THE GREEN BAG With all his great abilities and marvelous talents, he had sublime confidence and faith in humanity and in mankind's ability to work out its mission on earth; and like so many men of massive mind, he was possessed of a simplicity of demeanor, in deed to such an extent as to afford "fre quent cause of good-humored merriment to his friends, " as noted in the sketch of his life in Sanderson's Lives of the Signers. Wain also remarked that "Wilson was more a man of books, than of the world." In his writings and speeches he illustrates or quotes from Plato, Aristotle and Homer, from Cato, Cicero, Caesar, Brutus and Cali gula, as well from Bolingbroke, Bacon, the Bishop of Tours, Bishop Taylor and Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, and a host of others, among them, Dr. Robertson, Pope, Addison and Milton. Barbeyrack, Gogeut, Kaims and Puffendorf, Adam Smith, Blackstone, Coke, Yelverton, Justinian, Hadrian, Alfred the Great, Frederick the Great, Solon and Lycurgus, Marcus Antonius, Hodreau, Des Cartes, Beccaria, Heineccius, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Sully, Laelia, Carew, Baron de Wolfius, Vattel, Domat, Necar, Fortesque, Burlamaqui and so on almost ad infinitum. The celebrated traveler, the Marquis de Chastellux, Major General in the French army, when on his travels in America, 1780-82, was deeply impressed by his wide reading, recording in his notes' that Wilson, "a celebrated lawyer," " has in his library all our best authors on public law and juris prudence; the works of President Montes quieu and of the Chancellor d'Aquessau, hold the first rank among them, and he makes them his daily study." Wain in his biographic outline of Wilson's life records: "In private life he was friendly, inter esting, and hospitable; amiable and benevo lent in his deportment; of strict truth and integrity; and affectionate and indulgent as a husband and father. In a word, his domestic character and conduct were such 1 Chastellux's Travels (English translation, Lon don, 1787) Vol. I. p. 224.
as, uniformly, to secure the reverence and affection of his family and friends." Sometime after the "Fort Wilson Riot" in 1779, Wilson moved to Chestnut Street between Fourth and Fifth, later resided at 274 Market Street, and on the 14th of April, 1788, took possession of the house at the Southwest corner of 7th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, in which the Declara tion of Independence was written. On the 14th of April, 1786, he was called upon to mourn the death of his wife, whom he buried in Christ Churchyard, and to whose memory he erected a tablet, describ ing her as "loved, honored, and lamented by her husband," and by whose leaden casket his own remains were tenderly laid at his reburial on November 2 2d, 1906. After the lapse of seven years, he in 1793 married Hannah,1 daughter of Ellis Gray, a merchant of Boston. There were six children by the first mar riage, and by the second a son, who died in infancy. There are no descendants of Judge Wilson now living. One son by the first marriage, Bird Wilson, became a Pennsyl vania Judge, in 1802, in a judicial circuit embracing the counties surrounding Phila delphia, and seventeen years afterwards he resigned from the bench to enter Holy Orders. There are many indications throughout James Wilson's writings that he had strong religious convictions, and it is said that when he resided in Cumberland County, Penn sylvania, he was a trustee of the Presby terian church there. Soon after coming to America, he published, between 1767 and 1769, with the Rev. William White, after wards the distinguished first Episcopalian bishop in America, a number of essays entitled The Visitant. He was also on terms of close intimacy with the Rev. Dr. William Smith, first Provost of the Uni versity of Pennsylvania. He was an active 1 Judge Wilson's letter of proposal to Miss Gray is now in the autograph collection of Mr. Simon Gratz, of Philadelphia.
