Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/267

Rh, still visible on the rocks, was a source of never-failing wonder to us. The ruins of Both well and Crichton Castles, of Roman camps, and historical scenes already possessed an interest for us. A good deal of antiquarianism mingled with our natural history, and two of us were already embryo numismatists, and knew a Roman denarius from a bodle as well as Edie Ochiltree himself."

Daniel's education was commenced in the famous High School of Edinburgh, whence he passed to the still more famous university of that city. At this period the special turn and capacity for art which he always retained was so strong as to induce him, on his graduation, to decide to make the pursuit of it his profession. With this object he removed to London, where a notable group of great painters was then rising into fame. At their head was Turner, with whom he soon became intimate. He describes him as an "old, slovenly, slouching little man, as remote from the ideal of artist or poet as could well be conceived; but the flash of his keen gray eyes redeemed the face from the otherwise vulgar and sensual look." The door of the strange house in Queen Anne Street was freely open to the young student; and he found in his repeated visits that the great painter could be kind and genial to an enthusiastic youth, while grimly ridiculing his enthusiasm.

In 1840 Wilson brought to London as his bride a Scottish lady. They had three daughters, the first of whom was born in London. She died ten months later, when with her mother visiting the old home. This affliction changed the course of the parents' life. They decided to return to Edinburgh, and Wilson, giving up art as a life-pursuit, devoted himself to literature. His diligent pen and varied talents soon found ample occupation. "He was," we are told by one of his biographers, "a constant contributor to The Scotsman, and wrote for Tait's Magazine, Chambers's Miscellany, the British Quarterly, North British Review, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, Gentleman's Magazine, and other periodicals. He contributed articles to the edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica then in progress, as well as to subsequent issues, and he edited for a time the Proceedings of the Scottish Antiquary. He also prepared for friendly publishers some historical books, which, though creditably written, he afterward refused to include in the list of his acknowledged writings, counting them mere compilations and craftsman's work, as distinguished from the productions of original research, to which he was soon to owe his fame.

The first of these was published in 1848, under the title of Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, by Daniel Wilson, Acting Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. It filled two quarto volumes, illustrated throughout with fine engravings of the buildings and localities described, all from his own drawings. The pictures are enlivened by characteristic