Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 29.djvu/335

1860.] At our request he kindly consented to act, as Colebrooke had for some years acted, as our London agent, and it was in this capacity that he so succesfully pleaded our cause with the late Court of Directors and obtained for us the monthly grant which now forms our Oriental Fund. The correspondence of which we had with the Government and with Wilson himself in 1856 is a sufficient proof that he wished still to take a part in our deliberations for appropriating this grant; and it must be a source of gratification to us now to feel that in bringing out the Persian historical texts which we have lately resolved on undertaking, we shall be working more than we were a few years back in the special direction in which he wished to lead us.

What Wilson had been to our Society during his stay in this country he has since his return to England been to the Royal Asiatic Society with Colebrooke had founded ten years previously. Whether as President or Director, he has been its moving spirit at least on all occasions on which Indian subjects were to be dealt with. Besides his contributions to the transactions and Journal of that Society he found time to bring out a further edition of his Sanscrit Dictionary, "Ariana Antiqua," a work of the greatest archæological and historical value, a Glossary of Indian terms, and a continuation of Mill's History of India up to Lord William Bentick's adminstration. His introduction to the Sanscrit Grammar is known to every student of the language, and his edition of his old fellow-passenger, Moorcroft/s Travels in the Himalyan provinces, to every geographer. The last work on which he was engaged was the translation of the "Rig Veda," and his determination himself to efect its completion is strikingly shown by the way in which he has anticipated Müller's edition of the Text. Wilson died a few days only before the 37th Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society. He had when vacating the Presidentship of that Society in 1858, and acknowledging the usual resolution of thanks which Mr. Marshman had moved, and in which a hope was expressed that he would soon re-occupy his proper post, made a touching allusion to the improbability of his surviving the interval which must by the Rules of the Society precede his re-election.

What little I have said does not profess to approach to an