272 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VI. 



topics of a chemico -physiological character. I shall send you 

 the first-fruits of our labour as soon as it is published, which 

 will be on the auspicious 1st of April. John Goodsir will be 

 hampered by circumstances which may prevent him lecturing ; 

 I shall whether he does or no. 1 I do not expect pecuniary 

 return from these lectures ; I shall have to give away a number 

 of tickets, and only the senior students will attend. But I have 

 no doubt I shall clear all expenses, arid I shall raise up a host 

 of friends who will tell upon my winter course, besides making 

 myself better known. If my health only improves, with God's 

 blessing, I shall do bravely. 



" In the meanwhile I have engaged to deliver, next week, 

 three lectures to one of the surgery classes, on the composition 

 and mode of analysing calculi. The preparation for this has 

 prevented me writing you sooner. These lectures are intended 

 as prefatory and introductory to the summer course, and are de- 

 livered at Dr. Robertson's suggestion and request. 



" As to myself and my state of health, I am much better, and 

 hope soon to bid farewell to my present aches. That I have 

 often written you in another than the old merry mood w r ill not 

 surprise you ; you know with all my faults I am not a hypo- 

 crite, and never conceal, or seek to conceal, the mood I am in. 

 But if I have been grave, I have never been melancholy ; I 

 have neither desponded nor repined, but have struggled through- 

 out to bear patiently every pang. I bow myself with the most 

 sincere resignation to God's will, and pray that I may in all 

 respects be strengthened and bettered through affliction. And 

 yet overflowing mirth which could disport itself in letters, I 

 could rarely boast of. For the last five weeks I have not had a 

 night's unbroken sleep through pain, and even the repose, such 

 as it was, has been procured only by the nightly use of mor- 

 phia. Even so late as a week ago, I had to stop in the middle 

 of a lecture overcome with a severe paroxysm, and go straight 

 home. And what has stood even more in the way of writing, 

 has been the weakness of my eyes, which are easily irritated, 

 and scarcely stand even shaded gaslight, so that I have written 

 generally very hastily, not revelled in my thoughts as I used to 



1 Mr. Goodsir was unable to carry out this arrangement 



