338 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



gold-fish, but the latter stanzas were magnificent ! Oh, what a pity- 

 it is to see so noble a creature condescending to be the ass of La 

 Fontaine's Fable ! Adieu ! I have written beyond my power of 

 hand. I would rather far listen to you than write to you. I can- 

 not now make up a letter, but my heart is still the same. It was 

 the only talent I ever possessed in this world. It must be hid under 

 a bushel. How is Mrs. Hamilton ? I am ashamed to send such a 

 scrawl, but indeed I am very poorly, as the old nurses say." 



The following passages from the Professor's oration, which, on 

 referring to the papers, I see was the speech of the day, are worth 

 reproducing. He said, among other good things, that " Often have 

 I heard it said, and have my eyes loathed to see it written, that we 

 of the great Conservative party are enemies of education, and have 

 no love for what are called the lower orders — orders who, when 

 their duties are nobly performed, are, in my humble estimation, as 

 high as that in which any human being can stand. I repel the 

 calumny. I myself belong to no high family. I had no patronage 

 beyond what my own honorable character gave me. I have slept 

 in the cottages of hundreds of the poor. I have sat by the cotter's 

 ingle on the Saturday night, and seen the gray-haired patriarch with 

 pleasure unfold the sacred page — the solace of his humble but hon- 

 orable life. I have even faintly tried to shadow forth the lights and 

 shades of their character ; and it is said I belong to that class who 

 hate and despise the people. . . . Must I allow my understand- 

 ing to be stormed by such arguments as that the chief business of 

 poor men is to attend to politics, or their best happiness to be found 

 in elections ? I know far better that he has duties imposed on him 

 by nature, and, if his heart is right and his head clear, while he is not 

 indifferent to such subjects, there are a hundred other duties he must 

 perform far more important ; he may be reading one book, which 

 tells him in what happiness consists, but to which I have seen but 

 few allusions made by the reformers in modern times. In reading 

 those weather-stained pages, on which, perhaps, the sun of heaven 

 had looked bright while they had been unfolded of old on the hill- 

 side by his forefathers of the Covenant ; when, environed with peril 

 and death, he is taught at once religion towards his Maker, and not 

 to forget the love and duty he owes to mankind ; to prefer deeper 

 interests, because everlasting, to those little turbulences which now 



