The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-08-21 00:00:00

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his too confiding nature presented him a ready
victim on the altar of commercial vicissitude ; ere
he had ceased to be a youth his fortune was swept
away, and in early manhood he was tossed upon
the ocean of life, dependent, under God's good
providence alone, solely upon his intellectual
resources. The opening scenes of his public life,
unlike those which heralded and hallowed its
close, were cast among the tumults of political
contention ; and in the rough warfare of party
strife the youthful Titan was schooled in the
varied tactics of intellectual battle. In this try-
ing arena, where every combatant is necessitated
to hold his own, by the exercise of individual
prowess, without doubt he acquired much of that
habit of self-reliance which, although natural to
the man, was nevertheless developed and strength-
ened by the almost ceaseless contests in which
he was engaged. Shortly after the close of the
great European war, before men had forgotten
the art of maintaining opinion by the sword, and
long ere the expression of political differences had
been modulated to the cadences of peace, Wilson,
then full of the animation derived from rectitude
of purpose and exuberant manhood, joined that
valiant band of intellectual warriors who planned
and constructed Blackwood's Magazine, as a
citadel for the defence of constitutional liberty,
and as an asylum for literary freedom—both
threatened with subversion by the conventional
liberalism of the Whigs. In the van of those
political and literary champions, with whom he
was thus associated, he maintained his place of
pride during many years-of anxious conflict, sus-
tained on their part with such resolution and suc-
cess, that long before his sun had reached its
setting point in the horizon, its radiance illu-
minated a serene and cloudless sky, in which the
turbulent explosions of party wrath had given
place to the comparatively whispered zephyrs of
merely disputed opinion. The life of such a
man, as that is to be read in his works, must
necessarily form a valuable chapter in the history
of the human mind ; and such a chapter is
offered to contemplation in the collected series,
the first volume of which is now under considera-
tion.

In these remarks, however, we must not be mis-
taken as meaning to depict Professor Wilson
merely as a political gladiator. On the contrary,
his warfare embraced the wide circle of intellec-
tual strife. Finding the action of a pseudo-
liberalism sapping the foundations of our consti-
tution, undermining the stately fabric of our reli-
gious institutions, and poisoning with its moral
pestilence the well-spring and fountain-head of
our literature, he and his indomitable companions
waged war, uncompromising war, against the
insidious monster ; traced him through every
tortuous zig-zag of approach, chased him back
into his slimy cavern, and there shut him up to
perish in his rottenness. This victory achieved,
while unrelaxing in his watchfulness, Professor
Wilson omitted no opportunity of fostering
virtue, encouraging goodness, and upholding
worth ; he was untiring in his efforts for the
advancement of genius, and even amid the ha-
rassing cares of laborious duty, he found or
made opportunity to forward the general intel-
lectual advancement of his time. In all such
enterprises his name was a tower of strength, and