Perhaps it does not surprise the reader of passages such as these that they were quickly written; but all that he wrote must have been at full speed to account for the prodigious amount he got through. His daughter writes, after his election to the Moral Philosophy professorship :

:

'But though the heavy duties of his first session (1828) put an end for the time to all other occupations, his literary activity was rather stimulated than otherwise by his elevation to the chair. With trifling exceptions, his literary labours were confined exclusively to Blackwood's Magazine; and their extent may be guessed from the fact that, for many years, his contributions were never fewer, on an average, than two to each number. I believe that on more than one occasion the great bulk of the entire contents of a number was produced by him during the currency of a month. No periodical, probably, was ever more indebted to the efforts of one individual than "Maga" was to Wilson. His devotion to it was unswerving; and whether his health was good or bad, his spirits cheerful or depressed, his pen never slackened in its service.'-Christopher North, vol. ii. p. 50. We find Blackwood himself enthusiastic on this score:'Edinburgh, Oct. 18, 1823.

'MY DEAR SIR,-This has been a busy and a happy week with me. Every night, almost, have I been receiving packets from you; and yesterday's post brought me the manifesto, which you will see closes so gloriously this glorious number. I hope you are going on. It astonishes even me what you have done for 'Maga' this last week.'—Ibid. p. 67.

A 'Noctes' generally fills some thirty or more printed pages of the magazine. These papers are of various merit, but always spirited, and, though very open to adverse criticism, are full of thought, fancy, invention, and humour-and are given with the animation of real dialogue, so difficult for fancied conversation to attain to, though perhaps with not much distinction of persons.

The memorials of this year (1827) are confined to the pages of Blackwood, to which he contributed in one month (June), when a double number was published, six of the principal articles. How little he thought of knocking off a Noctes, when in the humour, may be judged from a note to Mr. Ballantyne, the printer, in which he says: "I think of trying, to-day and to-morrow, to write a Noctes. Would you have any objection to be introduced as a member? Would your brother? Of course I need not say that, with a little fun, I shall introduce you both with the kindest feeling. Pray let me know. 'Yours, very truly,

JOHN WILSON. • Subject-a party are to assemble in the new shop to dinner.'—Ibid. vol. ii. p. 120.

It is probably the amount and variety of his literary work that stood in the way of putting his mind into his letters. The excuse is an ample one, but, it being so, it would have been better to print fewer of them. His powers of work in the line he had made for himself were truly gigantic, and, when connected with his love of out-of-doors, and his passion for

sport, denote a wonderful organization. The exercise of all his powers was perhaps alike necessary to him; but continuous mental effort is so great a tax that we must lay his perseverance as much to a sense of duty as to the indulgence of a prolific genius. Strength of every sort was his characteristic, and his affections were as strong as the rest. Some great checks there were, some moral flaws, some fatal weaknesses to interfere with the proper development of so fine a nature, but we must respect for its rarity among other causes-the consistency and warmth of his friendships, the strength of all family ties, and his devotion as a husband and a father, especially that mournful fidelity to his wife's memory which, for the last seventeen years of his life, clouded and subdued his great spirit. It is rare to find constancy a characteristic of so full and exuberant a life. But it may be noticed, that though gifted in such an extraordinary and varied a degree, he was--what is perhaps a fortunate weakness in such a character-dependent upon others, and never sufficient for himself.

When not precisely on his own ground, he was nervously timid, and appealed for advice and help with quite a childlike simplicity. This comes out when, after a strenuous contest, he finds himself elected Professor of Moral Philosophy, with a course of lectures to prepare. He consulted all his friends, who on their side advise with an evident impression of his need of good counsel; and in the end a course of lectures are written, very popular with the young men, but, as it seems to us from the specimens reported, made up a good deal more of florid illustrations than of the very heart of the subject they illustrate. Again, his tendency to low spirits, and his need of sympathy, bound him to his friends; his eccentricities called for the toleration and indulgence of old friends; and his helplessness, his necessity to be cared for, attended to, waited upon, humoured, petted, taught him to appreciate the sweetness of domestic life. That he was thoroughly loveable in all these relations we know from his daughter's affectionate narrative. The pride she takes in his absence of mind, his peculiarities, and ways; the pretty pictures she draws of the great man playing with his grandchildren, his geniality, his interest in his daughter's pleasures, his solicitude for his son's interests, his spirits fluctuating with his wife's health-all convince us of a very engaging character. Powerful as his constitution was, it could not stand the demands that work, sorrow, and other causes made upon it. His spirits sank, and some painful years of depression, with occasional returns of hope and strength, are slightly and tenderly alluded to. In 1851, his sixty-seventh year, he was obliged to resign his professorship, on occasion of which the

Queen, through Lord John Russell, granted him a pension of 3001. a year-a gracious acknowledgment of his services to the literature of his country he was still able to appreciate. One of his last public acts was to go, at some trouble and unsolicited, to give his vote for Macaulay, when he stood for the University of Edinburgh. Surrounded by the solicitous cares of friends and children, but suffering from almost continuous depression, he gradually sank. This state, however, did not numb his old warmth of feeling :

'We were naturally desirous of keeping from his knowledge anything that would surprise him into agitation. This could not, however, always be done; for family distress, as a matter of course, he must participate in. The day which brought us intelligence of Mrs. Rutherford's death, was one of startling sorrow to him. His own widowed life had been one of long and faithful mourning; and the bereavement Lord Rutherford was called upon to endure, filled his mind with the most poignant pain, and it was with difficulty he could banish the subject from his thoughts: other men's sorrows, in the unselfishness of his nature, he made his own. More unbounded sympathy I never knew. Therein lay the feminine delicacy of his nature, the power of winning all, soothing the sad, encouraging the weak, scorning not the humble. With heart and hand alike open, he knew and acted up to the meaning of one simple rule, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.'-Vol. ii. p. 357.

His last days were silent ones, of which his daughter confidently says:

'That silence, so incomprehensible to common minds, looking too often for consolation to the recited words of Scripture, which they convey to curious ears, as expressing the last interest and hope of dying hours, was no other than the composing of his spirit with the unseen God. . . . The tender and anxious question which he asked concerning Robert Burns, "Did he read his Bible?" may perhaps by some be asked about himself. On a little table, near his bedside, his Bible lay during his whole illness, and was read morning and evening regularly. His servant also read it frequently to him.'-Vol. ii. p. 359.

He died the 2d of April, 1854, in his seventieth year. The book is an interesting one, and the character drawn real and graphic as far as it goes; but he was one whose influence was personal-it is clear that none could know him but through personal intercourse. His letters are common-place, creditable to his heart, but telling nothing of himself. His conversation did not admit of description or report, though we are led to suppose that his powers were great. 'Wilson's conversational powers, his wit, his humour, cannot, save in general terms, be described.' His daughter does not venture on the task, nor would she trust any one living to attempt it; Lockhart alone could, she thinks, have done him justice. His speaking, too, we are led to suppose, was pre-eminent; but here, too, we see that it was the grand figure he made, his sonorous voice, his

command of the occasion, his great reliance on the mood of his hearers, his power of self-abandonment to the interest of the hour, which constituted its excellence. And for his writings, on which his daughter relies for lasting fame, we see a style too diffuse, undisciplined, devious, parenthetical, to live far beyond the memory and the traditions of contemporary readers. Yet perhaps what is called fame, that is, living on book-shelves, and being known to scholars, is, in real influence, nothing to the hold some men get over their own generation through the vigour that emanates from every part of them and in a great degree dies with them. Such an influence Wilson possessed, and he wielded it, though sometimes recklessly and unscrupulously, yet, in many main points, for good and in the cause of faith and truth.

162

ART. VI.-1. Journal of the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, assembled in General Convention in Richmond, 1859.

2. General Convention at New York, 1862, reported in the Church Journal. New York. Published weekly.

It is twelve months since we reviewed the two preceding years of Church progress, and had in the course of the inquiry to refer to the new organization of our Communion within, and consequent on the establishment of, the Confederate States of America. We could not well touch upon that topic without pronouncing some opinion on the political aspect of the revolution; and we did not fear accordingly to give expression to an opinion, which it required more courage to express then than it would do at present, that the substantial justice in the quarrel lay with the Southerners. Now that the large majority of the respectable opinion of England inclines on their side by an overwhelming instinct, we may profitably recur to the contemplation of the great disruption, in a religious and ethical aspect, as it presents itself to us from our own particular standing-ground.

No better proof of the tendency of English public opinion on the question could be found than the fact that out of the ten daily papers which are published in London, in the morning or the evening, there are only two which are favourable to the Northern cause-the Daily News, the organ of philosophic radicalism both in its political and religious developements, and the Morning Star, the mouthpiece of Brightite policy and of the Liberation Society--both of them being strong Abolitionists. The remaining eight, ranging in their opinions from the strongest Toryism to the most decided Radicalism, reflect in various ways the prevalent sentiment of the country. It must be no common upheaving of feeling which unites in one line of argument the Times; the Morning Post, the exponent of Conservative Whiggism, and moderate High Churchmanship; the Church and State Derbyite Standard; and the Daily Telegraph, with its 'advanced' opinions on things in general. If we turn to the religious press the same growth of conviction presents itself, alike in the Guardian, in spite of the letters of its Philadel phian correspondent, about which we shall have something to say hereafter, and in the Record, which has for once had the courage to break out of the narrow ring of its traditionary