324 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VIII. 



His keen appreciation of the pleasures of society, and of 

 all beautiful things, was sternly put aside to meet profes- 

 sional claims ; and all with such quiet simplicity or gay good 

 humour, that few if any guessed the price at which his work 

 was accomplished. " I should have been to see you," a note 

 says, " but a cold has damaged my bellows a little, and I have 

 had to put a comforter on the chest in which they are kept." 

 And before the opening of a winter session, he writes to a fel- 

 low invalid, " I'll wager you'll get through the winter with less 

 croaking than I will. I was wondering this morning, as I 

 looked at my collar bones, how soon they would have a blister 

 occupying the valley below. You have not like me to turn 

 ' stump orator ' for six months in the year ; and talk, talk, talk 

 till your tongue cleaves to the roof of your mouth ; however, I 

 hope we'll both fare well. To be well enough to work is suffi- 

 cient, and quite satisfies me." " One whole day in seven spent 

 in talking out loud," he says again, " makes that prophecy com- 

 forting, ' Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.' " 



Besides the systematic course of lectures, given each session 

 to his several classes, there were occasional series of popular 

 lectures. The greater number of these were delivered before 

 the Philosophical Institution, 1 Edinburgh, with increasing ac- 

 ceptance on each occasion. The subject of the first course was, 

 " The Chemistry of the Gases," and part of the Introductory 

 Lecture appeared shortly afterwards in a periodical of the day, 

 with the title, " The alleged Antagonism between Poetry and 

 Chemistry." 2 Professor Goodsir at the same time gave a short 

 popular course on Human Physiology, he and George Wilson 

 lecturing alternately. It was on one of these chemical evenings 

 that the pet terrier made his last appearance at a lecture. 

 Stronach having died and left a blank in the household, 

 Alexander Russell brought a successor, that in due tkne became 

 as great a favourite, and, like Stronach, accompanied his master 

 everywhere. He was named Grim, and one evening in the 

 Waterloo Rooms, he astonished the attentive audience by push- 



1 The title, in its earlier years, was " Philosophical Association," and the lectures 

 were delivered in the Waterloo Rooms. 



2 See Torch/ pp. 13-16. Sutherland and Knox, Edinburgh, 1846. 



