422 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. X. 



students who become my pupils, as I was helped by my precep- 

 tors when I was homeless and friendless. 



"Lastly, let me commend this new Chair to your good- will 

 and kindly aid. With its associated Industrial Museum, it 

 constitutes a great additional centre of knowledge, from which 

 light will spread over this land and over the world. I can but 

 sow the seed. I have sown it to-day ; I am honoured to do 

 thus much ; but the prediction, true in reference to all matters, 

 is that ' one soweth and another reapeth.' I am not so selfish 

 or so thoughtless as to wish it were otherwise. Institutions, 

 like all other things, grow faster in these days than they did of 

 old ; but perennial things are still slow of growth, and the most 

 enduring the slowest of all. We must be content to pluck the 

 first fruits, and leave the full harvest to be gathered by those 

 who follow. But that its first and last fruits may alike conduce 

 to the glory of God and the good of man, is my prayer ; and, 

 therefore, we will confide it to Him who, eighteen hundred years 

 ago, dignified and made honourable the humblest craft, by per- 

 mitting Himself to be called the Son of the Carpenter, and who 

 now stretches forth His divine hand to bless all honest, earnest 

 labour." 



Though the House of Commons had, in 1854, voted 7000 

 to purchase a site for the Industrial Museum of Scotland, no 

 steps were taken in the erection of buildings for it till some 

 progress had been made in collecting suitable objects. In the 

 spring of 1855, the Independent Chapel in Argyle Square 

 which Dr. Wilson had attended as a place of worship for the 

 previous ten years and the hospital adjoining, were secured, 

 and in them stores of specimens quickly began to accumu- 

 late. As no laboratory or lecture-room was provided, Dr. Wilson 

 continued to occupy those he had already in use. His class 

 was taught under great disadvantages, the lecture- room being 

 most inconvenient, and at some distance from the temporary 

 depository of museum specimens. The introductory lecture was 

 the only one given within the University walls for the first four 

 sessions. The class was not imperative on the University stu- 

 dents, and those who attended represented the professions of 

 "general manufacturer, architect, engineer, farmer, merchant, 



