liberty to work for himself, with all the anxiety of the voyager who fears that his meagre stock of provisions and water may wholly fail him ere he reaches port. I of course could not assist him. I was an apprentice, like himself, and had not the command of a sixpence; nor, had the case been otherwise, would he in all probability have consented to accept of my help; but he lacked spirits as much as money, and in that particular my society did him good. We used to beat over all manner of subjects together, especially poetry and the fine arts; and though we often differed, our differences served only to knit us the more. He, for instance, deemed the “Minstrel" of Beattie the most perfect of English poems; but though he liked Dryden's "Virgil " well enough, he could find no poetry whatever in the " Absalom and Ahithophel” of Dryden; whereas I liked both the "Minstrel " and the "Ahithophel," and, indeed, could hardly say, unlike as they were in complexion and character, which of the two I read oftenest or admired most. Again, among the prose writers, Addison was his especial favorite, and Swift he detested; whereas I liked Addison and Swift almost equally well, and passed without sense of incongruity, from the Vision of Mirza, or the paper on Westminster Abbey, to the true account of the death of Partridge, or the Tale of a Tub. If, however, he could wonder at the latitudinarian laxity of my taste, there was at least one special department in which I could marvel quite as much at the incomprehensible breadth of his. Nature had given me, in despite of the phrenologists, who find music indicated by two large protuberances on the corners of my forehead, a deplorably defective ear. My Uncle Sandy, who was profoundly skilled in psalmody, had done his best to make a singer of me; but he was at length content to stop short, after a world of effort, when he had, as he thought, brought me to distinguish St. George's from any other psalm-tune. On the introduction, however, of a second tune into the parish church that repeated the line at the end of the stanza, even this poor fragment of ability deserted me; and to this day,-though I rather like the strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection to drums in particular,-doubts do occasionally come across me whether there be in reality any such thing as tune. My friend William Ross was, on the contrary, a born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and clarionet of young shoots of elder, on which he succeeded in discoursing sweet music; and, addressing himself at another and later period to both the principles and practices of the science, he became one of the best flute-players in the district. Notwithstanding my dulness of ear, I do cherish a pleasing recollection of the sweet sounds that used to issue from his little room in the outhouse, every milder evening as I approached, and of the soothed and tranquil state in which I ever found him on these occasions, as I entered. I could not understand his music, but I saw that, mentally at least, though, I fear, not physically,-for the respiratory organs were weak, -it did him great good. There was, however, one special province in which our tastes thoroughly harmonized. We were both of us, if not alike favored, at least equally devoted, lovers of the wild and beautiful in nature; and many a moon-light walk did we take together this winter among the woods and rocks of the Hill. It was once said of Thomson, by one who was himself not at all morbidly poetic in his feelings, that "he could not have viewed two candles burning but with a poetical eye." It might at least be said of my friend, that he never saw a piece of fine or striking scenery without being deeply moved by it. As for the mere candles, if placed on a deal-dresser or shop-counter, they might have failed to touch him; but if burning in some lyke-wake beside the dead, or in some vaulted crypt or lonely rock-cave, he also could not have looked other than poetically on them. I have seen him awed into deep solemnity, in our walks, by the rising moon, as it peered down upon us over the hill, red and broad, and cloud-encircled, through the interstices of some clump of dark firs; and have observed him become suddenly silent, as, emerging from the moonlight woods, we looked into a rugged dell, and saw far beneath, the slim rippling streamlet gleaming in the light, like a narrow strip of the aurora borealis shot athwart a dark sky, when the steep rough sides of the ravine, on either hand, were enveloped in gloom. My friend's opportunities of general reading had not been equal to my own, but he was acquainted with at least one class of books of which I knew scarce anything;-he had carefully studied Hogarth's "Analysis of Beauty," Fresnoy's "Art of Painting," "Gessner's Letters," the "Lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds," and several other works of a similar kind; and in all the questions of criticism that related to external form, the effects of light and shade, and the influences of the meteoric media, I found him a high authority. He had a fine eye for detecting the peculiar features which gave individuality and character to a landscape,-those features, as he used to say, which the artist or poet should seize and render prominent, while, at the same time, lest they should be lost as in a mob, he softened down the others; and, recognizing him as a master in this department of characteristic selection, I delighted to learn in his school,-by far the best of its kind I ever attended. I was able, however, in part to repay him, by in troducing him to many an interesting spot among the rocks, or to retired dells and hollows in the woods, which, from his sedentary habits, he would scarce ever have discovered for himself. I taught him, too, to light fires after nightfall in the caves, that we might watch the effects of the strong lights and deep shadows in scenes so wild; and I still vividly remember the delight he experienced, when, after kindling up in the daytime a strong blaze at the mouth of the Doocot Cave, which filled the recess within with smoke, we forced our way inwards through the cloud, to mark the appearance of the sea and the opposite land seen through a medium so dense, and saw, on turning round, the landscape strangely enwrapped "in the dun hues of earthquake and eclipse." We have visited, after nightfall, the glades of the surrounding woods together, to listen to the night breeze, as it swept sullenly along the pine-tops; and, after striking a light in the old burial vault of a solitary churchyard, we have watched the ray falling on the fissured walls and ropy damp and mould; or, on setting on fire a few withered leaves, have seen the smoke curling slowly upwards, through a square opening in the roof, into the dark sky. William's mind was not of the scientific cast. He had, however, acquired some knowledge of the mathematics, and some skill both in architecture and in the anatomy of the human skeleton and muscles; while of perspective he perhaps knew well-nigh as much as was known at the time. I remember he preferred the Treatise on this art, of Ferguson the astronomer and mechanician, to any other; and used to say that the twenty years spent by the philosopher as a painter were fully redeemed, though they had produced no good pictures, by his little work on Perspective alone. My friend had ere this time given up the writing of verses, very much because he had learned to know what verses ought to be, and failed to satisfy himself with his own; and ere his death, I saw him resign in succession his flute and pencil, and yield up all the hopes he had once cherished of being known. But his weak health affected his spirits, and prostrated the energies of a mind originally rather delicate than strong. CHAPTER IX "Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate; and reasoned high MILTON. SPRING came on, and brought with it its round of labor,— quarrying, building, and stone-cutting; but labor had now no terrors for me: I wrought hard during the hours allotted to toil, and was content; and read, wrote, or walked, during the hours that were properly my own, and was happy. Early in May, however, we had finished all the work for which my master had previously contracted; and as trade was usually dull at the time, he could procure no further contracts, and the squad was thrown out of employment. I rushed to the woods and rocks, and got on with my lessons in geology and natural science; but my master, who had no lessons to learn, wearied sadly of doing nothing; and at length, very unwill ingly, for he had enacted the part of the employer, though on a small scale, for a full quarter of a century,—he set himself to procure work as a journeyman. He had another apprentice at the time; and he, availing himself of the oppor tunity which the old man's inability of employing him ur nished, quitted his service, and commenced work on his own. behalf,-a step to which, though the position of a journey |