LIFE OF WILSON. 
Ixxxiii 
without paying much attention to other passing objects; and, in 
tracing the streets of Charlestown, was astonished and hurt at 
the indifference with which the inhabitants directed me to the 
place.* I inquired if there were any person still living here 
who had been in the battle, and I was directed to a Mr. Miller, 
who was a lieutenant in this memorable affair. He is a man of 
about sixty — stout, remarkably fresh coloured, with a benign 
and manly countenance. I introduced myself without ceremo- 
ny — shook his hand with sincere cordiality, and said, with some 
warmth, that I was proud of the honour of meeting with one 
of the heroes of Bunker’s Hill — the first unconquerable cham- 
pions of their country. He looked at me, pressed my hand in 
his, and the tears instantly glistened in his eyes, which as in- 
stantly called up corresponding ones in my own. In our way 
to the place he called on a Mr. Carter, who he said was also in 
the action, and might recollect some circumstances which he 
had forgotten. With these two veterans I spent three hours, 
the most interesting to me of any of my life. As they pointed 
* We have here a trait of character worthy of note. Wilson’s enthusi- 
asm did not permit him to reflect, that an object which presents uncommon 
attractions to one who beholds it for the first time, can have no such effect 
upon the minds of the multitude, accustomed to view it from their infancy; 
and in whose breasts those chaste and exquisite feelings which result from 
taste, refined by culture, can have no place. 
But what Wilson felt upon this occasion, was that which almost all men of 
genius and sensibility experience when similaily situated — ^that divine enthu- 
siasm, which exalts one, as it were, above mortality, and which commands 
our respect in proportion as the subject of it is estimable or great. 
Who has not read, or having read, who can forget, that admirable passage 
in Johnson’s Journey to the Hebrides, wherein the illustrious traveller re- 
lates his reflections on his landing upon the island of Icolmldll! “ Far from 
me, and from my friends,” says he, “ be such fri^d philosophy as may con- 
duct us incfifferent and unmoved over any ground wliich has been dignified 
by wisdom, bravery, or virtue.” That this frigid philosophy was a stinnger 
to the soul of Wilson, we have his own declaration in evidence; and so little 
skilled was he in the art of concealing Ins emotions, tiiat, on any occasion 
which awakened liis sensibility, he would exhibit the impulse of simple na- 
tive by weeping like a child. 
