254 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



varied powers in almost every field of knowledge. Though my 

 intercourse with him was limited entirely to student life, I retain 

 for him the deepest reverence and love. 



" ' I cannot deem thee dead ; like the perfumes 



Arising from Judea's vanish'd shrines, 

 Thy voice still floats around me ; nor can tombs 



A thousand from my memory hide the lines 

 Of beauty, on thine aspect which abode, 

 Like streaks of sunshine pictured there by God.' " 



The following account of his last year's professional work (the 

 session 1850-1851) is furnished by the medallist of the year:* — 



" The first thing that every one remarked on entering his class, 

 was how thoroughly he did his proper work as a Professor of 

 Moral Philosophy. This is not generally known now, and was not 

 even at that time. There was a notion that he was there Christo- 

 pher North, and nothing else ; that you could get scraps of poetry, 

 bits of sentiment, flights of fancy, flashes of genius, and any thing 

 but Moral Philosophy. Nothing was further from the truth in that 

 year 1850. In the very first lecture he cut into the core of the 

 subject, raised the question which has always in this country been 

 held to be the hardest and deepest in the science (the origin of the 

 Moral Faculty), and hammered at it through the great part of the 

 session. Even those who were fresh from Sir William Hamilton's 

 class, and had a morbid appetite for swallowing hard and angular 

 masses of logic, found that the work here was quite stiff enough for 

 any of us. It was not till the latter part of the session, in his lectures 

 on the Affections and the Imagination, that he adopted a looser style 

 of treatment, and wandered freely over a more inviting field. But 

 it is not enough to say that he was thoroughly conscientious in 

 presenting to his students the main questions for their consideration ; 

 I am bound to add that he was also thoroughly successful. It is 

 well known that his own doctrine (though it was never quite fixed, 

 and he stated publicly to his class at the close of his last session that 

 he had all along been conscious that there was some gap in it) was 

 opposed to the general Scotch system of Moral Philosophy. His 



* Mr. Alexander Taylor Innes, who says in reference to that distinction: — "He was specially 

 kind to me, as the youngest who had ever attained that honor, much coveted at that time us 

 coming from himself; for when the University offered to give a prize to his class, he declined 

 to discontinue his own, and still year by year awarded 'Professor Wilson's Gold Medal,' giving 

 the other separately or cumulatively." 



