Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE ' NOCTES AMBROSIAN^.' 257
of several others, was a storeroom of wisdom and of
wit, of sport and earnest, of the gravest discussions
and the gayest commentaries, and had a large,
unacknowledged, perhaps uncomprehended, share in
the mental training of our fathers. It is a little
humbling to reflect that these fathers, whom we
inevitably feel less wise than ourselves, often knew a
great deal more than we do, and had read more— ^just
as we are conscious that we have a better acquaintance
with the literature of our own country than the latest
generation, which prides itself on reading nothing.
We do not hesitate to say that the nation's power of
expressing itself, its faculty of judging between the
bad and good, or the not-so-bad and good-enough,
were considerably affected by the lively dialogue, the
fine criticism, and beautiful descriptions, of that famous
literary commentary on contemporary life.
John Wilson was born in 1785, the son of a wealthy
manufacturer in Paisley, though not without gentle
blood on his mother's side. We are told by his
daughter, Mrs Gordon, that the blood of the gallant
and noble Montrose was in his veins,—a potent element,
delightful to contemplate, though he never made
any boast of it so far as we are aware— a singular,
nay, almost an unkindly omission, for such an ancestor
as Montrose was a thing which it was a duty to
brag of He was a son of wealth, trained in luxury,
one of the ostentatiously superior class of gentleman-
commoners, no longer existing—at Magdalen College,
Oxford, and set out in life as the possessor of a com-
fortable fortune. But the favourites of heaven gener-
ally manage early to shake off by hook or by crook
that unnecessary appendage. He lost his money in
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