90 EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



sketch is given on page 92. The description of it, as 

 given in that paper, will be interesting. " ' Thomas 

 Edward, shoemaker and naturalist,' " and this greatly 

 amused him, at the fun made at his expense. " A rale 

 guid pictur'," he says of it. 



" Help yourself ! " is a good rule, and a capital text, 

 on which Mr. Smiles, some time ago, preached a 

 sermon by examples, with the title of "Self -Help." 

 The moral of this sermon is summed in the old proverb, 

 " Grod helps those who help themselves,' ' for there 

 indeed lies the strength of " Self-help " — it is Grod's 

 help. And now Mr. Smiles has preached another 

 sermon on the same text, called " The Life of a Scotch 

 Naturalist." It is the wonderful true story of a won- 

 derful true man — Thomas Edward, Associate of the 

 Linnsean Society, and souter in Banff ; a story to bring 

 tears into the eyes, and to fill the heart with sadness 

 and gladness : a story to make those who read it better, 

 humbler, and gentler, and, above all, more thankful to 

 the great Father of all, who can so mysteriously teach 

 and guide, strengthen and lead up one of the humblest 

 of His children, from eleven years of age till sixty-three 

 an earner of distressful bread at a cobbler's stool, with 

 an average wage of nine shillings a- week. 



Thomas Edward has lived two lives. There was first 

 the humble life of the hardly-brought-up son of a poor 

 weaver ; scholar, now and then, for brief spells, of 

 brutal dominies ; next apprentice of a drunken ruffian ; 

 then toiling bread-winner for a brave and true wife, 

 and a well-reared family of eleven children. This was 

 the man who helped himself. 



