Wilson, in some of his phases, reminds us often of a great glorified child, rejoicing in an eternal boyhood.  He had the same impulse, restlessness, glee, zest, and abandon.  All sport was serious work with him, and serious work was sport.  No frolic ever came amiss, whatever its guise.  He informed play with the earnestness of childhood and the spirituality of poesy.  He could turn everything into a hook on which to hang a frolic.  No dark care bestrode the horse behind this perennial youth.  No haggard spectre, reflected from a turbid soul, sat moping in the prow of his boat, or kept step with him in the race.  Like the Sun-god, he was buoyant and beautiful, careless, free, elastic, unfading.  Years never cramped his bounding spirits, or dimmed the lustre of his soul.  He was ever ready for prank and pastime, for freak and fun.  Of all his loves at Elleray, boating was the chief.  He was the Lord-High-Admiral of all the neighboring waters, and had a navy at his beck.  He never wearied of the lake:  whether she smiled or frowned on her devotee, he worshipped all the same.  Time and season and weather were all alike to the sturdy skipper.  One howling winter’s night he was still at his post, when Billy Balmer brought tidings that “his master was wellnigh frozen to death, and had icicles a finger-length hanging from his hair and beard.”  Though there was storm without, the great child had his undying sunshine within.

In 1811, he married Miss Jane Penny, of Ambleside, described as the belle of that region,—­a woman of rare beauty of mind and person, gentle, true, and loving.  She was either a pedestrian by nature, or converted by the arguments of her husband; for, a few years after marriage, they took a long, leisurely stroll on foot among the Highlands, making some three hundred and fifty miles in seven weeks.  The union of these two bright spirits was singularly happy and congenial,—­a pleasing exception to the long list of mismated authors.  Nought was known between them but the tenderest attachment and unwearied devotion to each other.  For nearly forty years they were true lovers; and when death took her, a void was left which nothing could fill.  The bereaved survivor mourned her sincerely for more than seventeen years,—­never, for an instant, forgetting her, until his own summons came.  Some one has related the following touching incident.  “When Wilson first met his class, in the University, after his wife’s death, he had to adjudicate on the comparative merits of various essays which had been sent in on competition for a prize.  He bowed to his class, and, in as firm voice as he could command, apologized for not having examined the essays,—­’for,’ said he, ’I could not see to read them in the darkness of the shadow of the Valley of Death.’  As he spoke, the tears rolled down his cheeks; he said no more, but waved his hand to his class, who stood up as he concluded and hurried out of the lecture-room.”