better known by his classical appellation of Florentius Volusenus, was born about the year 1500. He is supposed to have been born on the banks of the river Lossie, near Elgin, and to have received a part of his education in the university of Aberdeen. He afterwards prosecuted his studies at Paris, and was there employed as tutor to a son of Cardinal Wolsey's brother. He appears to have fixed his residence at Carpentras in the month of November 1535. His earliest publication was a theological tract, printed at Lyon in 1539. He next published the elegant work which has chiefly recommended him to the notice of posterity, De Animi Tranquillitate Dialogus, Florentio Voluseno autore. Lugduni, 1543, 4to. Wilson probably continued to reside at Carpentras till the year 1546, when, resolving to return to his native country, he was arrested by the hand of death at Vienne, during the same year.

Wilson, Dr George, was born at Edinburgh in 1818, and was educated at the High School and University of his native town. He was destined for the medical profession, and completed his medical education, and took his degree, but never practised. Disqualified by lameness for active pursuits, he devoted himself to the study of science and literature; and his easy transparent style, command of illustration, and ability and neatness as an experimenter, made him a favourite lecturer on chemistry, a post which he held for a number of years in one of the extra-academical institutions in Edinburgh for the study of medicine. In chemistry, as applied to the arts and manufactures, he was peculiarly well versed, and was therefore admirably qualified for the chair of Technology, which, on its first institution in the University of Edinburgh, was at once conferred on him. This office he held in combination with the curatorship of the Industrial Museum, formed in the Scottish metropolis, under the auspices of government, and which owes so much of its completeness and order to the skill and knowledge of the accomplished hand which superintended its formation. Dr Wilson continued to hold these offices till his death, which happened prematurely and unexpectedly in November 1839, when he had only reached his forty-first year. Besides the fame which his skill as a chemist and his ability as a lecturer are likely to secure him, Dr Wilson has left many contributions to every department of literature, which will long sustain his reputation. He even ventured into the domains of poetry, and both Blackwood's and Macmillan's Magazine have been at various times enriched with his poetical effusions, which possess little strength indeed, but are pleasing, graceful, and melodious. To scientific literature he contributed, among other works which we have not space to enumerate, an excellent Text-Book of Chemistry, forming part of Chambers's Educational Course; curious Researches on Colour Blindness, a subject which he was the first to investigate systematically; and a pleasing treatise on the senses under the ingenious name of The Five Gateways of Knowledge. He was also the author of an excellent Life of Carvendish, and of a large number of scientific papers in various magazines and reviews.

Wilson, Horace Hayman, one of the most distinguished orientalists to whom England has given birth, was born in London in 1786. He was educated for the medical profession, and on finishing his studies went out to Calcutta as an assistant surgeon in the Company's Bengal establishment. His great ambition was, however, to emulate Sir Wilson, James, and he accordingly devoted himself with great assiduity to the study of the oriental languages, for which his residence in Calcutta gave him peculiar facilities. In 1813 he published a translation of a Sanscrit poem, and in 1819 he compiled a Dictionary in Sanscrit and English, which has been of essential service in removing the difficulties which formerly impeded a European in his endeavours to acquire a knowledge of the oriental languages. He was now recognised as one of the most competent oriental scholars of the day, and became a valuable contributor to the Asiatic Researches, for which he wrote An Account of the Religious Sects of the Hindoos, which is still our best authority on that subject. In 1827 he published a translation of six Sanscrit dramas, which was received with much favour by the learned both in England and on the continent. His ability, in the meantime, procured him an official position in India of considerable dignity; and any leisure which his duties allowed him was occupied in preparing articles for the various literary journals of India. In 1831 he became a candidate for the Boden Professorship of Sanscrit at Oxford, and after a sharp contest he was elected, and left India for England. Shortly after his arrival he was appointed librarian at the East India House, and various literary honours were conferred on him by the different learned societies in England. He still continued his labours in elucidating the history and language of India. In 1840 appeared a translation of the Vishnu Purana, accompanied with learned notes; and shortly afterwards he published an excellent grammar of the Sanscrit language; and several similar works also proceeded from his pen. He also edited a translation of Bopp's Comparative Grammar; and a revised edition of Mill's India, in which the mistakes into which that historian's ignorance of the Indian language led him are corrected, and the history continued to the year 1855. He died in 1860.

Wilson, James, a very remarkable financier, and one of the most practically influential of British economists, was born at Hawick, in Roxburghshire, on the 3d June 1805. He received a sound though plain education at a seminary belonging to the Society of Friends, of which his father was a respected member. At a very early age he went into business as a hat-manufacturer in his native town, and afterwards removed to London, being discontented with so limited a sphere of action. For many years he was very successful in business, and had accumulated considerable property; but in 1837 he was unfortunately induced to engage in an indigo speculation, which proved disastrous. He obtained a release from his creditors on terms which both he and they considered satisfactory, and continued his business as a manufacturer of hats with fair success. When, some years afterwards, it unexpectedly appeared that his former creditors had not succeeded in realizing the anticipated sum from the property assigned to them, he, without solicitation from them, paid the deficiency.

From early youth Mr Wilson had paid great attention to the more practical portion of political economy, and in 1839 he published a small treatise, entitled Influences of the Corn-laws, as affecting all classes of the community, and especially the landed interest; and next year another, on the Fluctuations of Currency, Commerce, and Manufactures, referable to the Corn-laws. Mr Wilson was among the first to maintain that the influence of the corn-laws was essentially prejudicial to every class in the community: to the agricultural part as well as to the manufacturing part; and he stated the argument with an emphasis and lucidity that had a practical effect at the time. In 1843 he started the Economist newspaper, of which he was for many years the chief editor, and was always the sole proprietor. In consequence of his energy and ability, that journal became very efficient in the incultation of free-trade doctrines and the dissemination of liberal opinions. Mr Wilson's name will be long remembered as one of the most efficient of those sound and practical economists who obtained commercial freedom for Great Britain.

In 1841, Mr Wilson published a remarkable tract, called The Revenue, or what shall the Chancellor do? in which he showed very perspicuously the financial expediency of freeing our commercial industry from forced restrictions. The principles on which Sir R. Peel and Mr Gladstone afterwards acted are stated with concise distinctness in this pamphlet, and are illustrated by telling figures. In 1847, Mr Wilson collected from the Economist newspaper a series of articles on capital, currency, and banking, which contain a series of criticisms on the currency acts of Sir R. Peel, and the best contemporary analysis of the panic of 1847, and of the railway mania which preceded it. Mr Wilson was a consistent bullionist, and a strenuous advocate for the sure convertibility of the bank-note, but he was opposed to the technical restrictions of the act of 1844.

In July 1847, Mr Wilson was elected to serve in parliament for Westbury, and very soon established a parliamentary reputation for indefatigable industry, sound business abilities, and an effective readiness in lucid exposition. After he had been a very few months in parliament, he was offered one of the secretarieships of the Board of Control, which he continued to hold until the resignation of Lord John Russell's administration in February 1852. During his tenure of this office he took an active and influential share in the establishment of railways in India, and in the settlement of the peculiar guarantee which the government of India has given to the capital embarked in them.

On the return of the liberal party to power, Mr Wilson accepted the laborious office of financial Secretary to the Treasury, which he continued to fill with singular efficiency for five years. During his tenure of this difficult office, he acquired among the best judges and closest observers a permanent reputation as one of the best administrators of the present day. On the dissolution of Lord Palmerston's administration in the spring of 1857, Mr Wilson resigned his office at the Treasury. During Lord Derby's administration he continued to be in opposition, but was made vice-president of the Board of Trade on the formation of a new liberal ministry in 1859.

In the summer of that year he was appointed financial member of the Council of India. The sepoy mutiny had thrown the finances of India into utter confusion, and Mr Wilson was sent thither to cure a deficit which the financiers of Calcutta seemed unable not only to remedy but even to ascertain. On the 20th October 1859 he sailed for India, and on the 18th February 1860 brought forward at Calcutta an elaborate budget, in which he first proposed the income-tax which is now in operation throughout our eastern empire. On the 5th March 1860 he proposed a careful plan for the establishment and regulation of a paper-currency in India. He likewise commenced a reformation of the system of public accounts in India, with a view of establishing a satisfactory estimate of coming expenditure, and a satisfactory calculation of coming income, neither of which now exist there. These severe labours proved too much even for Mr Wilson's iron frame. He might probably have prolonged his life by an abrupt departure, but he refused to leave Calcutta until his financial measures had reached a certain stage. Unhappily his disease was too rapid. He died of dysentery on 11th August 1860. The regret felt at Calcutta was perhaps unexampled. The higher classes, without exception, and almost the whole population attended his funeral; and when the news of his death arrived in England, it was felt there also, that in such a crisis, at such a post, the loss of such a man was hardly to be replaced. (W.B.—T.) Wilson, James, the younger brother of the celebrated "Christopher North," was born in Paisley in 1795. The reputation of his elder brother, and his own modest and retiring disposition, have conspired to throw him into the shade, yet few names are more worthy of honour. Shortly after his birth his father died, and his mother in consequence removed with her family to Edinburgh, where her youngest son received his education. From his earliest years he exhibited a fondness for natural history, which prompted him in his many school-boy ramblings around Edinburgh to collect specimens of every variety of bird, beast, and insect that the neighbourhood afforded. This taste was of course developed by attending the lectures of Professor Jameson on natural history; and though he at a subsequent period went through the usual routine of training preparatory for the profession of a writer to the signet, his career in life had been already marked out as that of a naturalist. When only seventeen he became a member of the Wernerian Society, and when twenty he began to read communications on the natural history of the country. We are indebted to the pen of Lockhart for a description of his appearance and habits at this period. "He is a thin, pale, slender, contemplative-looking person, with hair of rather a dark colour, and extremely short-sighted. His voice is low, and his whole demeanour as still as can be imagined. . . . The parts of natural science of which he is fondest are ornithology and entomology—studies so delightful to every true lover of nature, that I suspect they are, in some measure, familiar to every poet who excels in depicting the manifestations and in tracing the spirit of beauty in the external universe. . . . I have never met with any man who seemed to possess a greater power of illustrating subjects of natural history by quotations from writers of all kinds, and in particular from the poets. Nothing could be more refreshing than to hear some minute details about birds and insects, interrupted and illuminated by a fragment of grand melancholy music from the Paradise Lost, or the Excursion." (Peter's Letters to his Kingsfolk, 1819.) On the restoration of peace after the long wars with Napoleon, he visited the continent, making a tour through Holland, Belgium (where he visited the field of the then recent fight of Waterloo), Germany, and Switzerland; and he has preserved in a lively and well written journal, of which parts have been published, his first impression of the scenes which he then beheld. Shortly after this tour he went to Paris to purchase for the University of Edinburgh the famous ornithological collection of Dufréne; and on his return he found employment in contributing to Blackwood's Magazine, which had been recently projected. His weak health obliged him to spend the winter of 1820 in Italy, where he recovered his strength; and shortly after his return, he married and established himself at Woodville, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, in a delightful cottage surrounded by a little patch of ground which his skill converted into a paradise. Here, in the enjoyment of domestic happiness, with all the conveniences of proximity to town and all the pleasures of rural life, he devoted himself to the prosecution of the studies in which he so much delighted, varying and relieving his toils by an occasional visit to some of his numerous friends, a fishing-expedition, or a trip in a yacht round the coasts of Scotland. On the issue of the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he furnished all the articles on natural history, including Entomology, Helminthology, Mammalia, Ornithology, Reptiles, and Serpents, &c. These articles taken together amount, in the extended scale in which they appear in the present edition of the work, most of them extended and revised by himself, to upwards of 900 pages, a quantity of matter equal to at least six ordinary octavo volumes. All these articles are distinguished by the peculiar grace of their style, so different from the dry and repulsive air which usually characterizes works of science, and by the felicity of the poetical illustrations which are interspersed. His calm and pleasant life presents no incidents deserving of special note, if we except his declination of the chair of natural history in the University of Edinburgh, which was offered to him on the lamented death of Professor Forbes in 1834, an office for which every one but himself deemed him eminently competent. He died in May 1836, with the calm composure of a Christian who had nothing to dread in the future. In addition to the works mentioned above, he wrote A Voyage round the Coasts of Scotland and the Isles; Illustrations of Scripture, by an animal painter; and several articles in Blackwood, and the North British and Quarterly Review. A pleasant memoir of him was published in 1839, by Dr Hamilton of London.

Wilson, John, poet and essayist, and for thirty years professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was a native of Paisley, born on the 18th of May 1785. His father was a wealthy manufacturer, who gave his son a complete education, and left him a fortune of about L30,000. Some years of the youth of John Wilson were passed in the country, under the charge of a Scottish clergyman in a rural parish—Mearns in Renfrewshire—and this residence was of vast importance to him both as a poet and a man. It rendered him familiar with the face of nature and the simple life of the country, and it fostered that love of athletic sports and invigorating exercise which continued to be one of the most blessed conditions and marked features of his character, personal and literary. From his boyhood, he was an enthusiastic angler and pedestrian, as well as an eager though irregular student. At the age of fifteen, he was entered of Glasgow University. The two most celebrated professors at that time were Young and Jardine—the former occupying the Greek chair, and the latter that of logic; and Wilson, like Campbell and Jeffrey, has borne testimony to their merits and virtues. Four years were agreeably and profitably spent in attendance at college in Glasgow, and in studies and vacation in the country, and Wilson was then sent to Magdalen College, Oxford. He applied himself assiduously to the classics and to English composition, and was no less devoted to boating on the Isis or Thames, cricket-playing, and long pedestrian rambles. In 1806, he carried off the Newdigate prize for the best English poem of fifty lines. His subject was a recommendation of the study of ancient art, as seen in the Greek and Roman remains, and his style was the regular conventional academic pace—the stately, measured, heroic couplet. The verses of Wilson were always flowing and resonant—his ear for time, if not for tune, was faultless.

In 1808, the young poet completed his collegiate career. He had purchased a small but beautiful estate on the banks of Lake Windermere, and there he resided for many years, enjoying the exquisite scenery of that poetical district, the conversation of Wordsworth and Southey, and the pleasures of rowing, yachting, and pedestrian excursions, for which he entertained as keen a relish. As "admiral of the lake," Wilson was famous for his skill and courage, and for his bounteous hospitality. His stout, robust figure, fair Saxon complexion, blue eye, and long clustering yellow hair (of all which he was as proud as of his poetry), rendered him always a conspicuous personage in town or country. His appearance was singular; to casual observers it appeared theatrical, but in point of fact, as was said of Mrs Siddons, "a manner in itself artificial, sprung out of the nature" of his character." In 1811, Mr Wilson married a very amiable lady, Miss Jane Penny, daughter of a Liverpool merchant; and about this time we find him described by Sir Walter Scott:—"The author of the elegy upon poor Graham (the poet of the Sabbath) is John Wilson, a young man of very Wilson, John, considerable poetical powers. He is an eccentric genius, and has fixed himself upon the banks of Windermere, but occasionally resides in Edinburgh. . . . He seems an excellent, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic young man. Something too much, perhaps, of the latter quality places him among the list of originals."—(Letter to Joanna Baillie, Jan. 17, 1812.) Scott's attentions and encouragement were gratefully felt by Wilson, and were acknowledged in a poem entitled The Magic Mirror, in which he portrays the mighty minstrel in the character of a great magician, a title by which he was afterwards frequently designated. In the spring of 1812, Wilson's Isle of Palms, with other Poems, was published. It was something in the style of Southey, as Scott remarked; the rich descriptions of tropical scenery were not unlike the gorgeous scenes in Thalaba or Kelema, but the general tone and diction of the Isle of Palms remind one more of Wordsworth. An intense love of nature approaching to Pantheism, and of all gentle sympathies and affections, is the prevailing characteristic of Wilson's poetry. It wants energy and condensation, the "brief strokes of power" which distinguish the master-hand, but it spreads out into passages of great sweetness and fairy imagery.

The poet now began to think of adopting a profession. The cares of a family and some pecuniary reverses suggested the expediency of such a step, and he commenced the study of the law. In 1815, he passed as an advocate at the Scottish bar. He does not seem, however, to have gone resolutely to work at his new calling, and three years afterwards we find Lockhart describing himself and Wilson as briefless barristers, sweeping the boards of the Parliament House. Literature was to be the vocation of both. Before this time Wilson had put forth a second volume of poetry, The City of the Plague (1816), a dramatic poem superior in literary merit and interest to the Isle of Palms, and which Byron considered as showing that Wilson had "set up for himself," without reliance on the Lakers. Next year Blackwood's Magazine was established, forming a grand era in the history of our author, and in the literary annals of Edinburgh. Wilson became the founder of a new dynasty, the latest dynasty of Edinburgh literati. History and metaphysics had held sway in the previous century under Hume, Robertson, and Smith. The physical sciences were afterwards illustrated by Playfair and Leslie. With Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Brougham, came the Edinburgh Review, and the advent of free thought and independent criticism. To these succeeded Wilson and Lockhart—young, flushed with genius, scholarship, and ambition, and determined to excorise whiggism and the Review by means of Blackwood's Magazine. Their success was great. Over the whole of Scotland there was a spring-tide of Toryism breaking down the old Edinburgh embankments, sweeping through college halls and the Parliament House, and animating with a wild excitement a large portion of the educated youth of the country. This, in time passed away, but the flood of Wilson's essays and criticism had irrigated and improved our periodical literature. There was originality, with fervour and boldness, in all he wrote. It was mixed with baser matter in the shape of invitations to coarse jollity and fierce political and personal satire, but the frank, genial, literary spirit predominated. There was abundance of illustration, humour, fancy, and mirth. The poetry of Wilson had only displayed delicacy of feeling and purity of sentiment. It was graceful and picturesque. But it was as an essayist, a critic, and humorist, that he made known his various and high powers, and the chivalrous gallantry of his nature. He poured out the whole man in his prose. His critical papers on Homer and Spenser have a magnificent breadth and eloquence, rarely, if ever before found in disquisitions of that class, and his essays on our modern poets—on Thomson, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Crabbe—exhibit profound sympathy with the creations and temperament of genius and insight into the sources of emotion and passion. A "fra-ter feeling strong," impelled his teeming fancy and his fluent pen. There was another class of papers in which Wilson was unique—descriptions of the Lake Country and of Highland scenery. These often became in his hands a sort of poetical dithyrambs or idylls, full of true poetry and fine discrimination, yet crossed and streaked with all manner of grotesque images and fancies; the real mingling with the ideal, the high with the low, the beautiful with the gross and extravagant. His glowing imagination seemed to fuse together these incongruous materials, much of which a purer taste would have rejected, yet which none of his contemporaries perhaps could have produced in equal abundance. In The City of the Plague Wilson had essayed the grave dramatic style. In Blackwood he struck into the walk of the comic drama. The Noctes Ambrosianae contributed to the magazine between the years 1822 and 1835, consist of familiar dialogues among a few interlocutors on the principal topics of the day, men and books, morals and social life. They contain passages of "admirable fooling," shrewd observation, description, and criticism. The style is much the same as that of the essays, but with greater abandon of manner, and a larger admixture of poetical exaggeration and farcical humour. Three volumes of serious prose tales were also published by our author.—The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, 1822; The Trials of Margaret Lindsay, 1823; and The Foresters, 1824. These are all stories of a domestic character, in which the painting, both light and shade, is generally in extreme, and the incidents, though often strikingly pathetic and sweetly told, are too Arcadian or improbable. They are the works of a poet idealizing whatever he touches—not transcripts of actual life from the hand of a keen and searching novelist. To be relished they must be read with the fresh romantic feelings of youth.

In 1820 the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the death of Dr Thomas Brown. Wilson was a candidate, and he succeeded, though not without strong opposition, in obtaining the appointment. It could not be said that his previous studies had fitted him for such an office, and the careless freedom of his life and anonymous writings was urged against him. All the "Tory mischief" in Blackwood was laid at his door, although, in reality, the chief part was concocted by Lockhart (whom James Hogg in the Chaldee Manuscript had named the scorpion), and Wilson never possessed editorial control over the magazine. It was well known, however, that his strength did not lie in reasoning or mental analysis, or in regard for order and method, and hence part at least of the opposition and its justification. But genius has a faculty of rapid perception, as well as a kindling and creative power. The new professor made his lectures attractive and suggestive; his enthusiasm was contagious; his cordiality and kindness won the hearts of the students; and his literary and social eminence made them proud of him as a chief. As the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine, he became known to all the world, and as "The Professor" he was the great lion of the Scottish capital. After the death of Scott he had no rival in literary popularity, for Jeffrey had then withdrawn from the arena, and devoted himself wholly to law. Lockhart was in London, and the Ettrick Shepherd, who had at one time loomed largely in the view of Edinburgh society, was subsidized by the Professor, and drawn at his chariot wheels in the Magazine.

In 1837 Professor Wilson sustained an irreparable loss in the death of his wife—the accomplished companion of his summer rambles and winter's fireside, and the careful tender mother of his children. For a season books and lectures were neglected: "How could I see them," he said, "in the valley and shadow of death?" Literature, however, again became the solace. He resumed work for the Magazine, and in 1841 he wrote, or rather compiled from his previous magazine writings, a copious Essay on the Genius and Character of Burns, which accompanied an illustrated work, the "Land of Burns," published for the Messrs Blackie of Glasgow. In 1842 he collected and revised part of his contributions to Blackwood, and published them in three volumes under the title of The Recreations of Christopher North. In 1844 a poetical jubilee brought him joyously and prominently before the public. A great festival was held at Ayr in honour of Burns, and in recognition of Burns's three sons, two of whom, retired Indian officers, had, after a long absence, returned to their native country. A "demonstration" took place in the open air, near the poet's monument on the banks of Doon, at which, it was calculated, about 80,000 persons were present, and in the afternoon 2000 dined together in a pavilion erected for the purpose. The Earl of Eglinton presided over this assembly, and Professor Wilson officiated as croupier or vice-chairman. To the Professor was assigned the chief toast and speech of the day, a welcome to the sons of Burns, and with characteristic force and impulsive fervour, he delivered a long oration, in which he expatiated on those topics so dear to his heart and imagination, the people of Scotland and their great peasant poet. "The people," he said, "were not lightly moved, but when moved, their meaning was not to be mistaken; tenacious their living grasp as the clutch of death!" And their poet had "reconciled poverty to its lot, toil to its task-work, care to its burden—nay, even grief to its grave:" and by one immortal song, has sanctified for ever the poor man's cot—by such a picture as only genius in the inspiring power of piety could have painted; has given enduring life to the image—how tender and how true!—of the happy night passing by sweet transition from this working world into the hallowed day, by God's appointment, breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest—nowhere else so profoundly—and may it never be broken—as over the hills and valleys of our beloved and yet religious land." This fragment may convey some idea of the style and phraseology of the Professor's "large utterances," which were delivered in a deep powerful voice, his broad chest heaving, his eye glancing, and his whole manner indicating the poetical afflatus that possessed him. His nationality was always a fountain of inspiration.

The collected works of Professor Wilson have not been generally popular. When seen in a mass, they had a character of sameness and repetition. Much of the original freshness was gone; both 'bloom and odour had perished in the using. And this is by no means a singular case. The most successful articles in the Edinburgh Review, for above twenty years, were those of Jeffrey. Professor Wilson's contributions to Blackwood may be said to have sustained the Magazine for a still longer period; and Mr Fonblanque's witty and sparkling "leaders" made the Examiner the delight of literary and political circles. Selections were made and published from all the three, yet not one of the reprints can be pronounced a success, or is likely to occupy a permanent place in our literature. Essays on the current events, books, and characters of the day, when not of great historical value or concise and complete (like Macaulay's Clive and Hastings), soon lose their interest. When brilliant, high-coloured, and piquant, they serve admirably for perusal in their periodical form; but when presented in three or more volumes, they cloy or repel readers. Their very excellence for immediate use unfitts them in a great measure for preservation. "What a waste," exclaimed Coleridge, "what a reckless spending of talent—ay, and of genius too, in Wilson's, I know not how many years' management of Blackwood!" Yet the sage of Highgate Grove admitted that Wilson's writings soothed and suspended his bodily miseries and mental conflicts. The world was all the better for the Professor's genial criticism, his broad mirth, and unrestrained revelry. Even yet he can charm. It is delightful to lose oneself with such a companion among Highland lochs and glens—to ramble with him over the milder beauties of the lake country of England—or to hold high converse with him in his graver moments on poetry, philosophy, and religion; when pausing to collect his strength, he dismisses the motley train of images that throng his fancy, and reviewing the issues of life and death, breathes forth "thoughts that wander through eternity." On these occasions his very mannerism, like a well known voice, has a certain fascination. Overflowing with animal spirits, at the same time that his finer sensibilities and intellectual tastes are called into play, he throws his whole soul into such monologues and reveries, and astonishes alternately by the wildness of his imagination, and by the depth of his feeling, humour, and pathos. His faults appear all to spring from the exuberance of his intellectual resources. As was said of his favourite Spenser, "the clouds of his allegory and description may seem to spread into shapeless masses, but still they are the clouds of a glowing atmosphere."

About the year 1850 the health of Professor Wilson, mental and physical, gave way. In 1851 a pension of L300 a year was settled upon him by the Crown, and in 1852 he was compelled, from increasing infirmity, to resign his professorship. He was no longer seen by the public, and his absence was felt as a sad blank—a void that has not yet been filled up in the city where he dwelt, for he was the last of the old race of strong men. He lingered on for two more years, and died in his house in Gloucester Place, Edinburgh, on the 3rd of April 1854. An edition of his works has been published in twelve volumes, edited by his son-in-law, Professor Ferrier of St Andrews. (ii. c—8.)

Wilson, Richard, an eminent landscape-painter, was the son of a clergyman in Montgomeryshire, in Wales, where he was born in 1713. Having displayed early a taste for drawing, he was placed by his relation, Sir George Wynne, with an obscure portrait-painter in London, where he made great progress. After practising in portraits for some time in London, he resolved to visit Italy, which he accordingly accomplished in 1749. While in that country, he was advised by Zuccarelli and Vernet, who took an interest in his studies, to try landscape. Henceforward Wilson painted little but patches of country; but these he executed with such simplicity and truthfulness, as occasionally to gain for him the epithet of the English Claude. In 1760, after his return from Italy, he exhibited his famous picture of "Niobe," which established his reputation in England. He painted besides a "View of Rome from the Villa Madama," and many other pictures which cannot here be mentioned. But it is sad to relate that, from some cause or other, probably from the surly temper of the artist, or from the uncouthness of his manners, he was in his later years reduced to great straits. The products of his pencil had to go to picture-dealers, who, it is reported, had to hoard them up till their author was gone, when they brought in as many hundreds as they originally cost of pounds. He died at Llanverris, in Wales, in 1782.