onnected with its
forthgivings is rendered doubly memorable. It fixes, in a certain sense,
the limit of expectation, and the prevailing sentiment is--we are under
the tuition of the highest among those on earth who teach; if we do not
profit here, we may not hope to do so elsewhere. These remarks I make
with a particular reference to the late Professor Wilson, under the
influence of whose genius and generous warmth of heart many have felt as
I was wont to feel. If it brings hope and gladness to love and esteem
the living, it also yields a satisfaction, though mingled with regret,
to venerate the dead; and now that he is no more, I cannot forbear
recording how he treated a man from the mountains who possessed no
previous claim upon his attention. I had no introduction to him, but he
said that he had heard of me, and would accept of no fee for his class
when I joined it; at least he would not do so, he said, till I should be
able to inform him whether or not I had been pleased with his lectures.
But it proved all the same in this respect at the close as it was at the
commencement of the session. He invited me frequently to his house as a
friend, when other friends were to meet him there, besides requesting me
to come and see him and his family whenever I could make it convenient.
He said that his servant John was very perverse, and would be sure to
drive me by like all others, if he possibly could; so he gave me a
watchword, which he thought John, perverse as he was, would not venture
to resist. I thus became possessed of a privilege of which I did not
fail to avail myself frequently--a privilege which might well have been
gratifying to such as were much less enthusiastic with regard to
literary men and things than I was. To share in the conversation of
those possessed of high literary taste and talent, and, above all, of
poetic genius, is the highest enjoyment afforded by society; and if it
be thus gratifying, it is almost unnecessary to add that it is also
advantageous in no ordinary degree, if, indeed, properly appreciated
and improved. Any one who ever met the late Professor in the midst of
his own happy family, constituted as it was when I had this pleasure,
was not likely soon to forget a scene wherein so much genius, kindness,
loveliness, and worth were blended. If the world does not think with a
deep and undying regret of what once adorned it, and it has now lost,
through the intervention of those shadows which no m