Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Obituary notice of Professor Alexander Dickson / by Thomas R. Fraser. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![various liills introduced into Parliament during tlie last seven years, for effecting fundamental changes in the consti- tution and character of the Scottish universities; considering them prompted more by political, social, and selfish aims, than by a real and disinterested desire for educational reform. If it were ])ossible for one so charitable and generous to entertain any feeling of resentment, that feeling was approached in the indignation with which he regarded many of the statements of the extreme section of agitators for university legislation. Even when he found himself in a ho]De- less minority—as occasionally happened in the discussions on this question,—he still courageously maintained and ex- pressed the views he had deliberately adopted. Polemical discussion, however, was not congenial to his fair and candid disposition. When not engaged in teaching or in the botanical investigations to which he was so ardently attached, his occupations as proprietor of Hartree and Kil- bucbo, and social intercourse with his friends, were more in accordance with his tastes. It has been well said that, as a country laird, “his one aim in life was to make others happy.” And the same characteristics made him also a general favourite in society; where he used to delight his friends by the exquisite taste and feeling with which he played on the piano the works of Beethoven and Bach, and the national airs of Scotland. His social charms were never more pleasantly exhibited than when he was entertaining his friends at his country house. They were made to feel as if the place belonged to them, and not to him; except that every now and then the host was recognised by his kindly interpositions to in- crease the comfort and enjoyment of his guests. His delight was to know that they had been gratified with the day’s shooting or curling, or with the ramble over hills or through the woods, where some matter of botanical interest was in- variably brought under notice; their delight was the com- panionship and conversation of an acute and widely-informed man, genial and destitute of envy, self-denying and careful to avoid wounding susceptibilities, and appreciating heartily what was good in others, because desirous of doing so. No one could have guessed that beneath this never-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21945378_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
