APPENDIX 



i. 



PUBLIC FUNERAL AND PROPOSED STATUE. 



I am indebted for the following account to a friend : — 



"On the 7th of April, 1854, the mortal remains of Professor "Wilson were laid 

 in the Dean Cemetery. Seldom has such a procession wended through the streets 

 of Edinburgh as passed, in the soft sunshine of that April afternoon, from Glouces- 

 ter Place up Doune Terrace, Moray Place, and Eandolph Crescent, on to that lovely 

 sequestered ground, where now repose a goodly company of men whose names will 

 not soon die — Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, Thomas Thomson, Edward Forbes, 

 David Scott, John Wilson, and his well-loved brother James. Students were there 

 from many a distant place, who had come to pay the last tribute to ' the Professor,'' 

 whom they loved, and, for old Scotland's sake, were so proud of. Tears were shed 

 by manly eyes ; and none were there who did not feel that the earth closed, that 

 day, over such a man as the world will not soon see again. 



" That Edinburgh, rich in monuments for a northern city, should unhesitatingly 

 determine to add to these a statue of John Wilson, was most fitting and natural. 

 The resolution was not only at once formed, but speedily acted upon. Shortly after 

 his death a public meeting was held, the Lord Provost (M'Laren) presiding, at 

 which it was formally resolved that such a statue should be erected ' on a suitable 

 and conspicuous site.' A committee was appointed with that view, consisting of the 

 Right Hon. the Lord Justice-General (M'Neill), Lord Neaves, Sir John Watsoi 

 Gordon, P. R. S. A., R. A., Mr. John Blackwood, Mr. Robert Chambers, Mr. P. S. 

 Fraser, and Dr. John Burt. Much time was necessarily occupied in the receipt of 

 subscriptions, and other arrangements ; but early in 1857, the committee found 

 themselves in a position to commission Mr. John Steell, R. S. A., Her Majesty's 

 Sculptor for Scotland, to execute a bronze statue, ten feet in height, with a suitable 

 pedestal, to be placed at the north-west corner of East Princes Street Gardens. 

 The statue is now approaching completion : and will be erected on the appointed 

 site a few months hence. As the work has not yet, however, left the artist's 

 studio — has not, indeed, received the final touches from his hands — it would be 

 presumptuous to speak of it further than to say that it promises to prove worthy 

 alike of the sculptor, of his noble subject, and of the very ' suitable and conspic- 

 uous site' it is destined to occupy. In a representation of a man whose notable 

 person is so fresh in the recollection of many hundreds of his fellow-citizens, exact 



