348 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VIII. 



Society, for permission to set a portion of it to music in the 

 form of a cantata. 



The last of George Wilson's publications in this busy year 

 was a pamphlet, called forth by the occurrence of a vacancy in the 

 Chair of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow, by the death 

 of the learned and renowned Dr. Thomas Thomson. Its object 

 was to set forth the needless obstacles which the Scottish Uni- 

 versity Test Act placed in the way of those who, like himself, 

 could not conscientiously sign the Confession of Faith and the 

 Formula of Obedience. The test had been represented in Par- 

 liament as a form which might be " relaxed where a good rea- 

 son for such relaxation existed." In the University of Edinburgh, 

 indeed, it was usually ignored, but in Glasgow, St. Andrews, and 

 Aberdeen, it was rigorously exacted. On one occasion, however, 

 the reality of its powers was fully proved by the exclusion, in 

 1847, of a candidate for the Edinburgh Hebrew Chair. 1 The 

 Glasgow Chair of Chemistry being a Crown appointment, Dr. 

 Wilson addresses his remarks to the Secretary for the Home 

 Department. 2 A few biographical data are incidentally fur- 

 nished, while the writer modestly sets forth his claims ; the ob- 

 ject he had in view, however, was not a selfish one, but rather the 

 ungracious task of standing forth on behalf of all who, like him- 

 self, were not members of the Scotch Established Church. If 

 the test cannot be wholly abolished, he pleads, at least, for miti- 

 gation of its rigour. Happily a few more years brought about 

 its abolition ; and whether his pamphlet aided this result or not, 

 it, at all events, served to call forth expression of the estimation 

 in which he was held by the general public, and to show the 

 striking union in him of unflinching boldness in a right cause, 

 with the modest simplicity and gentleness which more usually 

 characterized him. He was by this time recognised as " one of 

 two brothers who rank among the most distinguished savans of 

 Edinburgh. One of the two is the author of the most learned 

 and judicious antiquarian work which has of late years been 



1 Mr. Macdouall, now Professor in Queen's College, Belfast. 



1 ' The Grievance of the University Tests, as applied to Professors of Physical 

 Science in the Colleges of Scotland : a Letter addressed to the Right Honourable 

 Spencer H. Walpole, Secretary of State for the Home Department,' pp. 48. Edin- 

 burgh : Sutherland and Knox. 1852. 



