The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Paisley, 1785. Died in Edinburgh, 1854. Aged 69.] The son of a Paisley manufacturer. Educated at Glasgow and Oxford. Like the youth of ancient Greece, he delighted equally in the spoils of the arena, and in the wisdom of the porch. At Oxford, the first wrestler of his time, and the gainer of the Newdegate prize for the best poem. His genius as passionate as his frame was overflowing with the sap of animal life. Endowed with a lofty and glowing imagination, and with great critical powers, improved by knowledge. A lover of learning for the joy it brings, and a hearty sympathizer with the glorious labours of the great makers of prose and verse, whether in ancient or modern time. He himself excelled as a worker in more than one of the paths of literature. His poetry is remarkable for the beauty of its imagery, for its rich fancy, and for the flow of the verse; his criticisms exhibit a profound knowledge of the true principles of taste, are eloquent, and full of generous sentiment; his prose tales of fiction have deep pathos, and reveal intimate acquaintance with the human heart. As an orator, John Wilson might have vied with the most eloquent of his contemporaries had he chosen to compete with them in their own peculiar field; as a writer upon the manly sports which he so ardently loved, he is unequalled. His very corporeal substance seems heaving with joy and physical happiness, as we follow his vigorous, picturesque, and elated pen, amongst the lochs of Scotland, or the lakes of Cumberland. Wilson wrote with the zeal of a strong partizan in politics. He would be one, and could not. His large and universal heart never entertained what are called political antipathies. His Toryism was his strong and hearty nature bubbling up and venting itself in loyalty, chivalry, and affectionate duty. To say that he was opposed to Liberty and Right, is to assert a monstrous paradox. He was the very incarnation of liberty, and his giant soul shrunk from wrong, by natural action. In 1818, Wilson was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. The bust bespeaks the man. It looks like Jupiter. We cannot gaze upon a more magnificent head. [This striking and characteristic work is by the late James Fillous of Glasgow, a fellow townsman of Professor Wilson. It was executed in marble for the Public Reading Room at Paisley.]