 

 and was vociferous. Esjjecially when the dying scene in his descrip- 

 tion of the North American Indian's virtues reached its glorious 

 consummation, the cheers were again and again repeated by every 

 voice, till the roof rang again, and Sir William Hamilton, not less 

 enthusiastic in his applause than the very youngest of the students 

 behind him, actually stood up and clapped his hands with evident 

 delight and approbation. 



" I have heard some of the greatest orators of the day, — Lords 

 Derby, Brougham, Lyndhurst; Peel, O'Connell, Sheil, Follett, Chal- 

 mers, Caird, Guthrie, M'Neile ; I have heard some of these in their 

 very best styles make some of their most celebrated appearances ; 

 but for popular eloquence, for resistless force, for the seeming inspi- 

 ration that swayed the soul, and the glowing sympathy that en- 

 tranced the hearts of his entire audience, that lecture by Professor 

 Wilson far excelled the loftiest efforts of the best of these I ever 

 listened to ; and I have long come to the decided conclusion that if 

 he had chosen the sacred profession, and given his whole heart and 

 soul to his work, he would have raised the fame of pulpit oratory 

 to a pitch far beyond what it ever has reached, and gained a celeb- 

 rity and success as a preacher second to none in the annals of the 

 Church. 



"The course was continued in lectures on, (1.) Jealousy, which 

 was illustrated by a very splendid and elaborate analysis of the 

 character of Othello, in which the erroneousness of the common idea 



