1840-41. EDWAED FOEBES'S ESTIMATE. 255 



He at once became a favourite lecturer. It was a delight to 

 him to impart to others the knowledge he possessed, and by the 

 wondrous law of sympathy, this delight communicated itself to 

 his audience. And even while with patient care unfolding the 

 deeper laws of his favourite science, flashes of wit and fancy 

 lighted up the subject, and made the dullest feel enamoured of 

 it. Some of those early lectures are still vividly remembered, 

 notwithstanding the lapse of time. A sweet clear voice added 

 to the charm ; and foreign students, with an imperfect know- 

 ledge of English, were often advised to attend him in preference 

 to other teachers, as being more easily followed. As the judg- 

 ment of contemporaries is more to be relied on than that 

 supplied from memory, and perhaps tinged by influences of 

 later years, we shall give Edward Forbes's opinion in 1844, as 

 communicated in a letter to his friend Dr. Percy : " Wilson is 

 one of the best lecturers I ever heard, reminding me more of 

 the French school than our humdrum English, and is a man of 

 high literary taste, and great general knowledge. Of his che- 

 mical views I know that Graham here [London] speaks in 

 the highest terms, which he does not bestow on any other 

 Edinburgh man." Had his health and strength enabled him, 

 he would have long been a most successful teacher ; but general 

 feeble health, a friend has truly said, " made his life of public 

 teaching one long and sad trial. How nobly, how sweetly, how 

 cheerily he bore all those long baffling years ; how his bright, 

 active, ardent, unsparing soul lorded it over his frail but willing 

 body, making it do more than seemed possible, and as it were by 

 sheer force of will ordering it to live longer than was in it to 

 do, those who lived with him and witnessed this triumph of 

 spirit over matter, will not soon forget. It was a lesson to every 

 one of what true goodness of nature, elevated and cheered by 

 the highest and happiest of all motives, can make a man endure, 

 achieve, and enjoy." 1 



Of the relaxation obtained in some degree by the return of 

 summer, we have specimens in one or two letters, forming plea- 

 sant episodes in his outer life. One to his cousin James, now a 

 divinity student in Glasgow under the Eev. Dr. Wardlaw, refers 



1 ' Hora Subsecivte,' Second Series, p. 105. 



