384 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



nection with one another, and image linked to image long before ; 

 they rise up by those connections, but they are determined to arise 

 and depart by that one fixed conception which holds its unshaken 

 seat in the sorrow of the soul."* It is quite evident from these 

 words, written a year after that great domestic affliction had befal- 

 len him, that my father had not shut out from his heart the image 

 of his wife. How he thought and felt at the moment when the 

 shadow of death darkened his life, may be gathered from the fol- 

 lowing touching lines copied from the public journals of the day: — 



" Last week a paragraph appeared describing the painful situation 

 to which Professor Wilson had been reduced from deep mental 

 affliction. The following extract from a letter to a friend, written 

 by himself, is the best evidence of the error into which our contem- 

 porary had fallen : — 



"'It pleased God on the 29th of March to visit me with the se- 

 verest calamity that can befall one of his creatures, in the death of 

 my wife, with whom I had lived in love for twenty-six years, and 

 from that event till about a fortnight ago, I lived with my family, 

 two sons and three daughters, dutiful and affectionate, in a secluded 

 house near Roslin. I am now in Edinburgh, and early in Novem- 

 ber hope to resume my daily duties in the University. I have 

 many blessings for which I am humbly thankful to the Almighty, 

 and though I have not borne my affliction so well, or better than I 

 have done, yet I have borne it with submission and resignation, and 

 feel that though this world is darkened, I may be able yet to exert 

 such faculties, humble as they are, as God has given me, if not to 

 the benefit, not to the detriment of my fellow-mortals.'" 



That letter leads one irresistibly back to one written in May, 

 1811, when he stood on the threshold of a new life full of antici- 

 pated happiness. Where was that solemn, calm spirit, now that 

 she — the best and gentlest of wives — was gone? Did he say, 

 " Comfort's in heaven, and we on earth ?" True it was, he suffered 

 as such a soul must suffer at such a loss, and it was for a long time 

 a terrible storm of trouble. But he gave evidence in due time that 

 he was not forever to be overcome with sadness. 



It is necessary, in order to relate some of the events of this sum- 

 mer, that we should follow him to the secluded house near Roslin, 

 where he went immediately after my mother's death, doubtless 



* " Our Two Vases," Blackwood, April, 1S38. 



