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 WISE

Ayr he is preparing a very extensive and valuable biography of the modern sage. He is a member of the Eationalist Press Association, and has expounded his views in a small work, The Faith of All Sensible People (1913). Like Carlyle, he admits only an &quot;eternal and unchanging Spirit of the Universe or Heaven &quot; (p. xxi).

WILSON, Sir Roland Knyvet of Delhi,

baronet, M.A., L.L.M., jurist. Ed. Eton and Cambridge (King s College). He was King s Scholar at Eton, and Craven Uni versity Scholar and Senior Classic at Cambridge. In 1867 he was elected Fellow of King s College, and was called to the Bar. From 1867 to 1871 he was reporter for the Weekly Reporter and Law Journal, and from 1871 to 1878 he was classical and historical lecturer for Mr. Walter Wren. He inherited the baronetcy he was the son of Bear-Admiral George Knyvet Wilson by special remainder in 1874. From 1878 to 1892 Sir Eoland was Eeader in Indian Law to the University of Cambridge. His legal works (especially his Digest of Anglo -Muhammadan Law, 1895) were of importance; and he wrote also a philosophico-political work, The Province of the State (1911}. In his later years Sir Eoland was much concerned with, and outspoken about, religion. In an article in the Hibbert Journal (October, 1919_the month of his death) he says that, like Francis Newman, he throughout life believed in God, but not in personal immortality (p. 28). For over thirty years &quot; he had followed that devout and fearless thinker.&quot; He adds, however : &quot; I have of late felt myself less and less able to affirm with any confidence the existence of any supreme mind behind the visible universe &quot; (p. 28). If such a mind exists, he says, it &quot;&quot; must be ignored in practice,&quot; and religion must consist wholly of a humanitarian ethical culture. D. Oct. 29, 1919.

WILTON, Wyndham, Australian jour nalist. B. 1859. Ed. Scotch College and Melbourne University. Mr. Wilson adopted 899

journalism as his profession, and has worked on the press of Victoria, Tasmania, New Zealand, and New South Wales. He was deflected from strict orthodoxy through the influence of the Eev. Page Hopps, and in 1879 he began to subscribe to the National Reformer and became a thorough Eationalist. In 1903 he was elected a member of the Canterbury (New Zealand) Freethought Association. For some years he edited the Reformer, a monthly paper devoted to &quot;religious and political pro gress.&quot; He has written several Eationalist pamphlets (How Are We Saved ?, Review of the Rev. Joseph Cook, etc.) and a few on social questions.

WINCKLER, Professor Hugo, German orientalist. B. 1863. Ed. Berlin Univer sity. In 1904 Winckler was appointed professor of oriental languages and history at Berlin University. His Geschichte Babylonians und Assyriens (1892; Eng. trans., 1907) is a standard work; and he translated into German the Hammurabi Code (Gesetze Hammurabis, 1904) and other important oriental documents. He was one of the most brilliant Assyriologists of Germany, and his Eationalist views are freely expressed in his Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen (1892) and Geschichte Israels (1898). D. April 19, 1913.

WISE, John Richard de Capel, ornitho logist and natural historian. B. 1831. Ed. Grantham Grammar School and Oxford (Lincoln College). He made extensive travels abroad, and obtained a very solid knowledge of birds and of natural history generally. After settling in England, Wise wrote an unsuccessful novel, Her Cousin s Courtship (2 vols., I860), and a more valuable work on Shakespeare (Shakspere : His Birthplace and its Neighbourhood, 1860). In 1862 he published an excellent natural history work, The New Forest. He contributed frequently to the early Westminster Revieiv, and was a close friend of Lewes and George Eliot ; and his volume of poems, The First of May (1881), was 900