Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

PROFESSORSHIP. 259
undergraduate nowadays), that we find Wilson, only
three years after he had set the Forth aflame, pre-
senting himself for the suffrages of these said bailies
as a candidate for the Professorship of Moral Philo-
sophy in the University—the appointment to which, as
to most of the other 'chairs, by some curious arrangement
descending from the days when Edinburgh bur-
gesses were a very important part of every movement,
the civic authorities held in their hands. This fact
made every such selection more or less a matter of
politics, the Whigs carrying their candidate when
Whiggery was in the ascendant, the Tories theirs
when their day came round.
There could not, however, be a more triumphant
answer to the complaints and remonstrances of Mr
Murray of Albemarle Street and others, as to the
personalities which were to ruin the Magazine, than
the success of Wilson on this occasion. Perhaps the
Southern wit will say that it required a joke as wild
and riotous as that of the Chaldee Manuscript to
penetrate the Scottish understanding : at all events,
it is clear that it was taken in no such ill part as the
outer world imagined. No doubt there was much
opposition to Wilson's candidature, but that was
chiefly on personal, and, indeed, on religious, grounds,
—many accusations of profanity quite unproved, and
some of reckless living, having been brought against
him. Scott himself took an active part in the
canvass, writing to the Lord Provost in defence of
Wilson's character, and sparing no pains to bring
the contest to a successful issue. But it did come to
a successful issue ; and at the very moment when,