pects I have the best reasons for believing that
this marriage connection has proved the happiest event of Mr.
Wilson's life; and that the delightful temper and disposition of his
wife have continued to shed a sunshine of peace and quiet happiness
over his domestic establishment, which were well worth all the
fortunes in the world. This lady has brought him a family of two sons
and three daughters, all interesting by their personal appearance and
their manners, and at this time rapidly growing up into young men and
women.

Here I should close all further notice of Mr. Wilson's life, and
confine myself, through what remains of the space which I have allowed
myself, to a short critical notice (such as it may be proper for a
friend to write) of his literary character and merits; but one single
event remains of a magnitude too conspicuous in any man's life to be
dismissed wholly without mention. I should add, therefore, that, about
eight or nine years after his marriage (for I forget the precise
year[46]), Mr. Wilson offered himself a candidate for the chair of
Moral Philosophy in the University in Edinburgh, which had recently
become vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown, the immediate
successor of Mr. Dugald Stewart. The Scotch, who know just as much
about what they call 'Moral[47] Philosophy' and Metaphysics as the
English do, viz. exactly nothing at all, pride themselves
prodigiously upon these two names of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Brown, and
imagine that they filled the chair with some peculiar brilliance. Upon
that subject a word or two farther on. Meantime this notion made the
contest peculiarly painful and invidious, amongst ungenerous enemies,
for any untried man--no matter though his real merits had been a
thousand times greater than those of his predecessors. This Mr. Wilson
found; he had made himself enemies; whether by any unjustifiable
violences, and wanton provocations on his own part, I have no means of
knowing. In whatever way created, however, these enemies now used the
advantages of the occasion with rancorous malignity, and persecuted
him at every step with unrelenting fury. Very different was the
treatment he met with from his competitor in the contest; in that one
circumstance of the case, the person of his competitor, he had reason
to think himself equally fortunate and unfortunate; fortunate, that he
should be met by the opposition of a man whose opposition was
honour--a man of birth, talents, and h