10 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAT. I. 



faded away in their early years, and the dark shadow was again 

 and again thrown across our diminished circle. Hence, birth 

 days, those fond anniversaries of the home-fireside in many a 

 happy family, were never named amongst us ; but we learned 

 to note certain seasons that brought their sad memories and 

 silent tears to our dear mother ; and mingled grave and earnest 

 thoughts with our light-hearted mirthfulness. In later days, 

 when the return of the 21st of February reminded George of the 

 completion of another year, it used to bring with it strange, sad 

 fancies, on which he would sometimes dwell, awakened by the 

 thoughts, that the brother to whom, as to himself, it was the 

 anniversary of life's gift, slumbered in his last long sleep among 

 the kindred dust, where both are now laid at rest. But while 

 such incidents as these, which marked life's early experience, 

 helped to develop thoughtful earnestness, and to awaken tender 

 sympathies, which bore fruit in riper years, our boyhood was a 

 very happy one, in spite of some stern but healthful lessons of 

 self-denial. 



" Edinburgh, our native city, was the scene of all our youth- 

 ful years ; and that itself was no unimportant element in life's 

 training. Among my earliest recollections are our rambles and 

 scramblings among the rocks and declivities of the Calton Hill ; 

 which, as we grew from childhood to youth, were exchanged for 

 the wider scope that Arthur's Seat afforded. There we knew 

 every accessible cleft and gully of the rocks, delighted in climb- 

 ing the famous Cat-nick on Salisbury Crags, and preferred find- 

 ing our way down from the top of the hill, as a goat might 

 scramble down the cliffs, to taking the more leisurely and safer 

 slope of the grass. Then the sea, with its inexhaustible charms, 

 lay within easy distance. Leith sands, and the pools of the 

 Black-rocks at low water, with their crabs and whelks, and 

 marine life of all sorts ; and the delights of the shipping and 

 building-yards, awoke all the Eobinson Crusoe longings and 

 dreams of boyhood ; or a Saturday's ramble carried us to Granton, 

 and away beyond it to old Roman Cramond, where the sculp- 

 tured eagle of the legionaries of the second century, still visible 

 on the rocks, was a source of never-failing wonder to us. 



" Edinburgh boys are generally great walkers, and George 



