258 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VI. 



this noisy generation ; it is one of the virtues of our Ribbon 

 Order that we eschew all but the most necessary talk. How- 

 ever, Maggie, I doubt not the listeners, who, like your own good 

 self, with the best of motives, attend such places. Yesterday, 

 the red-hot General Assembly of your kirk deposed the seven 

 poor rogues who have been hanged, or suspended so long ; and 

 young ladies sat from nine in the morning till three o'clock 

 this morning, without shifting their places the whole while. I 

 was advised to go, but, as it costs a shilling to get in, I reflected 

 on the price, and resolved, in preference, to dedicate the shilling 

 to hearing a splendid military band perform in our Zoological 

 Garden. That will be greatly more pleasing to my ears than 

 polemics of any sort are. 



" If you had been at a lecture of Faraday's ahem ! I could 

 have excused you, or listening to what Exeter Hall was built 

 for an Oratorio, it w r ould have been well. But the yearly 

 meetings ! O Maggie, Maggie ! you see what a grave, censorious 

 rogue I am grown. 



"From the preceding part of this letter you will rightly 

 gather that any little amiability you once thought I had, has 

 fairly evaporated. I am afraid it has, and how can it be 

 otherwise with a poor bachelor who spends the whole day in 

 making and discoursing on sulphureous, phosphoreous, and 

 other notorious, sour, acidifying substances ? The heart of me is 

 clean dried up, and serves no other purpose than to propel blood 

 for digestive purposes. The whole tone of this epistle, I am 

 persuaded, will show you (what I have not courage to confess 

 honestly) the melancholy, stunted state of my moral being, and 

 will enable you to understand how welcome was that proposal 

 of yours concerning the procuring a wife for me. Nevertheless 

 there are difficulties in the way, lions in the path, and the thing 

 must be thought over. . . . Meanwhile, this much I will say, 

 that provided you can clear away these difficulties, I see no 

 person half so well fitted as yourself to pick out a wife for me. 

 And why should it not be Miss - ? I have nobody picked 

 out for myself here or elsewhere. So that for that matter you 

 are perfectly free to speculate on my account, in any quarter 

 you please. You may make any use of my name you think fit ; 



