76 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



request, indited two love ditties for his boors, and a few verses 

 for Miss C.'s album ; so that, recoiling from the charge of idle- 

 ness, I remain your most affectionate brother, 



" GEORGE WILSON." 



" IRVINE, Tuesday, September 1836. 



" MY DEAR MOTHER, Time hath brought the changes of 

 place w T hich I anticipated, and you will see from the date of 

 this epistle I have arrived at Irvine. The three last days of the 

 week before this were so miserably bad that they were utterly 

 "useless in the country the whole land and sea overspread with 

 mist ; not a point of land, not a lighthouse to be seen ; nothing 

 but the sea lashed by the angry wind, and the gale not suf- 

 ficiently strong to give sublimity to the scene. I sat within 

 doors, talking, laughing, joking with Mr. Campbell and his 

 sister, and a fortunate discovery of the ' Essay on Taste,' by the 

 Rev. Mr. Alison, father of the professor, was hailed with great 

 delight, and served to amuse me for a long time. 



" On Saturday evening, at six o'clock, Mr. Campbell and I set 

 off in the steamboat for Arran. It rained, till within a very short 

 time of our embarking, very furiously, and under most dispirit- 

 ing weather we set off. The evening was cold and occasionally 

 wet, till we rounded the headland of Bute. The gale then fresh- 

 ened considerably ; the wind blowing on the side of the vessel 

 made it reel and toss very wildly, and the spray was swept over 

 us by the rude gust. I could not go below ; I should at once 

 have become sick ; so I sat it out on deck. There was some- 

 thing very wild in the night, quite dark, the vessel pitching very 

 much, and the billows breaking in foam upon her ; still there 

 was a peculiar beauty in the sky, which could never have been 

 seen in the effulgence of sunlight. Long, long after the sun had 

 set, he sent up a dim flood of light on the edge of a cloud which 

 overshadowed the west, and the appearance of the one still sub- 

 dued line of light mirrored in the wave was peculiarly beautiful 

 and wholly new to me ; and the time passed rapidly on in 

 watching the moon labouring in the sky, in fitful gleams, now 

 shining out, and now behind a dense cloud which she fringed 

 with her light. We arrived at Brodick, the most easterly of the 



