284 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VI. 



Portobello is such an abominably public place that I should 

 fear to move about, and I am not enticed by the attraction Mr. 

 Syme held out of its possessing a circulating library. 



"We scientifics, I can tell you, are very indignant at the 

 recent knighting of three painters and a musician, while not 

 one of us has, for I don't know how long, partaken of any of 

 the smiles of royal favour. It is really too bad. We have men, 

 I make bold to say, of far higher deserts in their crafts than the 

 artists were in theirs. Half of Europe never heard of Bishop 

 the musician, and would laugh to scorn his claims as an original 

 composer. And who is Hayter, that he should carry off an 

 honour before men admired in Europe and America ? However, 

 if Her gracious Majesty would give us some hard cash, we 

 should not mind letting the artists pocket the stars and ribbons. 

 There is a petty German duke enabling Liebig to beat all the 

 English chemists hollow. If a tithe of what is spent on mas- 

 querades and trumpery, dogs and stables, were granted to some 

 school or university to fit up and keep in existence a well- 

 appointed laboratory, the whole country would be the gainer. 

 Liebig is a man of genius of the highest order, and would unfold 

 himself though he had not a sixpence ; but he could not have 

 reached the eminence he has done had not money in sufficiency 

 been supplied him. Here our very professors can scarcely keep 

 life in them. Chairs are not worth the having, even as sources 

 of income, and there is no surplus to spend on experiments. As 

 for private teachers, no one is much better than myself. Teach- 

 ing is at an absolute stand. I am paying off Scott; he makes far 

 too big a hole in a nominal income, nominal at least to me, 

 though to him real enough. I shall make shift with a boy. 



" It is really disheartening to see the possibility of doing 

 something in a science you love and profess, almost annihilated 

 by the cost it takes being beyond you. I have been urged to 

 go to Paris, where I should be sure of practical chemistry 

 classes, like those here, succeeding, but it is a long step to 

 Paris ; arid I should require to know French, and a great many 

 more things before I thought of it. Are not these fine dreams 

 for a cripple ? But if I went abroad it should be to Germany, 

 a quiet country, which would exactly suit a politics-hating man 



