WILSON, SIR DANIEL (1816–1892), archaeologist and Canadian educational reformer, was born in Edinburgh on the 5th of January 1816, the son of Archibald Wilson, a wine-merchant, and Janet Aitken. After studying at the High School and the University of Edinburgh, he spent the next ten years in journalism and in other forms of literary work (London 1837–1842, Edinburgh 1842–1847). In 1845 he became secretary to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, and in 1848 published Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, of which the chief value lies in the numerous illustrations, done by himself. In 1851 appeared his most important work, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which placed him in the front rank of archaeologists. In 1853 he became professor of History and English Literature in the University of Toronto, where his practical ability and energy soon made him the most important member of the staff. While writing extensively on the archaeology and anthropology of Canada, and giving an impetus to the study, he produced nothing of lasting importance. His main work lay in asserting the claims of the University of Toronto, and of University College, the teaching body in connexion with it, against the sectarian universities of the province which denounced the provincial university as godless, and against the private medical schools in Toronto. Largely owing to Wilson's energy in fighting for what he called “the maintenance of a national system of university education in opposition to sectarian or denominational colleges,” the provincial university gained the chief position in the intellectual life of Ontario. Two of the sectarian universities, the Methodist and the Anglican, have now become united to the provincial university, but the Baptist and the Presbyterian (see Kingston) still retain a vigorous existence. He was equally successful in his struggle against the rival medical schools in Toronto, the chief of which is now incorporated with Toronto university. In his efforts to escape the control of local politicians he was less successful, and in some cases appointments to the provincial university were made for political rather than for academic reasons. Though seeing that in a young and democratic country the Scotch-American model must be followed rather than the English, and though resisting attempts to follow the practice of Oxford or Cambridge, Wilson was a believer in the merits of a modified form of the residential system. He was one of the first in Canada to cast aside the classical tradition, and as early as 1860 had the courage to say: “It is just because . . . German and French are now the keys of so much modern philosophy and science that all wise University reformers are learning to give to modern languages the place they justly claim in a liberal education.” In 1881 he was made president of Toronto university; and in 1885 president of the literature section of the Canadian Royal Society; in 1888 he was knighted; and in 1891 given the freedom of the city of Edinburgh. He died at Toronto on the 6th of August 1892.
Record of Historical Publications relating to Canada, edited by G. M. Wrong, vol. v. (Toronto and London, 1901), pp. 199-217, gives a good sketch of his career, and a bibliography of his numerous works.
WILSON, HENRY (1812-1875), vice-president of the United
States from 1873 to 1875, was born at Farmington, New Hampshire,
on the 16th of February 1812. His name originally was
Jeremiah J. Colbaith. His father was a day-labourer and very
poor. At ten years of age the son went to work as a
farm-labourer. He was fond of reading, and before the end of his
apprenticeship had read more than a thousand volumes. At
the age of twenty-one, for some unstated reason, he had his
name changed by Act of the Legislature to that of Henry Wilson.
At Natick, Massachusetts, whither he travelled on foot, he
learned the trade of shoemaker, and during his leisure hours
studied much and read with avidity. For short periods, also,
he studied in the academies of Strafford, N.H., Wolfeborough,
N.H., and Concord, N.H. After successfully establishing himself
as a shoe manufacturer, he attracted attention as a public
speaker in support of William Henry Harrison during the
presidential campaign of 1840. He was in the state House of
Representatives in 1841-42, 1846 and 1850, and in the Senate in
1844-45 and 1851-52. In 1848 he left the Whig party and
became one of the chief leaders of the Free Soil party, serving
as presiding officer of that party's national convention in 1852,
acting as chairman of the Free Soil national committee and
editing from 1848 to 1851 the Boston Republican, which he made
the chief Free Soil organ. The Free Soil party nominated him
for governor of the state in 1853, but he was defeated. For a
short time (1855) he identified himself with the American or Know
Nothing party, and afterwards acted with the Republican party.
In 1855 he was elected to the United States Senate and remained
there by re-elections until 1873. His uncompromising opposition
to the institution of slavery furnished the keynote of his earlier
senatorial career, and he soon took rank as one of the ablest and
most effective anti-slavery orators in the United States. He had
been deeply interested from 1840 until 1850 in the militia of his
state, and had risen through its grades of service to that of
brigadier-general. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he was
made chairman of the military committee of the Senate, and in
this position performed most laborious and important work for
the four years of the war. The Republicans nominated Wilson for
the vice-presidency in 1872, and he was elected; but he died on
the 22nd of November 1875 before completing his term of office.
He published, besides many orations, a History of the Anti-Slavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses (1865); Military Measures of the United States Congress (1868); a History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses (1868) and a History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 vols., 1872-1875), his most important work.
The best biography is that by Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (Boston, 1876).
WILSON, HORACE HAYMAN (1786–1860), English orientalist, was born in London on the 26th of September 1786. He studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, and went out to India in 1808 as assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the British East India Company. His knowledge of metallurgy caused him to be attached to the mint at Calcutta, where he was for a time associated with John Leyden. He became deeply interested in the ancient language and literature of India, and by the recommendation of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, he was in 1811 appointed secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1813 he published the Sanskrit text—with a graceful, if somewhat free, translation in English rhymed verse—of Kālidāsa's charming lyrical poem, the Meghadūta, or Cloud-Messenger. He prepared the first Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1819) from materials compiled by native scholars, supplemented by his own researches. This work was only superseded by the Sanskritwörterbuch (1853–1876) of R. von Roth and Otto von Böhtlingk, who expressed their obligations to Wilson in the preface to their great work. Wilson published in 1827 Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus, which contained a very full survey of the Indian drama, translations of six complete plays and short accounts of twenty-three others. His Mackenzie Collection (1828) is a descriptive catalogue of the extensive collection of Oriental, especially South Indian, MSS. and antiquities made by Colonel Colin Mackenzie, now deposited partly in the India Office, London, and partly at Madras. He also wrote a Historical Sketch of the First Burmese War, with Documents, Political and Geographical (1827), a Review of the External Commerce of Bengal from 1813 to 1828 (1830) and a History of British India from 1805 to 1835, in continuation of Mill's History (1844–1848). He acted for many years as secretary to the committee of public instruction, and superintended the studies of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta. He was one of the staunchest opponents of the proposal that English should be made the sole medium of instruction in native schools, and became for a time the object of bitter attacks. In 1832 the university of Oxford selected Dr Wilson to be the first occupant of the newly founded Boden chair of Sanskrit, and in 1836 he was appointed librarian to the East India Company. He was an original member of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was director from 1837 up to the time of his death, which took place in London on the 8th of May 1860.
