446 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. X. 



into a typical rest, and with their great white wings crystallized 

 into "bright marble, look on with sweet and serene faces, aaid tell 

 us not to despair of rest. 



" The spirits of some of the wisest, and gentlest, and best of 

 their kind, are here embodied in iron and bronze, and metal and 

 ivory, and all sorts of workable materials ; dead painters, poets, 

 sculptors, artists dead in one sense, alive in another and better 

 sense here speak to us in terms the most winning and persua- 

 sive. Again and again do I wish they were living, that I might 

 thank them and bless them. Perhaps if they were living I 

 would rather dispute with them than believe them, but here 

 they have it all their own way. And their way is the best 

 here, for they cannot reply if you refuse their lesson, and you 

 lose the good of it if you carp as to its meaning. And so I gaze, 

 and gaze, and gaze, and often find the tears in my eyes, and 

 often smile with delight, and altogether forget the clogging 

 weight of this evil-good body, through whose dim but not dark 

 windows we are compelled to look. 



" Jessie will send you our news, which are simply none. 

 Your loving son, GEORGE." 



The visit to Dublin was made more enjoyable by the presence 

 of his friends, Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Gladstone, and Professor 

 Voelcker of Cirencester, "a happy family" being formed by 

 their means, so that he says, looking back on it, " my memories 

 of Ireland are very pleasant." A merrier party than they were 

 could scarcely have been found, while business was by no means 

 forgotten. Dr. Wilson read to the Natural History Section a 

 paper ' On the electric fishes as the earliest electric machines 

 employed by mankind/ which was more fully written out 

 for the 'Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine;' 1 and to the 

 Chemical Section a paper 'On the processes for detection of 

 Fluorine.' 2 



After his return Dr. Gladstone received the following account 

 of his employments : 



1 < Edin. New Phil. Mag.,' October 1857. 



2 ' Brit. Assoc. Reports' for 1857, p. 61. 



