144 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. III. 



adjoining towns and the like, I have spent more than two weeks, 

 having returned to town on Friday evening from Lanark, which 

 I made the goal of my journey." 



The day after he writes to Miss Mackay : 



" You will not doubt my sincerity, or think the less of me for 

 it, when I say I am very glad to be at home again. I am such 

 a slave to habits, and so easily set wrong in bodily frame, and 

 therefore so unequal in spirits, that the change of mode of living, 

 and the like, however slight, which attend moving about, soon 

 discomfort me ; and with much greater wish to be rnerry, 

 thoughtless, and at ease, than among the grave studies of home, 

 I am always less so ; and would rather have my friends come 

 and see me, than I go to see them. In all this, I talk of the 

 part I play, not of that of my kind entertainers ; so you are to 

 regard this in the light of an apology for any dulness, stupidity, 

 crossness, or the like, which appeared in me. Since I came 

 home, I have got several new ideas, especially in geology, which 

 I am studying, and have devised many foolish poems, quibbles, 

 and much such nonsense, which of course evaporates away, 

 leaving, I hope, a clear full-bodied liquor, as the brewers say, 

 all the better, like porter, of losing the barm. My visit to 

 Glasgow was a very pleasant one, and the source of much 

 pleasure and happiness." 



'' GAYFIELD SQUARE, June 18, 1838. 



" MY DEAR DANIEL, Your most acceptable letter to mother 

 arrived to-day, and the reading of the last line has set me to 

 writing you. Think not that I have suddenly had my discern- 

 ment of logic so powerfully increased, as to make the question 

 of whose letter was last, decide my periods of correspondence ; 

 even if I had, I should be guilty, for your letter recognised both 

 of mine, and I was inexcusable. My only excuse for not writ- 

 ing you, has been the apparently paradoxical one to you, I' am 

 sure almost without meaning and weight of having too little 

 to occupy me ; not that I have been idle, for that I cannot be, 

 but my business has been more of the body than of the mind ; 

 more of the feet than the head. As soon as I came home from 

 Glasgow, I knew I had to begin dispensary duties, and set 



