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

in favour of them his energies were freely drawn
upon, and kis efforts were as freely accorded.
His fancy was rich and teeming, his eloquence
glowing and fervid, and both were at all times
willingly as well as ably devoted to the further-
ance of those views which his conscience told
him were the right ones. For upwards of a quarter
of a century he was foremost in the strife of
knowledge against ignorance, of truth against
insidious error ; and probably in no instance was
his advocacy more efficiently wielded than in his
" imaginary colloquies," as Professor Ferrier calls
them, entitled the " Noctes Ambrosianx."

In these charming dialogues nearly every topic
falling within the range of literary, artistic, and
political discussion is freely entered upon, and
handled with the ability and liberality of genius.
Each subject is analyzed with the dexterity of the
moral anatomist, scanned by the tutored eye of
the scholar, and scrutinized by the searching
glance of the philosopher. Criticism the most
searching and subtle, directed towards men
and things, are their characteristics. In them
the author evokes a train of thought, lively and
varied, and invigorating as the breezes which fan
the hill-sides and sweep the valleys of his native
mountains. They are rich in their ceaseless
spring of sparkling wit, delightful in their flow-
ing stream of genial humour, and resistless in
their rolling tide of healthy merriment ; all tem-
pered and attuned by kindliness of disposition
and a manly benevolence of heart. To republish
such mental. achievements as those embalmed in
the " Noctes Ambrosianse " of Professor Wilson
is to confer a boon upon the age which it will
not be slow to recognise.
The revision of these dialogues has been
entrusted to Professor Ferrier, the accomplished
son-in-law of their gifted author ; a gentleman
whose congeniality of sentiment, added to his
affectionate personal intimacy with the author,
pointed him out as peculiarly fitted for the task ;
a task which he has performed with a degree of
skill and with a careful tenderness for Professor
Wilson's reputation which fully vindicates his
title to the trust reposed in him. He has dis-
charged his duty faithfully in the preservation of
a pure and well-assorted text, which he has
enriched by judicious explanatory notes. He has
also contributed a prefatory essay, in which he
gives a scholarly analysis of these admirable dia-
logues, in which the wit and eloquence of Pro-
fessor Wilson shine with so glorious a lustre, so
bright a radiance—a brilliancy which none who
knew Professor Wilson can fail to recognise in
the idealized and portly gravity which hallows
the stately eloquence of Christopher North ; in
whom also they must at once perceive that noble
personal dignity of demeanour, that generaliza-
tion of mild and lofty kindness, which were so
peculiarly and instinctively characteristic of the
Professor, whose harmonised grandeur of feature
and expression is perpetuated only, so far as we
know, in the noble bust of him executed about
ten years ago by Fillans, for the Mechanics' In-
stitution of Paisley, of which locality both the
bard and the artist were natives. This magnifi-
cent bust, one of the finest of modern times, now
adorns the library of that institution, and in its
massive lineaments and contour, the connoisseur
will readily trace much of the instinctive gran-