1B32 37. EDWARD FORBES AND HE TWIN-STARS. 87 



of glory and perfection ; and Hainan thought his pleasure in- 

 complete because Mordecai hung not on gallows thirty feet 

 high, and Alexander found this round, spacious globe far too 

 little for him. That was Alexander the Great : what says 

 Alexander the Little ? I daresay he finds room enough to move 

 about in Stirling. Give my best wishes and hopes for his 

 happiness, comfort, and renown, and for yourself, be sure you 

 read your classic books. I left the High School just when I 

 was becoming alive to the beauties of what had formerly been 

 looked on merely as tasks. You have been more fortunate, and 

 you ought not to lose your opportunity. As it is, I find much 

 delight in Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca, and in a modern writer, Sir 

 T. Browne ; but you are a far better classic than I am, and must 

 find far greater delight in having m a more extensive and varied 

 round of pleasures than I can at all command. 



" Although I have been gravely proving the country not 

 Paradise itself, yet I may be soon there myself. Perhaps you 

 shall see me at Stirling in a week or so, on my way to Callan- 

 der. I am not sure, however. Write soon ; see you address 

 to G. Wilson, Esq., Surgeon, or the other George Wilson will 

 get the letter. And believe me, your affectionate cousin." 



The journal will be allowed to speak for itself before we pass 

 to a new epoch of life, bidding farewell to scenes wherein the 

 nucleus of all future greatness has been year by year forming 

 itself. "The tastes of most men can be traced back to the 

 habits of their youth, and their habits are, in a great measure, 

 moulded by the circumstances, physical as well as intellectual, 

 in which that youth has been passed. . . . The youth whose 

 hours of relaxation are spent in the presence of those magnifi- 

 cent prospects so rife and many around us, carries with him in 

 after -life the memory of their beauty and grandeur." So said 

 Edward Forbes, in his Inaugural Lecture on entering his Pro- 

 fessorship in the Edinburgh University ; and as twin-stars 

 revolving around each other, alternately coming forth in bright- 

 ness, he and George Wilson have in this chapter thrown light 

 on each other. Once more we borrow w T ords that are Wonder- 

 fully appropriate to both of them : " The dew of his youth was 



