The Rev. J. Wilson has been at St. James’s upwards of 15 years.  He was curate of the Parish Church from 1847 to 1850.  In the latter year he left in order to take the sole charge of a parish in Norfolk.  In 1854 he gravitated to Preston again, and in the course of a year was made incumbent of St. James’s.  For some time he had much to contend with in the district; and he has had up-hill work all along.  He was one of the original agitators for an alteration of the Parish Church, and in one sense it may be said that the move he primarily made in the matter eventuated in the restoration of that building.  The creation of St. Saviour’s Church is also largely due to him, and owing to the building being in St. James’s district, which is a “Blandsford parish,” and the only one of the kind in Preston we may remark, he has the right of presentation to it.  Mr. Wilson is a calm, middle-sized, rather eccentric looking gentleman, tasteful in big hirsute arrangements, and biased towards a small curl in the front of his forehead.  He is light on his feet, has a forward bend in his walk, as if trying to find something but never able to get at it; has a passion for an umbrella, which he carries both in fine and wet weather; likes a dark, thin, closely-buttoned overcoat, and used to love a down-easter wide-awake hat.  He is a frank, independent, educated man; has no sham in him; is liberal is far as his means will allow; works hard; has an odd, go-ahead way with him; cares little about bowing and scraping to people; often passes folk (unintentionally) without nodding; and has nothing of a polemically virulent character in his disposition.  There is something genuine, honest, gentlemanly, and unreadable in him.  He almost reminds one of Elia’s inexplicable cousin.  He has a special fondness for architecture; plans, specifications, &c., have a charm for him; he is a sort of clerical Inigo Jones; and ought to have been an architect.  He is a rather polished reader; but he holds his teeth too tightly together, and there is a tremulousness in his voice which makes the utterances thereof rather too unctuous.  As a preacher he is clear, calm, and methodical.  His sermons, all written, are scholarly in style cool in tone, short, and, in the orthodox sense, practical.  In their delivery he does not make much stir, he goes on evenly and rapidly, looking little to either the right hand or the left, broiling none, and foaming never.  Occasionally, but it is quite an exception, he forgets his sermons—­ leaves them at home—­and this is somewhat awkward when the mistake is only found out just before the preaching should be gone on with.  But the company are kept serene by a little extra singing, or something of that kind, and in the meantime a rapid rush is made to the parsonage, and the missing manuscript is secured, conveyed to the church either in a basket or a pocket, taken into the pulpit, looked at rather fiercely, shook a little, and then read through.  How would it be if the