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 Place, Edinburgh, his home since 1826, he had a paralytic stroke, which terminated his life two days afterwards. He was buried in the Dean cemetery with an imposing public funeral on 7 April, and a statue of him by John Steell was erected in Princes Street in 1865. Wilson left two sons, John and Blair, one a clergyman of the church of England, the other for a time secretary to the university of Edinburgh. He had three daughters: Margaret Anne, married to Professor James Frederick Ferrier [q. v.]; Mary, his biographer, married to Mr. J. T. Gordon, sheriff of Midlothian; and Jane Emily, married to William Edmonstoune Aytoun [q. v.]

Wilson was a man of one piece. His personal and literary characters were the same. The chief characteristic of both is a marvellously rich endowment of fine qualities, marred by want of restraining judgment and symmetrical proportion. As a man he was the soul of generosity and magnanimity, but exaggerated in everything, and by recklessness and wilfulness was frequently unjust where he intended to be the reverse. As an author he must have attained high distinction if his keen perception of and intense delight in natural and moral beauty had been accompanied by any recognition of the value of literary form. In the ‘Noctes’ this is in some measure enforced upon him by the absolute necessity of maintaining consistency and propriety among his dramatis personæ. Elsewhere the perpetual frenzy of rapture, although perfectly genuine with him, becomes wearisome. His style is undoubtedly colloquial and sometimes meretricious. Nassau Senior thought so badly of both ‘his dulcia as well as his tristia vitia’ that ‘he would almost as soon try to read Carlyle or Coleridge.’ Such a verdict has no terrors now. Yet it is true that there are few writers of Wilson's calibre who discourse at such length, and from whom so little can be carried away. His descriptions both in prose and verse read like improvisations, leaving behind a general sense of beauty and splendour, but few definite impressions. He will live nevertheless by his often imitated but never rivalled ‘Noctes,’ and should ever be held in honour for the manliness and generosity of his character as an author. The same qualities characterised the mass of his criticism, although at times some insuperable prejudice or freak of perversity intervened, as when in his old age he recanted his former sentiments respecting Wordsworth in an essay which fortunately never saw the light. Such were aberrations of judgment: he was entirely free from malice or vindictiveness, and never cherished resentment. His review of his former adversary Macaulay's ‘Lays of Ancient Rome’ affected Macaulay ‘as generous conduct affects men not ungenerous.’ Long before his death he was entirely reconciled to Jeffrey, and he wrote in 1834 of his bygone enmity with Leigh Hunt, ‘The animosities die, but the humanities live for ever.’ His own function, whether as a painter of natural or an expositor of literary beauty, may be truly and tersely summed up in another dictum, that it was to teach men to admire.

Portraits of Wilson, painted by Raeburn and Watson Gordon, are in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, and in the National Portrait Gallery, London, respectively; an engraving of the latter is prefixed to ‘Professor Wilson: a Memorial and a Sketch’ [by George Cupples], Edinburgh, 1854. A fine engraving of a portrait taken at the age of sixty is prefixed to Mrs. Gordon's biography of her father. Thomas Duncan painted ‘Christopher in his Sporting Jacket’ (engraved by Armytage for the collected works), and a sketch from a statue by Macdonald, with a caricatured background, appeared in the Maclise Gallery in ‘Fraser's Magazine.’

Wilson's works were collected in twelve volumes by his son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, 1855–8. Four volumes are occupied by the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ;’ four by ‘Essays, Critical and Imaginative;’ two by ‘The Recreations of Christopher North,’ one by the poems, and one by the tales. The collection is not complete, the earlier numbers of the ‘Noctes’ being omitted, as well as the papers on Spenser, ‘Dies Boreales,’ and other matter which but for space might well have been reprinted. A complete and elaborate edition of the ‘Noctes’ was published at New York by Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie (in five volumes with an excellent index) and revised in 1866.

[Christopher North: a Memoir of John Wilson by his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon, 1862; Mrs. Oliphant's Annals of the Publishing House of Blackwood, William Blackwood and his Sons, 1897; Cupples's Professor Wilson, a Memorial and Estimate by one of his Students, 1854; Blackwood's Mag. May and December 1854; Athenæum, April 1854 and 8 July 1876 (a brilliant but severe estimate of the ‘Noctes,’ which are pronounced to be ‘dying of dropsy’); Quarterly Review, vol. cxiii.; Professor Ferrier's prefaces in Wilson's Works; Lang's Life of John Gibson Lockhart, 1897; De Quincey's Portrait Gallery and Autobiographic Sketches; Gillies's Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, 1851; Douglas's The ‘Blackwood’ Group, 1897; Selections from the Correspondence of Macvey Napier; Lock-


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266 fact that the acorn becomes an oak—that oak and acorn are but different stages of one process of growth. And the fact that in the earlier stages of religion we do not find the later stages preformed is no proof that the earlier stages do not pass into the later. If anyone chooses to insist that an oak is not the same thing as an acorn, he is entitled to do so. But, we must point out, he is not also entitled to assert that the oak is the same thing as the tree. "Tree," we will take it, is a term which includes or is applicable to all stages from the first to the last—to the acorn, the sapling and the oak alike. And so, too, religion is a term which includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to the stage of monotheism alone or of polytheism alone, or even to those stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of these stages is a stage in the process of religion, but no stage is by itself the whole process, and consequently a definition of one stage cannot possibly be a definition of the processes as a whole.

If we bear that simple and undeniable fact in mind, we shall have no difficulty in recognising that what is essential to, or an essential part of, religion in one stage may have to be cast aside when a later stage is reached. And in such a case it is a mistake to say that what is thrown off in the later stage was never at any time an essential part of religion. The husk of the acorn is thrown off, indeed, as the tree begins to grow, but in the acorn-stage of the tree it is an essential part of the tree, even though at a later stage it ceases to be any part of the tree whatever. Thus in the intichiuma rites there are ceremonies which, even if they are felt by the celebrants of the ceremonies to be very different from magic, and should by us be unmistakably distinguished from magic, nevertheless have the same modus operandi as magic. These ceremonies correspond to the husk of the acorn: they tend to be dropped in proportion as religion rises to higher stages.

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Rh But it would plainly be erroneous to say that they were not essential to the earlier stages because of necessity they cease to be part of the later stages. And, as already said, it is equally erroneous to suppose that these ceremonies, because their modus operandi is the same as that of magic, are, or are supposed by their celebrants to be, magical: what is intended for the good of a community is different from what is intended for its harm. Between magic and religion in Australia the difference is, then, to begin with, a difference of value. To imagine the Australians do not distinguish between magic and religion because ceremonies practised by them as religious are felt by people in another stage of religion to be magical, is just as unreasonable as it would be to say that the Australians are unaware of the difference between good and bad, or between truth and falsehood, because they think things to be good or true which we see to be bad and false. As there is no human society which does not distinguish between good and bad, truth and falsehood, so there is none which does not distinguish between religion and magic, though in each case the line between the two may be drawn at different points. The important fact, however, is that always the line is drawn somewhere The line may be continually shifting; but it could not shift, if it did not exist.

Sir James Frazer's definition or description of religion—that the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man—receives the assent of many who do not agree with all his views. It wins their assent because it places the idea of God at the beginning of religion. It has the advantage from his point of view that it enables him to cite the Australians as an instance of a people who have not attained to the belief in personal beings superior to man—as an instance of man in a pre-religious stage. May it not, however, be, as a definition or description of religion, capable of amendment? Viewed from the point of view of science,


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  hart's Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, vol. iii.; Gilfillan's Gallery of Literary Portraits; Findlay's Personal Recollections of De Quincey, 1886; Maclise Portrait Gallery, ed. Bates; Parmenides [De Quincey] in the Edinburgh Literary Gazette of 1829.]

WILSON, JOHN (1774–1855), sea-painter, son of James Wilson, shipmaster, and Eleonora Masterton, his wife, was born at Ayr on 20 Aug. 1774 (Ayr Parish Register). When thirteen years of age he was apprenticed to John Norie of Edinburgh, who, although by business a house-painter, not infrequently executed landscape panels of some merit in the rooms he decorated. On the completion of his apprenticeship, which was not without influence upon his future, he had some lessons in picture-painting from Alexander Nasmyth [q. v.], and then practised as a drawing-master in Montrose for two years, at the end of which he went to London. There he soon found employment as a scene-painter at Astley's Theatre in Lambeth Road, and his scenery is said to have been good. His name appears for the first time in the Royal Academy catalogue of 1807, but, although he exhibited a good many pictures there, his principal works were sent to the British Institution and the Society of British Artists. In 1826 he was awarded a 100l. premium for a picture of the battle of Trafalgar (purchased by Lord Northwick), painted in competition for a prize offered by the directors of the former society, and in the formation of the latter in 1823–4 he took a leading part. He was also elected an honorary member of the [Royal] Scottish Academy in 1827, and contributed regularly to its exhibitions. His later years were spent at Folkestone, where he found congenial subjects for his pictures, which usually represent coast scenery and the sea with shipping. His work is fresh and vigorous, and, if somewhat lacking in delicacy, pictorial in motive and arrangement, while it is marked by much truth of observation and directness of expression. He was a prolific painter, and between 1807 and 1856 showed 525 pictures at the three London exhibitions already named. There are two pictures by him in the National Gallery of Scotland and one at South Kensington Museum. On 20 April 1855 he died at Folkestone. Wilson, who was familiarly known as ‘Old Jock,’ was of a sociable disposition, a keen observer, a brilliant conversationist, and his stories of Robert Burns [q. v.] and other famous men he had met were in great request among those who knew him.

In 1810 he married a Miss Williams, and their son, John W. Wilson, who died in 1875, followed his father's profession, choosing landscape and farmyard subjects with figures.

[Gibson's View of the Arts of Design, 1816; Redgraves' Century of Painters, 1865; Redgrave's, Bryan's, and Graves's Dictionaries; Armstrong's Scottish Painters, 1888; Brydall's Art in Scotland, 1889; Catalogue of National Gallery of Scotland.]

WILSON, JOHN (1780–1856), general, born in 1780, was commissioned as ensign in the 28th foot on 26 March 1794, and became lieutenant on 12 Aug. 1795. He went with part of the regiment to the West Indies in 1796, and was present at the capture of St. Lucia in May and of St. Vincent in June. He was made prisoner and taken to Guadaloupe in July, and, after he had been exchanged, he was again made prisoner in the British Channel in 1797. He rejoined his regiment at Gibraltar, and took part in the capture of Minorca in November 1798. On 18 Jan. 1799 he was given a company in the newly formed Minorca (afterwards the 97th, or queen's German) regiment. He served with it in the expedition to Egypt in 1801, and was present at the battle of Alexandria on 21 March, where the regiment greatly distinguished itself. He was promoted major on 27 May 1802.

In 1808 the 97th was sent to Portugal. It landed on 19 Aug., and two days afterwards fought at Vimiero as part of Anstruther's brigade. Wilson was severely wounded. On 22 Dec. he obtained a lieutenant-colonelcy in the royal York rangers. In January 1809 he went back to the Peninsula and joined the Lusitanian legion raised by Sir Robert Thomas Wilson [q. v.] He was employed with it in the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo, harassing the French posts, one of which he surprised at Barbara de Puerco, at the end of March. In 1810 he was made chief of the staff of Silveira, who commanded the Portuguese troops in the northern provinces. In August he saved the rear-guard of the corps, ‘in circumstances of such trying difficulty that he received the public thanks’ of Beresford (, bk. xi. chap. v). In October orders came out for him to rejoin his regiment (York rangers), but Wellington represented that ‘the loss of his services will be seriously felt’ (Despatches, vi. 543), and he remained with the Portuguese army. At this time he was harassing the rear of Masséna's army at Coimbra, in concert with Colonel (afterwards ‘Sir’ Nicholas) Trant [q. v.]

In 1811 he was made governor of the province of Minho. At the head of the Minho militia he had a successful affair at Celorico on 22 March, and was actively engaged on


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 sixth tergites (see fig. 50). Ruedemann (1919, p. 92) has previously shown the alimentary canal in Carcinosoma newlini (Claypole), and Heubusch (1962, p. 222) has shown it in specimens of Eurypterus remipes lacustris Harlan.

Specimens examined.—The specimens listed as H-1 to H-18 are in the private collection of Jerry Herdina. The specimen listed as "Witmer" is in the private collection of Harry Witmer, of Downers Grove, Illinois; the Vigo County, Indiana, specimen is in the collection of Michael Moore, of Tulsa, Oklahoma; and those listed as PE 3969, PE 5094, and PE 6263 are in the collection of Chicago Natural History Museum. All except the Indiana specimen were collected from the strip mines on the Will-Grundy County line, Illinois. All of the specimens collected by Herdina and the Bell specimen (PE 6263) are from the vicinity of the Santa Fe and the Gulf Mobile and Ohio railway tracks, where they cross the strip mines (see Richardson, 1956, pp. 6, 7). The specimen with the alimentary canal preserved is in the private collection of Francis Tully, of Lockport, Illinois; the copper cast, PE 6174, is in the collection of Chicago Natural History Museum.

Remarks.—The mode of preservation of eurypterids, particularly with reference to biometric studies, is of primary importance. It should be emphasized that the more incompetent the encasing material, the greater the amount of distortion that is found. To illustrate this point, the measurements of two carapaces of Slimonia acuminata (Salter) from the Silurian, Ludlow shales of Lesmahago, Scotland, are given (specimens in Princeton University):

The length/width-at-base ratio of No. 1 is 10.5:10 whereas that of No. 2 is 18.8:10. The latter carapace has been stretched but it


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 the frontier throughout that year and 1812. In June 1813 he joined Wellington's army, and commanded an independent Portuguese brigade at the siege of San Sebastian, the passage of the Bidassoa, and the battle of Nivelle. He was severely wounded on 18 Nov. during the establishment of the outposts before Bayonne. He was made knight-commander of the Portuguese order of the Tower and Sword, a distinction which, it seems, he would have received two years before but for a confusion between him and Sir Robert Wilson (ib. viii. 367, 435). He was made brevet colonel on 4 June 1814 and was knighted, and in 1815 he was made C.B. He received the gold medal for San Sebastian, and afterwards the silver medal with clasps for Vimiero and Nivelle.

He was placed on half-pay on 25 Dec. 1816, and promoted major-general on 27 March 1825. He commanded the troops in Ceylon from December 1830 till his promotion to lieutenant-general on 28 June 1838. He was made K.C.B. on 6 Feb. 1837, and colonel of the 82nd foot on 5 Dec. 1836, from which he was transferred to the 11th foot on 10 May 1841. He became general on 20 June 1854, and died at 67 Westbourne Terrace, London, on 22 June 1856, aged 76.

WILSON, JOHN (1804–1875), missionary and orientalist, born at Lauder in Berwickshire on 11 Dec. 1804, was the eldest son of Andrew Wilson, for more than forty years a councillor of the burgh of Lauder, by his wife Janet, eldest daughter of James Hunter, a farmer of Lauderdale. When about four years old he was sent to a school in Lauder taught by George Murray, and about a year later he was transferred to the parish school under Alexander Paterson. In his fourteenth year he proceeded to Edinburgh University with a view to studying for the ministry. In his vacations he was employed at first as schoolmaster at Horndean on the Tweed, and afterwards as tutor to the sons of John Cormack, minister of Stow in Midlothian. While at the university he became more and more inspired by Christian zeal, and on 22 Dec. 1825 he founded the ‘Edinburgh Association of Theological Students in aid of the Diffusion of the Gospel.’ His attention was drawn to the mission field, and in the same year he offered himself to the Scottish Missionary Society as a missionary candidate. In 1828 he published anonymously ‘The Life of John Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians’ (Edinburgh, 16mo). His attention had been directed to India while acting as tutor to Cormack's nephews, the sons of (Sir) John Rose, an Indian soldier, and by the influence of Brigadier-general [q. v.], former resident at Baroda; and to prepare himself for work in that country he studied anatomy, surgery, and the practice of physic at Edinburgh in 1827–8. In 1828 he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Lauder, and on 21 June was ordained missionary. In the same year he was married, and sailed from Portsmouth in the Sesostris, East Indiaman.

On his arrival at Bombay in 1829 Wilson devoted himself to the study of Maráthí, and made such rapid progress that he was able to preach in the tongue in six months, delivering his first sermon on 1 Nov. After visiting the older stations of the Scottish Missionary Society at Harnai and Bánkot, Wilson and his wife returned to Bombay on 26 Nov. 1829. Wilson immediately commenced to labour energetically among the native population, and by 4 Feb. 1831 he had formed a native church on presbyterian principles. In 1830 he founded the ‘Oriental Christian Spectator,’ the oldest Christian periodical in India, which continued to appear for thirty years.

About 1830 an important undertaking was begun by Mrs. Wilson with her husband's advice—the establishment of schools for native girls, the first of their kind in India. The first school was opened on 27 Dec. 1829, and half a year later six others had been set on foot. These, and some elementary schools for boys established by Wilson, were supplemented on 29 March 1832 by the foundation of a more advanced college for natives of both sexes. Wilson's institution invites comparison with that founded almost contemporaneously in Calcutta by [q. v.] Wilson devoted more attention to female education, and gave more prominence to the study of native languages. While Duff's instrument was the English tongue, Wilson employed the vernaculars of a varied population—Maráthí, Gujaráthí, Hindustání, Hebrew, and Portuguese; with Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit for the learned classes. Both systems, however, were equally adapted to their environment: neither could have flourished amid the surroundings of the other. Wilson's college was at first known as the ‘Ambrolie English School.’ On 1 Dec. 1835, after some differences with the Scottish Missionary Society, Wilson and his colleagues in India were transferred to the church of Scotland, and the school was denominated the Scottish


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268 it has the same drawback as the notion that the oak exists preformed in the acorn. It seems to imply a "preformation" theory; and, as such, to be inconsistent with modern views of the nature either of growth or of evolution. The steam-plough has grown or evolved from the primitive digging-stick by a series of changes which though they have been changes have an unbroken continuity. But this continuity affords not the slightest ground for supposing that the idea of the steam-plough existed, preformed, in the mind of the man who first used a digging-stick. Neither, however, does the undoubted continuity throw the least doubt on the fact that the digging-stick has considerably changed in the process of its evolution. Different as a steam-plough is from a digging-stick, there is unbroken continuity between the two; and the unbroken continuity manifests itself in the changes by which the implement in its later stages has been evolved from the implement in its earlier stages. Enormous as the difference is, the similarity is none the less. So too, I suggest, enormous as is the difference between a stage of religion in which there is no reference to beings superior to man, and later stages of polytheism or monotheism, the process by which the later stages have followed on the earlier has been a process not only of change but of continuity—of change in continuity and of continuity in change—a process in which the very differences postulate similarity, and the similarity implies difference. The continuity of the digging-stick and the steam-plough implies all the stages of difference which at the same time separate and yet unite them.

For the illustration of my argument I may perhaps employ a statement made by our President. He says (following Mr. J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 24): "European geometry would seem to be the outcome of the art of the 'cord-fasteners,' who measured out the land in Egypt after each inundation of the Nile." Now,


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 . 49. A particularly well-preserved and only partly compressed specimen of Adelophthalmus mazonensis (Meek and Worthen) from the Herdina collection (H-3); × 1.8. The ocellar mound and the short genal spines of the carapace are particularly well preserved.


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 Mission School. In 1838 the arrival of John Murray Mitchell, a student of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and the return of the missionary Robert Nesbit (d. 1855), rendered it possible to organise the school on a more extended basis, and it became known as the General Assembly's Institution. A new building was completed in 1843, but Wilson was immediately afterwards obliged to relinquish it on quitting the church of Scotland at the time of the disruption. He carried on his school in another building which was finished in 1855. The present ‘Wilson College’ was completed about 1887.

Wilson did not, however, confine his efforts to the native youth. He entered into public discussions with the Hindu Bráhmans, and with the Muhammadans and Parsís. His courtesy and knowledge of oriental literature made no less impression than his logic, and by familiarising the native mind with Christian modes of thought he prepared the way for further progress. In 1837, however, a dispute arose which threatened serious consequences. Some of the Parsí pupils at the institution having shown an intention of becoming Christians, one of them was carried off by his friends, while two others evaded capture by taking refuge in Wilson's house. After various violent attempts a writ of habeas corpus was taken out for one of them, and on 6 May 1839 he appeared in court and declared his intention to remain with Wilson. The consequence of these proceedings was the removal of all but fifty out of 284 pupils at the institution, and it was some years before the former numbers were regained.

In the meantime Wilson sought to spread the influence of the mission beyond Bombay by tours through various parts of the country. In 1831, with Charles Pinhorn Farrar, the father of Dean Farrar, he proceeded to Násik on the Godávari, through Poona and Ahmadnagar. In the following year he went eastward to Jálna and the caves of Ellora in Haidarábád, and in the cold season of 1833–4 he visited the south Maráthá country and the Portuguese settlement at Goa. In 1835 he journeyed through Surat, Baroda, and Káthiáwár; and between 1836 and 1842 he visited the Gairsoppa Falls and Rájputána, besides returning to Káthiáwár and Somnáth. These frequent expeditions were used by Wilson as opportunities for spreading religious teaching, while at the same time he collected oriental manuscripts, and by constant intercourse with the natives increased his stock of oriental knowledge, in which he was acquiring a European reputation. He was elected a member of the Bombay Literary Society in 1830, and became president in 1835. On 18 June 1836 he was elected a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was the first to partially decipher the rock inscriptions of Asoka at Girnar, which had so long remained an enigma to western savants, and on 7 March 1838 James Prinsep [q. v.] made a full acknowledgment of his services to the Royal Asiatic Society. From 1836 onward he was frequently consulted by the supreme court and by the executive government on questions of Parsí law and custom. In 1843 he published ‘The Parsí Religion unfolded, refuted, and contrasted with Christianity’ (Bombay, 8vo), a work which obtained the favourable notice of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and which on 7 Feb. 1845 procured his election as a fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1843 Wilson was compelled by ill-health to take a furlough, and visited Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, on his way to Scotland. The fruit of his observations was the ‘Lands of the Bible visited and described’ (Edinburgh, 1847, 2 vols. 8vo). He arrived in Edinburgh immediately after the disruption of the church of Scotland, and without hesitation he joined the free church. After addressing the general assembly at Glasgow in October he accompanied Robert Smith Candlish [q. v.] to England, and advocated the cause of Indian missions at Oxford and London. The establishment of the Nágpur mission under Stephen Hislop was largely the result of his insistence of the need of a mission in Central India.

Wilson returned to India in the autumn of 1847, and in 1849 he commenced a tour in Sind, in which he was joined by Alexander Duff in the following year. The conquest of Sind had just been achieved, and Wilson was the first Christian missionary to traverse the country.

From 1848 to 1862 was intellectually the most fruitful period of Wilson's career. About 1848 he was nominated president of the ‘Cave Temple Commission’ appointed by government, chiefly through his instances and those of James Fergusson (1808–1886) [q. v.], to examine and record the antiquities connected with the cave temples of India. To this commission he gave his labour gratuitously for thirteen years, receiving the hearty co-operation of the leading orientalists in India. He published in the ‘Journal of the Bombay Asiatic Society’ (vol. iii.) ‘A Memoir on the Cave Temples and Monasteries, and other Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina Remains of Western India,’ which was reprinted in 1850, and circulated by government to all the district and politi-


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Rh geometry as it exists to-day certainly did not exist preformed in the mind of the ancient Egyptian "cord-fasteners," any more than the steam-plough existed in the mind of the first men who used digging-sticks. And, as we cannot say that the geometry which now exists in Europe, is nothing more than what was present to the mind of the early Egyptian, so we cannot say that the religion of the polytheist or monotheist is nothing more than was present to minds which had not attained to the belief in personal beings superior to man. But neither can we close our eyes to the fact that what was in the mind of the Egyptian "cord-fastener" has become modern European geometry by a process of continuity, which is none the less continuous because it has been continuously changing.

Whether the Egyptian "cord-fasteners" went on fastening their cords in the primitive way even after the time of Euclid, I do not know. If they did, then we should have an earlier and a later stage of geometry existing simultaneously in different countries, in the same way that we have in Australia an earlier stage of religion existing simultaneously with later stages elsewhere.

If we consider the process by which geometry has evolved to be analogous to the process by which religion has evolved, we shall perhaps be inclined to differ somewhat from Dr. Marett in one point. He says (E.R.E., viii., p. 247b), "In the sphere of nascent religion there must have been a stage of cult or ritual (if so it may be termed), the product of sheer unreflective habit, which preceded the growth of ideas concerning the how and why of what was being done." But, I suggest, that in the sphere of nascent geometry the stage in which the Egyptian "cord-fastener" measured out the land in Egypt after each inundation of the Nile—or, in the sphere of nascent agriculture, the stage in which a digging-stick was first used—was not "the product of sheer unreflective habit."


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 appears not to be distorted, as there are no breaks on the integument. Both carapaces are of approximately the same size, as attested by the nearly similar dimensions of the lateral eyes. The thin chitin however, is easily distorted when the encasing material is argillaceous. Specimen No, 1 represents the normal dimensions of the carapace of the eurypterid.

For comparison with Adelophthalmus mazonensis, the following measurements from specimens of A. mansfieldi (C. E. Hall) are offered. The specimens are all from the Darlington black shale of the Middle Pennsylvanian Allegheny formation, collected near Cannelton, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. All are preserved in black shale with varying degrees of slight distortion, but overall, the specimens listed here are mainly undistorted, though compressed (all carapaces are complete unless indicated). I have made the following measurements:


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 cal officers in and around the province of Bombay. With their assistance he published a second memoir in 1852, embodying the results of the commission's work on the larger caves, like Elephanta. In 1849 he declined the appointment of permanent president of the civil and military examination committee of Bombay, and in 1854 refused the post of government translator, fearing that acceptance might injure his missionary usefulness. In 1855 he published his ‘History of the Suppression of Infanticide in Western India’ (Bombay, 8vo), and in 1858 ‘India Three Thousand Years Ago’ (Bombay, 8vo), a description of the social state of the Aryans on the banks of the Indus. At the time of the Indian mutiny his knowledge of dialects was of great service to the government, for whom he deciphered the insurgents' secret despatches written to evade detection in various archaic characters and obscure local idioms. In 1857, when the university of Bombay was constituted, he was appointed dean of the faculty of arts, a member of the syndicate, and examiner in Sanskrit, Persian, Hebrew, Maráthí, Gujaráthí, and Hindustání, and he soon after was made vice-chancellor by Lord Lawrence.

In 1860 Wilson made a second tour in Rájputána, and in 1864 he was consulted by government in regard to the Abyssinian expedition. In 1870 he made a second visit to Scotland, and was chosen moderator of the general assembly. He returned to Bombay on 9 Dec. 1872, and laboured unweariedly until his death at his residence, ‘The Cliff,’ near Bombay, on 1 Dec. 1875. He was buried in the old Scottish burial-ground. His portrait, engraved by Joseph Brown, is prefixed to his ‘Life’ by Dr. George Smith, C.I.E. Wilson was twice married: first at Edinburgh, on 12 Aug. 1828, to Margaret, daughter of Kenneth Bayne, minister of Greenock. She died on 19 April 1835, leaving a son (1831–1881) [q. v.], who is separately noticed. Wilson married, secondly, in September 1846, Isabella, second daughter of James Dennistoun of Dennistoun. She died in 1867, leaving no issue.

Wilson's abilities as an orientalist were great, and would have earned him yet higher fame had he not always subordinated his studies to his mission work. It is not easy to overestimate the importance of his labours for Christianity in western India. During later life Indian officials, native potentates, and European travellers alike regarded him with esteem and affection. Lord Lawrence, the governor-general, and Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay, were among his personal friends. Through his educational establishments and his wide circle of acquaintances his influence radiated from Bombay over the greater part of India, and natives of Africa also came to study under his care. Besides the works already mentioned he was the author of:
 * 1) ‘An Exposure of the Hindu Religion, in Reply to Mora Bhatta Dandekara,’ Bombay, 1832, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘A Second Exposure of the Hindu Religion,’ Bombay, 1834, 8vo.
 * 3) ‘Memoirs of Mrs. Wilson,’ Edinburgh, 1838, 8vo; 5th edit. 1858.
 * 4) ‘The Evangelisation of India,’ Edinburgh, 1849, 16mo.
 * 5) ‘Indian Caste,’ edited by Peter Peterson, Bombay, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo; new edit. Edinburgh, 1878.

WILSON, JOHN (1812–1888), agriculturist, was born in London in November 1812. He was educated at University College, London, and afterwards completed his training in Paris, where he studied medicine and chemistry under Payen, Boussingault, and Gay Lussac. In 1845–6 he was in charge of the admiralty coals investigation under Sir Henry de la Beche. From 1846 to 1850 he was principal of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. His term of office was distinguished chiefly by an attempt to convert the college farm from pasture to arable land, which involved much expense and met with considerable opposition. In 1850 a suggestion on the part of the council for a thorough change of the organisation of the college into that of a school for farmers' sons led to Wilson's resignation. He was succeeded by the Rev. J. S. Haygarth, and the college continued its work much on the former lines.

In 1854 Wilson was, on the death of Professor Low, elected to the chair of agriculture and rural economy in the university of Edinburgh. This professorship had been founded in 1790 by Sir William Pulteney, but the salary attached to it at this time was little more than nominal. In 1868 he succeeded Professor Kelland as secretary to the senate of the Edinburgh University, and in the course of the same year, chiefly owing to the exertions of the Highland and Agricultural Society, the endowment of the chair of agriculture was increased (Journ. Roy. Agr. Soc. Engl. 1885, xxi. 525). Wilson's methods as a teacher were severely criticised, partly no doubt because some of the English systems of farming which he advocated ran counter to Scottish prejudices.


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 death he came to Rome, apparently about the year 180. In describing the behaviour of Commodus toward the senate and others at the beginning of his reign, he states that his account is henceforth the result of personal observation and not hearsay. It seems a reasonable inference, therefore, that he was already a member of the senate at this time, and therefore at least twenty-five years of age. Pertinax in 193 nominated him to the praetorship for the following year; but in the meantime both Pertinax and his successor Julianus were overthrown, and Dio thus assumed the office under Septimius Severus. The mild course of the new ruler at the outset of his reign, taken in connexion with his past record, was such as to win the enthusiastic admiration of Dio and to encourage in him the hope that a new era was now dawning.

It was at this point, apparently, that Dio's literary work began. He wrote and published a little book, as he tells us, containing an account of the dreams and portents which had foretold to Severus his future greatness. The details he had doubtless learned from the emperor himself, and he presumably had implicit faith in all these signs, to judge from his fondness for reporting omens and prodigies in general. Upon receiving a gracious letter from Severus in acknowledgment of a presentation copy, he seemed to be admonished by a dream the following night to


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 The fact, however, that most of the important chairs of agriculture in Scotland and many elsewhere were filled by his pupils is sufficient testimony to his merit as a teacher.

In 1885 Wilson resigned his chair at Edinburgh, and was appointed emeritus professor. In the spring of 1886 the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him. He died at Sandfield, Tunbridge Wells, on 27 March 1888.

An important characteristic of Wilson's career was his intercourse and relations with foreign agricultural authorities and societies. In 1851 he filled the position of deputy juror at the International Exhibition; in 1853 he was sent as royal commissioner to the United States, and in the same year was appointed knight of the French Legion of Honour. In 1855 he acted as commissioner to the British agricultural department in the exhibition at Paris. At different periods he also rendered important services to the agricultural departments of Canada, Austria, Denmark, and Germany. He was a corresponding member of numerous foreign agricultural societies, and in 1885 he was created knight commander of the Brazilian order of the Rose.

Wilson wrote: By far the most valuable, however, of his writings is
 * 1) ‘Catalogue de la collection des produits agricoles, végétaux et animaux de l'Angleterre … exposés par le Board of Trade à l'Exposition Universelle de Paris en 1855,’ Paris, 1855, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘The Agriculture of the French Exhibition: an Introductory Lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh, Session I., 1855–6,’ Edinburgh, 1855, 8vo.
 * 3) ‘Agriculture, Past and Present: being two Introductory Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh,’ Edinburgh, 1855, 2nd edit. 8vo.
 * 1) ‘Our Farm Crops, being a popular Scientific Description of the Cultivation, Chemistry, Diseases, Remedies, &c., of the various Crops cultivated in Great Britain and Ireland,’ London, 1860, 2 vols. 8vo. This is still a standard work of reference, and nothing better of its kind has ever appeared in agricultural literature.

Wilson edited a ‘Report on the Present State of the Agriculture of Scotland,’ arranged under the auspices of the Highland and Agricultural Society, to be presented at the international congress at Paris in June 1878.

 WILSON, JOHN MACKAY (1804–1835), author of the ‘Tales of the Borders,’ was the son of a millwright, and was baptised at Tweedmouth, Berwick-on-Tweed, on 15 Aug. 1804. After receiving elementary education at Tweedmouth he completed his apprenticeship as a printer in Berwick, and then settled for a time in London. Here he experienced hardship, and is said to have paid his last two shillings on one occasion to see Mrs. Siddons in Covent Garden Theatre. Leaving London, he lectured in the provinces for a time on literature with indifferent success. In 1832 he became editor of the ‘Berwick Advertiser,’ working thereafter steadily in the cultivation of his literary talent and the advocacy of political reform. He died at Berwick on 2 Oct. 1835, and was buried in Tweedmouth churchyard.

Wilson wrote various lyric and dramatic poems of little consequence. ‘The Gowrie Conspiracy,’ a drama, appeared in 1829. There was another drama, ‘Margaret of Anjou,’ besides several poetical publications—‘The Poet's Progress,’ ‘The Border Patriots,’ &c.—of smaller account. On 8 Nov. 1834 Wilson began the weekly publication, in threehalfpenny numbers, of ‘The Tales of the Borders,’ which speedily attained an extraordinary popularity both in Great Britain and in America. Realistic narratives of simple sentiment and impressive situations, these stories made a direct appeal to the general reader, and the weekly circulation steadily rose from two thousand to sixteen or seventeen thousand. Wilson published in all forty-eight numbers, comprising seventy-three tales. Favourites among his stories are: ‘The Poor Scholar’ (with manifest autobiographical touches), ‘Tibbie Fowler,’ ‘The Vacant Chair,’ and ‘My Black Coat, or the Breaking of the Bride's Chain.’ The series was continued by Wilson's brother, and much prolonged by Alexander Leighton (1800–1874) [q. v.] Several collected editions have been published. In 1834 appeared Wilson's ‘Enthusiast; a metrical tale, with other pieces.’

 WILSON, JOHN MATTHIAS (1813–1881), president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, eldest son of William Wilson of South Shields, was born at that town on 24 Sept. 1813. He received his early education as a day scholar at the grammar school of Newcastle-on-Tyne, under Dr. Mortimer, subsequently headmaster of the City of London school. On 15 June 1832 he was elected to a scholarship open to natives of the bishopric of Durham at


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 . 51. The only known, well-preserved, and entire male (Type A) mesial appendage of Adelophthalmus. This occurs in a specimen of A. mansfieldi (C. E. Hall) from the Pennsylvanian, Allegheny group at Cannelton, Darlington township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania; previously figured by James Hall (1884).

In Adelophthalmus mansfieldi and A. mazonensis the length/width-at-base (of the carapace) ratios and the length/width-behind-eyes ratios show little difference when plotted and when not taking into consideration the important preservational factor. For instance, all of the carapaces of A. mansfieldi are preserved in black shale and almost without exception they are completely compressed into one plane. Most of the carapaces of A. mazonensis, on the other hand, are only partly compressed and retain, in many cases, considerable relief. Thus A. mansfieldi is a much narrower form than A. mazonensis, as compressed carapaces of A. mansfieldi have nearly


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  Christi College, Oxford. He graduated B.A. in 1836, M.A. in 1839, and B.D. in 1847. While still a bachelor scholar he became tutor in 1838, and succeeded to a fellowship on 28 April 1841. In 1846 he was elected to White's professorship of moral philosophy, then a terminable office, re-elected in 1851, and finally re-elected in 1858, after it had been converted into a permanent chair. His lectures given in this capacity, and perhaps still more the stimulating assistance in their private work which he ungrudgingly afforded to his pupils, procured him a considerable reputation in the university as a teacher. In the fifties and sixties many of the best men in Oxford passed under his hands, and he gave a great impetus to the inductive study both of morals and psychology. This office he continued to hold till 1874. Meanwhile, as a leading member of the Hebdomadal Council, to which he was elected soon after its first institution, he had taken a prominent part in the business of the university, for which his shrewd common sense specially fitted him, and, as an ardent university reformer, he was largely instrumental in bringing about the abolition of religious tests and in procuring the issue of the parliamentary commissions of 1854 and 1877. From 1868 to 1872 Wilson held the college living of Byfield, Northamptonshire, in conjunction with his professorship, but this ecclesiastical preferment he resigned on being elected to the presidentship of his college, 8 May 1872. He entered on the duties of this office with much zeal and energy, but, unfortunately, soon after his election to the presidency his health gave way, and during the last few years of his life he was largely incapacitated from taking part in the administration of the college. After a long illness he died on 1 Dec. 1881. He was buried in the Holywell cemetery, Oxford, but is commemorated by a mural tablet in the college cloisters.

Though Wilson was a fluent talker and an impressive lecturer, he was singularly slow in composition, a circumstance due partly to his fastidiousness, and partly to the want of practice in early life. He did not produce any independent book, but was engaged for many years, in conjunction with the writer of the present article, on a work entitled ‘The Principles of Morals,’ the first part of which appeared in the fifth year after his death, 1886, under their joint names, and the second part in 1887 under the name of Dr. Fowler alone. The share taken by Wilson in the first part is indicated in the preface to the second part, and that taken in the second part itself in the advertisement at the beginning of the volume. The two parts were reissued with additions and corrections, in 1894, under the names of Fowler and Wilson.

Wilson was a man of marked personality. Physically he was of strong build and commanding presence. He had a determined will, and possessed great skill in bringing over other people to his own opinions. Though he did not lay claim to any extensive erudition, he was full of intellectual life and interests, a shrewd observer, and an acute thinker, who, to use a favourite phrase of Locke, tried to ‘bottom’ everything. These qualities, combined with a deep sonorous voice, a frank outspokenness, a keen sense of humour, the knack of saying ‘good things,’ and a genial manner, made him highly popular among his friends, and, during the more vigorous period of his life, one of the greatest powers in the university. He was unmarried. Two sisters, who had lived with him for many years before his death, survived him.

WILSON, JOHN MORILLYON (1783–1868), commandant of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, son of John Wilson, rector of Whitchurch, Yorkshire, was born in 1783. He entered the royal navy, and served as a midshipman on the coast of Ireland during the rebellion of 1798, in the expedition to the Helder in 1799, and in the Mediterranean and Egypt in 1801. He received a medal from the captain-pasha of the Turkish fleet off Alexandria in 1801 for having saved the lives of the boat's crew belonging to a Turkish man-of-war. He was thrice wounded during his naval service, the third time so severely in the head that it produced total deafness, in consequence of which he was invalided and quitted the navy in 1803.

After the restoration of his health he entered the army as an ensign in the 1st royals on 1 Sept. 1804. The dates of his further commissions were: lieutenant, 28 Feb. 1805; captain, 1 Jan. 1807; major, 5 July 1814; lieutenant-colonel, 27 Nov. 1815; colonel, 10 Jan. 1837. He served with the third battalion of his regiment at Walcheren in 1809, and was twice wounded at the siege of Flushing. He afterwards served in the peninsular war, was present at the battle of Busaco, the retreat within the lines of Torres Vedras, the actions of Pombal, Redinha, Condeixa, Casal Nova, Foz d'Aronce, and Sabugal, the blockade of Almeida, and the battle of Fuentes d'Onor.


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 Soon after the outbreak of war with the United States of America in 1812, Wilson joined the first battalion of the 1st royals in Canada. He arrived towards the end of the year, and on 29 May 1813 was engaged in the attack under Sir George Prevost on the American depôt at Sacketts' Harbour, and on 19 June on a strong position occupied by the Americans at Great Sodus, where he received a severe bayonet wound. He took part in the expedition against Black Rock on the Niagara River near Erie, which was captured and burned on 11 July. He was at the capture of Fort Niagara on 19 Dec., and distinguished himself in the action near Buffalo on 30 Dec. 1813. He was engaged on the Chippewa under Major-general Phineas Riall on 5 June 1814, and in the desperate victory of the Chippewa or Lundy's Lane on 25 July, when Lieutenant-general Sir Gordon Drummond commanded the British. Riall was taken prisoner, and Wilson, wounded seven times and left for dead on the field of battle, fell into the enemy's hands, and remained a prisoner until after the treaty of Ghent terminated the war in December 1814.

For his distinguished conduct and bravery at Buffalo and Chippewa he received two brevet steps of promotion. He was also awarded the peninsular medal with clasps for Busaco and Fuentes d'Onor. He was for some time aide-de-camp to Major-general Riall at Grenada in the West Indies. He went on the half-pay list on 25 July 1822, and on 16 Nov. following he was appointed adjutant of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. He was gentleman usher of the privy chamber to Queen Adelaide for nearly twenty years till her death in 1849. He was made a companion of the order of the Bath and a knight of the royal Hanoverian Guelphic order. On 14 July 1855 he was appointed major and commandant of Chelsea Hospital, where he died on 8 May 1868. He married, in 1824, Amelia Elizabeth Bridgman (d. 1864), daughter of Colonel John Houlton.

[Despatches; Army Lists; Christie's War in Canada; Gent. Mag. 1868; Royal Military Cal. 1820; Alison's Hist. of Europe; m'Queen's Campaigns of 1812, 1813, and 1814; Carmichael Smyth's Wars in Canada.]

WILSON, MARGARET (1667–1685), the ‘martyr of the Solway,’ elder daughter of Gilbert Wilson (d. 1704), a yeoman of Penninghame, Wigtownshire, was born at Glenvernock in that parish in 1667. Though her parents conformed to episcopacy, Margaret and her younger sister Agnes refused to do so. On 18 April 1685 the sisters, together with a much older person, Margaret MacLachlan (aged 63), were tried at Wigtown assize, before the sheriff-depute, David Graham (brother of Claverhouse), and three other judges, upon a charge of rebellion and attendance at field conventicles. All three having refused the abjuration oath, they were sentenced to be tied to stakes fixed within the flood-mark in the water of Bladenoch, where the sea flowed at high water, so that they should be drowned by the incoming tide. The prisoners were confined in the tower of Wigtown church. Agnes, who was but thirteen, was bailed out by her father upon a bond of 100l. (duly exacted upon her non-appearance), but on the other two sentence was carried out on 11 May 1685. Major Windram guarded them to the place of execution, whither they were attended by a throng of spectators; Margaret appears to have taken the lead throughout. ‘The old woman's stake,’ says Wodrow, ‘was a good way in beyond the other, and she was the first despatched …’ but Margaret ‘adhered to her principles with an unshaken steadfastness.’ After the water had swept over her, but before she was dead, another chance of taking the oath was afforded her. ‘Most deliberately she refused and said, “I will not. I am one of Christ's children: let me go.” Upon which she was thrust down again into the water, where she finished her course with joy. She died a virgin-martyr, about eighteen years of age.’ An elaborate effort has been made (NAPIER, Case for the Crown) to show that the sentence was never really executed, but that a recommendation to pardon, made by the lords of the privy council (which appears in the council registers), was carried into effect. Wodrow himself refers to the signature of a letter of reprieve, but there is abundant evidence to prove that the death sentence was carried out in all its barbarity—probably before the notice of remission had time to be conveyed from Edinburgh to Wigtown. A horizontal slab, upon which Margaret's name and seven rude couplets were inscribed, was set up in Wigtown cemetery early in the eighteenth century, and a monumental obelisk was erected on Windy Hill to the memory of the martyrs in 1861. Millais's well-known picture, ‘The Martyr of the Solway’ (1871), was purchased by Agnew for 472 guineas, and was subsequently given by Mr. George Holt to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1895). A statue of Margaret Wilson was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1889 by C. B. Birch, A.R.A.

[Wodrow's Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, 1830, iv. 248; Stewart's History vindi-


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 270 What was in the mind of the early Egyptian, or of the men who first used a digging-stick, different though it was from modern European geometry, or from a steam-plough, is nevertheless connected by a continuous process with the later developments, and it is no more reasonable to say that the earlier stages were "the product of sheer unreflective habit" than it would be to say that the later stages of geometry or agriculture are. If there is something more than "sheer unreflective habit" in the work of modern geometry or agriculture, so there was in the earlier stages of the work. And in the same way, if there is something more than "sheer unreflective habit" in the later stages of the growth of religion, so there must have been in the earlier stages. What is evident is that in geometry, agriculture and religion alike, the earlier stages would not have been practised unless they had been thought worth while—unless they were felt to have some value. But whereas the value of geometry or agriculture is displayed mainly, if not wholly, in their material results, the value of religion is felt mainly if not wholly in the frame of mind or state of spirit produced. The Australian (as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen testify) is profoundly moved by the ceremonies in which he participates, whether as celebrant or witness; and, as the Archbishop of Upsala says (l.c, p. 195), in those ceremonies the Australian feels that man is in relation with what is holy—and feels such a state of mind or spirit to be the highest of all. Its value we may in other words say is supreme.

Dr. Marett (E.R.E., viii., p. 248b) deprecates the idea of dividing magic from religion by a horizontal line as it were, and inclines rather to regard the line of division between magic and religion as perpendicular. And he would place rudimentary cult, as we find it for instance amongst the Australians, on one side of the perpendicular line and magic on the other side. Thus we have not magic first existing for itself and religion subsequently


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Rh coming into existence, but both existing side by side. If, then, the order of events is not from magic to religion—is not magic first and rehgion subsequently occurring—then, I suggest, neither can the order of events be "from spell to prayer." If, as Sir James Frazer says, there is between magic and religion "a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle," then as magic does not become religion, so neither can spell become prayer. Between spell and prayer there is the same "fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle" as there is between magic and religion. As a mere matter of grammar, indeed, the verb which is used in formulating a prayer is as much in the imperative mood as the verb formulating a spell. "Be it done" is an expression which, as far as the words go, may be either a spell or a prayer. But from this it would be an error to infer that the attitude of mind and emotion is the same in magic and religion. Between the two attitudes there is a distinction which is fundamental and an opposition which is an opposition of principle. Prayer is on one side of the perpendicular line separating magic from religion; spell is on the other side. It is possible indeed to pass rapidly, instantaneously, from the one side to the other—from commanding to beseeching, as the spoilt child does—but that does not diminish the distinction and opposition between the two attitudes of mind. Nor does it constitute the least presumption that the two opposed attitudes are but two manifestations or two developments of one and the same principle. On the contrary, if we recognised that there is a fundamental opposition between magic and rudimentary cult, as we find it in Australia for instance, then we must class spells as from the beginning belonging to magic, and prayer as belonging to religion. At the same time if we recognise that there is in religion a stage of rudimentary cult in which a tribe no more relies upon personal beings superior to man than the Egyptian "cord-fasteners"


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272 relied upon Euclid, we shall have also to recognise that though prayer might eventually develop from rudimentary cult, it has not as a matter of fact developed in the rudimentary cult of the Australian black-fellows. The important fact however is that the rudimentary stage of religion must have been such that from it both belief in personal beings superior to man and the supplicatory attitude of prayer could develop, whereas from magic spells alone could be evolved. If the line separating magic from religion be perpendicular, as Dr. Marett says, and not horizontal, then prayer originates from or in religion on the one side, and spells from or in magic on the other. The spirit or frame of mind which resorts to spells and magic is fundamentally distinguished from, and opposed in principle to that which relies on religion and trusts to prayer. The spirit, the intention, of religion differs wholly from the spirit and intention of the magician. The two cannot be brought under one head, or into the same class. The difference between them is the same as and identical with the difference between good and bad. It cannot therefore be, as Dr. Alarett suggests that it is, "best to treat all magico-religious rites as generically akin." A poisoner and a physician may use the same drug, indeed; but to regard the two as "generically akin," implies that poisoning and healing are species of the same genus, that there is no difference—no generic difference—between the intention to heal and the intention to kill. But between the one intention and the other there is all the difference in the world; and as we do not in the least get rid of the difference between poisoning and healing by saying that the poisoner and the physician make use, it may be, of the same drug, so we do not in the least get rid of the absolute and fundamental difference between magic and religion by calling attention (E.R.E., viii., p. 379a) "to the element which magic and religion have in common," Poisoning and healing have no element in common: neither


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Rh have magic and religion. The intention and the spirit make the difference, the world of difference, between them—a difference as patent to the most primitive of peoples as it is to us. That the drug is obtained and administered in much the same way by poisoner and physician does not diminish the fundamental difference—the difference of purpose and intention—between the two. Between the murderer and the physician there is a difference. It would be vain to say that because they use the same drug there is "a unity in difference," or any unity whatever between them. And so, too, it is vain to "treat the magico-religious as a unity in difference" (E.R.E. ib.) on the ground that there are rites which are similar in magic and religion, just as there are drugs which are used both by murderer and physician. To us, indeed, who do not believe in magic it may be clear that some of the rites used in religion are the same as those used in magic; but to the men who believed in magic the difference was fundamental and absolute: it lay in the intention of the agent and in the approval or disapproval of the community. This difference it is which is ignored or denied in using the term "magico-religious," and in speaking of "all magico-religious rites as generically akin." From the point of view of tribes that believe in magic, there are rites which are magical, and there are rites which are religious; but there are no rites which are "magico-religious," for to such tribes "magical" means "non-religious," and "religious" means "non-magical"—or rather "magic" means to them what is condemned by the community, while what is approved by the community belongs to the sphere of what we call religion. But between what is approved and what is condemned by the community there is no unity—there is only difference. Approval and condemnation are not "generically akin." And to classify "all magico-religious rites as generically akin" is to commit an error in classification. To assume that there was a "magico-religious"


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 274 age is as though we were to assume a "medico-poisonous" age. It is to assume that men knew both poison and medicine, without knowing that poison was poison, and medicine, medicine. The assumption allke in the case of the "magico-religious" and the "medico-poisonous" is self-contradictory or meaningless. To say that the same drug is used by poisoner and physician is true enough. The same bricks and mortar may serve as a house or a home. But there is a difference between them. And it is an error in classification to say that house and home, poisoner and physician, or magic and religion are "generically akin." The difference is fundamental. The difference is fundamental for those who believe in magic. It is fundamental also for those of us who, though they believe in religion, do not believe in magic. For those of us, however, who believe in neither it can hardly be fundamental.

To one person in a street a certain house is home; to the hundreds or thousands of other people who pass it by it is but a house. Yet the distinction is fundamental between the conception of a house and the feeling of home. And it remains fundamental however much one house in a street may be like another. If both were built of brick, we might possibly say they had an element in common. But we should not feel that they had really. So too when Dr. Marett says (E.R.E., viii., p. 249b), "mana usefully calls attention to the eleme'nt which magic and religion have in common," I do not feel that they have anything in common really. But since both Dr. Marett and the Bishop of Upsala think that they have, we must pay attention to what they say.

Dr. Söderblom says (Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, p. 195), that belief in mana, and dealings with that power are accompanied not merely by fear but also by trust. Further, these two feelings—fear and trust—are the marks by which religion is distinguished from magic. But the


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 Ritorna a nostri pianti Il bel degli ochi tuo, che par che schivi Chi del suo dono in tal miseria è nato. —De, non turbate i vostri desir santi, Che chi di me par che vi spogli e privi Col gran timor non gode il gran pechato; Che degli amanti è men felice state Quello ove ’l gran desir gran cepia affrena C' una miseria, di speranza piena. ("Poems," cix, 48.)

VIII See p. 82 S’alcun se stesso al mondo ancider lice, Po’ che per morte al ciel tornar si crede, Sarie ben giusto a chi con tanta fede Vive servendo miser’ e ’nfelice.("Poems," xxxviii.)

IX See pp. 86 and 87

Or, che nostra miseria el ciel ti tolle, Increscati di me, che morte vivo.Tu se’ del morir morto e facto divo Ne tem’ or piu cangiar vita ne voglia, Che quasi senza invidia non lo scrivo. Fortuna e ’l tempo dentro a vostra soglia Non tenta trapassar, per chui s’adduce Fra no’ dubbia letitia e cierta doglia.


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 Rh distinction thus drawn by Dr. Söderblom will hardly suffice to mark off magic from religion. The person who uses magic trusts in it, and also fears it. The distinction which Dr. Söderblom draws is a distinction without a difference. So far from distinguishing magic and religion it would identify them.

The real difference is that, though the means or the modus operandi, regarded by themselves and viewed in the abstract, are the same in the two cases, the ends to which they are applied are different—different with all the difference between good and bad, between what is approved and what is disapproved by society. And the difference which is felt between the ends constitutes in itself the difference' between the means. The difference between the means is exactly the same as the difference between the ends. Means and ends apart from one another are mere abstractions. In reality they are no more separable from one another than a cause is from its effect. It is because the intention of the agent in the one case is good and in the other case is evil, that his action is approved in the one case and disapproved of in the other.

Dr. Söderblom himself on a later page (215) sees that the difference between primitive religion and magic consists partly in the use to which they are put, and states explicitly that in both religion and magic "power" or mana is employed. The difference, he says, originates in the purpose aimed at. He should therefore hold that it is the purpose which constitutes the difference, and not merely the feelings of fear and trust—for, as already said, those feelings accompany the use of magic as well as the practice of religion. A difference in the feeling with which magic and religion are viewed there is. But the difference is that the one is felt by the community to be used for evil and the other for good. So long as we take that to be a fundamental difference between magic and religion, we shall be constrained to reject the notion that


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 276 religion is but a sort of magic, and also to reject the idea that religion and magic, good and evil, are but different manifestations of fundamentally the same thing. The notion that religion is but a sort of magic is like the idea that justice is a sort of thievishness: the latter idea, as Plato showed, is the consequence that follows from a false notion of what justice is, and the other idea is based on a mistaken notion of what religion is. To appreciate the view that religion and magic were originally, or are fundamentally the same, it is necessary to take account of mana or "power."

Dr Söderblom's view is that the conception of mana or "power" differentiates itself, in the course of its evolution, into good mana and bad mana (p. 218), and that with this differentiation the opposition between magic and religion becomes marked (p. 219). Mana in the earliest stage of its evolution was, according to Dr. Söderblom, neither good nor bad; from this original mana, by the process of differentiation and evolution, sprang two species of mana, the good and the bad, and then the difference, or a difference, between magic and religion became clear. There are however difficulties about Dr. Söderblom's views. Power to do good is good power, good mana; power to do evil is evil mana, evil power. Wherever mana is believed in, the two kinds of mana are found. No case of the mana belief can be produced in which the two kinds of mana are absent. And the reason is clear: the only grounds on which the existence or nature of a power can be inferred are its effects; and it is because the effects are good, or because the effects are bad, that the supposed power is pronounced to be good in the one case, or bad in the other. If the effects were neither good nor bad, then indeed the mana would be neither good nor bad. But to effects which are neither good nor bad primitive man pays no attention, and consequently he only infers good mana and bad mana. They may be resident in the


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S' i' amo sol di te, signior mie caro, Quel che di te piu ami, non ti sdegni, Che I'un dell' altro spirto s'innamora. Quel che nel tuo bel volto bramo e 'mparo, E mal compres' e dagl' umani ingegni, Chi 'l vuol saper convien che prima mora. ("Poems." xlv.)

O fussi sol la mie l'irsuta pelle, Che del suo pel contesta, fa tal gonna, Che con ventura stringe si bel seno, Ch' i' l'are' pure il giorno; o le pianelle, Che fanno a quel di lor basa e colonna, Ch' i' pur ne porterei duo nev' almeno. ("Poems," lxvi.)

Felice spirto, che con zelo ardente, Vechio alia morte, in vita il mio cor tieni E fra mill' altrj tuo dilecti e beni Me sol saluti fra piu nobil gente, Chome mi fusti agli ochi, or alia mente Per l'altru' fiate a consolar mi vieni; Onde la speme il duol par che raffreni, Che non men che 'l disio l'anima sente.


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 write history. Accordingly he compiled an account of the events leading up to the accession of Severus. This work also met with a cordial reception, both on the part of the emperor and of the public, and Dio soon formed the resolve to cover the whole period of Roman history. It has been conjectured that his original intention was to have the work find its fitting climax in the splendour of the new era inaugurated by Severus; if such was the case, his plan must have been changed very promptly. He presently withdrew largely from public affairs for the remainder of Severus' reign, and spent the greater part of his time in retirement at his country-seat in Capua. During these years he gathered his material and wrote a considerable part of the history. In a certain vague passage he seems to imply that he had been consul (suffectus, naturally) under Severus; but this first consulship should probably be dated some years later (circa 222), shortly before his pro-consulship in Africa. Indeed, it seems altogether probable that his retirement from public life was the direct outcome of the changed policy of Severus, which could no longer command his support.

Caracalla, the successor of Severus, took Dio along as a member of his retinue on his Eastern expedition in 216, and the following winter was spent at Nicomedia; but Dio did not accompany the


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 Rh same person or the same thing, but they are none the less different powers. Doubtless when the abstract conceptions of good mana and bad mana have been reached, the still more abstract conception of mana that is neither good nor bad may be reached. But that is a further and a later conception: it is not the first or original conception. And for this reason I dissent from Dr. Söderblom's view that mana in the earliest stage of its evolution was conceived to be neither good nor bad. And I dissent from his view the more decidedly because it seems to me to imply necessarily what Dr. Söderblom himself refuses to believe, viz., that magic and religion have a common origin and therefore in their original stage were the same thing.

The other view from which I dissent is one which is held by Dr. Marett, if I understand rightly what he says about mana (E.R.E., viii., p. 379a, s.v. Mana). He says that religion and magic have an element in common. That element is mana, the wonder-working power; and as it is present in both religion and magic, it is termed by Dr. Marett "magico-religious," and it is viewed by him as constituting the unity of magic and religion. That is to say, from the point of view of logic, and of logical classification or definition, magic and religion are generically and fundamentally the same, though they are different species of the same genus—the specific difference being that in the one the wonder-working powers is social, and in the other anti-social in its use. As against Dr. Marett's view I venture to suggest that it does not follow that, because two things have an element in common, therefore the two things are generically the same or belong to the same genus. It does not follow that two things belong to the same genus because they have weight or even because they have the same weight; and it does not follow that two things belong to the same genus because they have or are believed to have power or even the same power.


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 278 The resemblance between magic and religion consists simply in the fact that both are subjects of which value is predicated. The difference is absolute and fundamental: it consists in the fact that the values predicated of the two are different and opposed. Magic, where it is believed in, is illicit and evil; religion is licit and approved by the community. The difference is not that religion makes and that magic avoids the assumption that there are powers superior to man, for magic often makes the assumption, whereas religion in its earliest stage probably had not yet come to make it or not to make it consciously. It may be that the behef in personal gods followed not only after but from the earlier stages of religious evolution, as European geometry not only followed but was evolved from the art of the Egyptian "cord-fasteners," or the steam plough from the primitive digging-stick, or as the oak grows from the acorn. But as we shall not expect by any process of analysis or dissection to find an oak in the acorn, neither shall we expect to find personal gods, or beings superior to man, in the earliest stages of religion. Nor should we for that reason deny that the earlier stages are religious, any more than we should deny that the oak and the acorn are both stages in the growth of the tree. Magic and religion differ not merely as two species of the same genus may differ, but at the outset with all the difference that lies between good and bad, and at the present day further with all the difference between what has been proved irrational and what has not.


text: Folk-Lore/Volume 28/Magic and Religion

title: Folk-Lore/Volume 28/Magic and Religion


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  cated in the Case of the Wigtown Martyrs, Edinburgh, 1867, 2nd edit. 1869 [affording a complete answer to] Napier's Case for the Crown in re the Wigtown Martyrs, proved to be Myth, 1863; Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, 1847, p. 237; Macaulay's History, chap. iv.; James Anderson's Ladies of the Covenant, 1851, pp. 427–48; Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland s.v. ‘Wigtown;’ Notes and Queries, 4th ser. v. 540; see also art. .]  WILSON, MARY ANNE (1802–1867), vocalist. [See under, 1781–1848.]

WILSON, MATTHEW (1582–1656), jesuit. [See .]

WILSON, NICHOLAS (d. 1548), Roman catholic divine, born near Beverley, was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1508–9, and commencing D.D. in 1533. He was related to John Wilson, prior of Mount Grace in Yorkshire (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ii. 748). Before 1527 he was appointed chaplain and confessor to Henry VIII (ib. iv. 2641). On 7 Oct. 1528 he was collated archdeacon of Oxford, and in the same year received from the king the vicarage of Thaxted in Essex (ib. iv. 4476, 4521, 4546). Wilson was a friend of Sir Thomas More and of John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and was a zealous Roman catholic, frequently acting as an examiner of heretics (, Actes and Monuments, ed. Townsend, iv. 680, 703, 704). On 28 March 1531 he was presented by the king to the church of St. Thomas the Apostle in London (Letters and Papers, v. 166), and in 1533 he was elected master of Michaelhouse at Cambridge. In the latter year, however, when the divorce of Catherine of Aragon was debated in convocation, he joined the minority in asserting that the pope had power to grant a dispensation in case of marriage with a deceased brother's widow. About that time he was employed by the papal party as an itinerant preacher in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire. He also visited Bristol, where he encountered Latimer, and threatened him with burning unless he mended his ways (, Eccles. Mem. 1822, I. i. 245; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vi. 247, 411, 433, ii. 952). His opposition to the king soon involved him in peril, and on 10 April 1534, a week before the arrest of Fisher and More, he was committed to the Tower for refusing to take the oath relative to the succession to the crown (ib. vii. 483, 502, 575, viii. 666, 1001;, v. 68). He was attainted of misprision of treason by act of parliament, deprived of all his preferments, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Confinement soon caused his resolution to falter. Before his own execution More wrote him two kindly letters, telling him that he heard that he was going to take the oath, and that he for his own part should never counsel any man to do otherwise (, English Works, i. 443). Wilson, however, hesitated for many months longer, and on 17 Feb. 1535–6 Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, wrote to Granvelle that it was reported that Henry intended putting him to death (Letters and Papers, x. 308). In 1537 he took the oath, and on 29 May he received a pardon (ib. i. 1315, 1330, ii. 181). On 7 June 1537 he was presented to the deanery in the collegiate church of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, receiving a second grant of the same office on 20 May 1538, and retaining the office until the dissolution of the deanery in 1547 (ib. ii. 191,  i. 1115). Soon after his release, however, he incurred the suspicion of communicating with recusants, and on 25 Aug. 1537 he wrote a submissive letter to Cromwell, professing his desire to conform to the king's wishes (ib. ii. 579). In September he and Nicholas Heath [q. v.] were appointed to confer with Cardinal Pole in the Netherlands, and to endeavour to persuade him to acknowledge the king's ecclesiastical supremacy in England. They received written instructions, in which they were ordered to address the cardinal only as ‘Mr. Pole;’ but Pole's sudden return to Italy prevented the mission, and Wilson was able to appear at Hampton Court on 15 Oct., at Prince Edward's christening (ib. ii. 619, 620, 635, 911). On 20 Dec. he was admitted rector of St. Martin Outwich in London, and earlier in the same year he was elected master of St. John's College, Cambridge, in opposition to the king's nominee, George Day [q. v.], an event which nearly proved fatal to the college. Wilson did not venture to accept the office, and in a letter to Thomas Wriothesley, now in the record office, he disclaimed all knowledge of the society's intention (ib. ii. 425). In 1539 Wilson joined the majority of the lower house of convocation in declaring his intention to accept the determination of the king and bishops in regard to points of doctrine and discipline similar to those contained in the six articles (ib. i. 1065).

Although Wilson professed to act only in complete submission to the king, yet according to Charles de Marillac, the French ambassador, he was suspected of secret communications with Rome (ib. 736). In May 1540 he was arrested for being privy to the


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 emperor to the Parthian war. By Macrinus he was placed over the cities of Pergamum and Smyrna as curator ad corrigendum stalum civitatium, and he was continued in this position by Elagabalus. Under Alexander Severus he became proconsul of Africa, and upon his return was sent out as governor successively of Dalmatia and Upper Pannonia, both imperial provinces. In 229 he became consul for the second time (consul ordinarius) with Alexander himself as colleague. But his disciplinary measures in Pannonia had made him unpopular with the praetorians, so that he found it advisable to remain away from Rome much of the time; and he soon obtained permission to retire to Nicaea, his native city, on the plea of an ailment of the foot. This is the last he tells us about himself, and we can only conjecture how many years of leisure he enjoyed in his native land; inasmuch, however, as he was presumably already past the age of seventy at the time of his retirement, it is probable that his death occurred soon afterwards.

The work for which Dio is known to the modern world is his Roman History (Ῥωραἴκὴ ιστορία or Ῥωραἴκά), originally in eighty books, covering the period from the landing of Aeneas down to the year of his own (second) consulship in 229 A.D. The last seven years, however, were treated very summarily, having been added, apparently, as an afterthought. He informs us that he spent ten years in gathering his


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 flight of Richard Hilliard, Tunstall's chaplain, to Scotland, and for ‘relieving certain traitorous persons which denied the king's supremacy’ (, Chron. 1548, p. 838). On 4 June he wrote an entreaty to Cromwell to intercede for him (Letters and Papers, 747), but he remained in the Tower until 1541, when, although excepted from the general pardon of the previous year, he was released by the king (ib. xvi. 578;, p. 841). On 20 July 1542 he was collated to the prebend of Bilton in York Cathedral, and on 14 Dec. to that of Hoxton in St. Paul's. He died before 8 June 1548, his will being proved in the same year (P. C. C. 14 Populwell). He wrote a prefatory epistle, dated 1 Jan. 1521, to a sermon preached by Fisher on the burning of Luther's books, which was printed in the Latin edition of Fisher's ‘Works,’ published at Würzburg in 1597. He was also the author of a book printed at Paris before 1535 against Henry's divorce (Letters and Papers, viii. 859). Several manuscript treatises by him of a theological nature are preserved in the record office, and were probably seized at the time of his first arrest (ib. viii. 152, vol. ix. index, s.v. ‘Wilson’). John Leland has some lines to Wilson in his ‘Encomia’ (1589, p. 51).

[Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 94; Tanner's Biblioth. Brit.-Hib.; Le Neve's Fasti Eccles. Angl. ed Hardy; Baker's Hist. of St. John's Coll. Cambr. ed. Mayor, i. 79, 110–12, 361; Newcourt's Repert. Eccles. Londin. 1710 i. 164, 419, ii. 582; Works of Hugh Latimer (Parker Soc.), ii. 365; Bale's Select Works (Parker Soc.), p. 510; Hennessy's Novum Repert. Londin. 1897; Foxe's Actes and Monuments. ed. Townsend, v. 430, 599, vii. 455, 476, 490, 505, 775; Fiddes's Life of Wolsey, 1724, pp. 198, 203; Zürich Letters (Parker Soc.), 1846, pp. 208, 211; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, 1865; Hutchins's Dorset, 1868, iii. 188, 190; Demaus's Life of Latimer, 1881, p. 135.]

WILSON, RICHARD (1714–1782), landscape-painter, was born at Penegoes in Montgomeryshire, of which his father held the living, on 1 Aug. 1714. His mother was one of the Wynnes of Leeswold. His father was collated to Mold after Wilson's birth, and gave his son, who does not seem to have gone to school, an excellent classical education. With the assistance of Sir George Wynne, Wilson was sent to London in 1729, and placed with Thomas Wright, a portrait-painter, of whom little is known. Wilson began his artistic career as a portrait-painter, and attained some position in that branch of the profession. A portrait by him of John Hamilton Mortimer was valued by John Britton [q. v.] at 150 guineas in 1842. There are several portraits by him at the Garrick Club, and he painted (about 1748) a group of the young Prince of Wales (George III), his brother Edward Augustus, duke of York, and their tutor Dr. Ayscough. This picture is now in the National Portrait Gallery (London), as well as another of the two princes by themselves, evidently taken for or from the larger picture. In 1749 Wilson went to Italy, and there he painted a landscape which excited the admiration of Francesco Zuccarelli [q. v.], who advised him to take to landscape-painting. This was at Venice, and either there or at Rome Horace Vernet encouraged him to do the same. The French painter also exchanged landscapes with him and showed Wilson's in his own studio with generous praise to all comers. Wilson soon gained a considerable reputation in Italy as a landscape-painter, and Raphael Mengs painted his portrait in exchange for one of his landscapes. When at Venice he made the acquaintance of William Locke of Norbury [q. v.] (the patron of George Barret the elder [q. v.], Wilson's rival), for whom he painted some sketches and landscapes. Wilson was six years in Italy (principally at Rome) painting and giving lessons. He seems to have mixed with the best society. In 1754 he sketched Mæcenas Villa in company with the Earls of Pembroke, Thanet, and Essex, and Viscount Bolingbroke. He travelled from Rome to Naples with Lord Dartmouth, for whom he painted some landscapes, and reached England again in 1756. His reputation had preceded him to England, and his return excited much interest among his brother artists, but it is said that his merit was not at once appreciated even by them. Paul Sandby [q. v.] is noted as an exception. He recommended Wilson to the Duke of Cumberland, for whom Wilson painted his celebrated picture of ‘Niobe,’ which was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1760, and engraved by Woollett in 1761. Wilson painted the subject three times: his earliest painting of it belonged to Sir George Beaumont, and was engraved by S. Smith (figures by William Sharp), and is now in the National Gallery; another was bought by the Marquis of Stafford. His picture of a ‘View of Rome from the Villa Madama’ (exhibited 1765) was bought by the Marquis of Tavistock. These and other works brought him the reputation of the greatest landscape-painter of the day, but his fame gained him scanty employment.

Between 1760 and 1768 Wilson exhibited over thirty pictures at the Society of British


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 Artists, including some of his best known pictures. Besides the works already mentioned there were ‘Temple of Clitumnus’ and ‘The Lake of Nemi’ (1761); a landscape with hermits (1762) (possibly that engraved under the title of ‘The White Monk’); ‘A large landscape with Phaeton's petition to Apollo,’ exhibited in 1763 and afterwards repeated; ‘A Summer Storm, with the Story of the two Lovers from Thomson (Celadon and Amelia)’ (1765), and ‘A Storm at Daybreak, with the Story of Ceyx and Alcione—Ovid's Metam.’ (the picture, part of which is said to have been painted from a pot of porter and a Stilton cheese). Many of his pictures of this period were engraved by Woollett, William Byrne, J. Roberts, and others, most of them for Boydell. Although the subjects were principally Italian, he exhibited a few English and Welsh scenes, including ‘View near Chester,’ ‘Carnarvon Castle,’ and ‘Snowdon,’ and ‘A View of a Ruin in Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales's Garden at Kew.’

Wilson was one of the first members of the Royal Academy who were nominated by George III at its institution in 1768, and he contributed regularly to its exhibitions till 1780. During this period there was little change in his art. In 1770 he sent his picture of ‘Cicero and his two friends Atticus and Quintus at his villa at Arpinum’ (engraved by Woollett for Boydell). In 1771 he sent ‘A View near Winstay, the seat of Sir Watkins W. Wynn, Bart.;’ one of Crow Castle, near Llangollen; and another of Houghton, the seat of the late Marquis of Tavistock. In 1774 he painted a large picture, six feet by five, of the ‘Cataract of Niagara, from a drawing by Lieutenant Pierie of the Royal Artillery’ (engraved by William Byrne), and a view of Cader Idris, perhaps the picture taken from the summit of this mountain which was engraved by E. and M. Rooker. In 1775 he exhibited ‘Passage of the Alps at Mount Cenis’ and three others, including a ‘Lake of Nemi,’ a favourite subject with him and his few customers. In 1776 he sent ‘A View of Sion House from Richmond Gardens,’ possibly the picture which at this date or before is said to have been the cause of the loss of court patronage. He asked sixty guineas for it, to which Lord Bute objected as too much, upon which the artist replied that if the king could not pay the sum at once, he would take it in instalments. This story is generally told of a date previous to the institution of the Royal Academy, but there is no trace of the picture before 1776. After this the only picture of importance by him which appeared at the academy was ‘Apollo and the Seasons,’ exhibited in 1779; but another celebrated picture, ‘Meleager and Atalanta,’ which was not exhibited, was engraved by Woollett and Pouncey and published in this year. The figures in this picture were supplied by Mortimer. A mezzotint by Earlom from the same picture, or a replica of it, appeared in 1771. In 1780 he sent a ‘View of Tabley, Cheshire, the seat of Sir F. Leicester,’ his last contribution to the exhibitions.

This was probably one of his commissions, and they were very few; for in spite of his reputation, which was always high, he had to suffer from almost continuous neglect—a neglect increasing with his years. At last the pawnbrokers were his principal customers, but he found it difficult to sell even to them. While he could get scarcely sufficient employment to live, other inferior artists, like George Barret the elder, George Smith of Chichester, and Zuccarelli, flourished exceedingly. Moreover, he had to suffer special mortifications. In a contest for fame with Smith of Chichester before the Royal Society that august body decided against Wilson. His picture of Kew Gardens was returned to him by the king, and, worst of all perhaps, he had to listen to a deputation of artists headed by Edward Penny [q. v.], who recommended him to adopt the lighter style of Zuccarelli. He is said to have offended them by the warmth of his remarks on this occasion.

For many years Wilson lived in the Great Piazza of Covent Garden, and from 1771–2 he was at 36 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, from which he was able to enjoy the view of the country away to Hampstead and Highgate. During 1777–8 he was at 24 Norton Street, and in 1779 in Great Titchfield Street, but as he grew poorer he had to seek more modest quarters, until at length he lived in a wretched lodging in Tottenham Street, Tottenham Court Road. He was reduced to such straits that when one day a young friend introduced a lady who gave him a commission for two pictures he had not money to buy paints and brushes to execute them. On another occasion he asked Barry [see, 1741–1806] if he knew any one mad enough to employ a landscape-painter.

In 1776, on the death of Francis Hayman [q. v.], he applied for and obtained the post of librarian to the Royal Academy, for which he was well fitted by his education and taste, and its slender stipend was a welcome addition to his resources. A few years after this he inherited from his brother a small estate at Llanberis, which enabled him to live in comfort for the short remnant of his days.


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 He retired into Wales in 1781, and died suddenly at Colomondie, the residence of his relative, Mrs. Jones, near Llanberis, on 15 May 1782. He was buried in the churchyard at St. Mary-at-Mold.

Wilson is now acknowledged to be one of the greatest of English landscape-painters. His art was based upon that of Salvator Rosa, Gaspar Poussin, and Claude. It was inspired by the scenery of Italy, and especially of the Campagna, with its clear bright skies and ancient ruins. It was somewhat formal and careless of detail, but in grandeur of design, in breadth of treatment, in the harmony of its rich but quiet colour, and in the rendering of space and air, Wilson has few rivals. His pictures of his own country, like the noble ‘Snowdon from Nantlle,’ lent by Mr. F. Worsley-Taylor to the 1899 exhibition in the corporation of London art gallery, are among his finest works; and, though they have a strong resemblance to his pictures of Italy, they contain much local truth of form and atmosphere. He used a very restricted palette, and painted with one brush.

In person Wilson was stout and robust, and above the middle size. In later years his face was blotchy and his nose red, the result possibly of large potations of porter, which is said to have been his only luxury. His fondness for this beverage was so well known that Zoffany introduced him with a pot of it at his elbow into his picture of the royal academicians (1773), but painted it out when Wilson threatened to thrash him. He was shy of society, especially when years of neglect and poverty had embittered him. He lived in and for his art, confident in his own genius and scornful of the opinions of others. His spirit never broke; his faith never faltered; he made no concession to popular opinion, but fought for his own ideals to the last. Even among artists he seems to have had few friends except Sir William Beechey, Paul Sandby, James Barry, and J. H. Mortimer. With Sir Joshua Reynolds he was not on cordial terms, but there seems to be no sufficient grounds for Cunningham's charges of hostility on the part of Reynolds. They seem principally based on the story of Wilson's retort to Reynolds when, ignoring Wilson's presence at a social gathering of academicians at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Sir Joshua proposed the health of Gainsborough as ‘the best landscape-painter,’ on which Wilson added aloud, ‘and the best portrait-painter too.’ On the other hand, Reynolds obtained commissions for two pictures by Wilson when the latter was in sore straits. Of his manner and character Cunningham tells us ‘he loved truth and detested flattery; he could endure a joke, but not contradiction. He was deficient in courtesy of speech. His conversation abounded with information and humour, and his manners, which were at first repulsive, gradually smoothed down as he grew animated. Those who enjoyed the pleasure of his friendship agree in pronouncing him a man of strong sense, intelligence, and refinement.’

Mengs's portrait of Wilson was engraved by W. Bond for John Britton's ‘The Fine Arts of the British School, ’ and appears as a frontispiece to Wright's ‘Life’ of the artist. A caricature profile of him with a red nose, and a maulstick on his shoulder, was drawn by Sir George Beaumont, and etched for the title-page of Thomas Hastings's ‘Notes from Etchings from the Works of R. Wilson,’ 1825.

It must have been when Wilson was dead or dying that Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar) wrote his celebrated lines about ‘Red-nosed Wilson,’ which were published in his first volume of ‘Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians’ (1782), and conclude as follows: But, honest Wilson, never mind; Immortal praises thou shalt find, And for a dinner have no cause to fear. Thou start'st at my prophetic rhymes: Don't be impatient for those times; Wait till thou hast been dead a hundred year. This prophecy has been more than justified. In 1806 a ‘Niobe’ (belonging to the Duke of Gloucester) was sold to Sir F. Baring for 830l. In 1814 the Exhibition of Deceased Masters at the British Institution contained over eighty of Wilson's paintings. In 1827, at Lord de Tabley's sale, ‘On the Arno’ fetched 493l. 10s. These prices have been exceeded since, especially during the last five-and-twenty years, during which many of his finest pictures have been exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery, and other exhibitions all over the country. At the Duke of Hamilton's sale in 1882 a ‘View of Rome—Sunset’ fetched 1,050l. Besides the ‘Niobe’ there are several small works by Wilson in the National Gallery, and two fine pictures in the South Kensington Museum. At the British Museum are a large number of Wilson's sketches in Italy. They are very slight—mere intimations of subjects for pictures. There is also the fine early drawing of a large head referred to in Edwards's ‘Anecdotes.’

Wilson had several pupils, the most important of whom were Joseph Farington [q. v.] and William Hodges [q. v.]

[Some Account of the Life of Richard Wilson, by T. Wright of Norwood, 1824; Hastings's