1857-58. INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM. 449 



Lectures. 1 In regard to tlie Museum, he urges the duties which 

 Merchant Companies have to discharge, and its claims on their 

 interest, protection, and encouragement. Most heartily did the 

 Edinburgh Merchant Company respond to the appeal, lending 

 influential aid to the success of the Museum, and giving ready 

 co-operation to the schemes of " their own professor," as they 

 were wont to call Dr. Wilson. The delay in erecting the pro- 

 mised buildings for the Museum a session of Parliament hav- 

 ing passed without a vote of money for this purpose was an 

 intense disappointment, not only to the Director himself, but to 

 many public bodies, whose interest he had secured, and from 

 which memorials and deputations had been sent. The site ori- 

 ginally purchased was too small for the necessary buildings, and 

 much harassing delay took place before even a promise of more 

 ground could be obtained. " No amount of business-writing,'* 

 he says to his brother, " seems to do otherwise than multiply 

 letters, and the endless labour I have had to go through in re- 

 ference to a better site for the Industrial Museum, makes me 

 sorry for myself. If Argyle Square be purchased by Government/ 

 and a noble building erected there, whisper into your grandchil- 

 dren's ears, after I have become historical, that Uncle George had 

 a hand in that." To his young nieces in Canada, Uncle George 

 was an occasional correspondent. A note to one of them, dated 

 March 23d, contains the following inquiries after truth : " I am 

 lying in bed, with a beautiful warm blister on one side to keep 

 the cold out, so that I can't venture upon a big sheet of paper. 

 . . . The weather here has been very inclement, and the fields, 

 whilst I write, are white with snow. Two months of such 

 weather are more than we are accustomed to, and you may 

 judge how little it suits us, when I mention that I have only 



1 Arrangements on a different footing have been made since Dr. Wilson's death re- 

 garding the Museum ; and the Chair of Technology, founded originally at the sugges- 

 tion of the Professors of the Edinburgh University, and so warmly welcomed by the 

 public, has been sxippressed, the link closely uniting Commerce and Manufactures 

 to Science thus being broken. " We require perpetually to transfer knowledge 

 from the wise to the unwise ; from the more wise to the less wise ; and such a chair 

 as this, with its associated Museum, is what, in commercial language, would be called 

 an entrepot, or exchange for effecting such transfers." ( ( What is Technology ? Inau- 

 gural Lecture for 1855-56, p. 15.) It is evident no want of success attended this Chair, 

 though unendowed. <* 



2 F 



