6 Notes and Sketches. 



for the purpose of acquiring as perfectly as he could 

 the handicraft of the blacksmith, then in a rather 

 primitive state in country districts. And having fairly 

 mastered his business at a somewhat mature stage of 

 his life, he set up his " smiddy," building his fire 

 wholly of coals in place of home-made charcoal, and 

 otherwise prosecuting his calling in accordance with his 

 own advanced notions : although it was not he, but his 

 son, w 7 ho followed in succession to him in the same 

 business, whose services came to be in repute in the 

 first quarter of the present century as the only black- 

 smith over a wide district who understood, and could, 

 with his own hand, fit up all the iron work of the 

 thrashing mill and winnowing machine, then coming 

 into general use, and if need were of the " meal mill" as 

 well. 



Generally, the latent energies of the people, which 

 in the early part of the eighteenth century had been 

 starved down by the meagre style in which physical 

 life was sustained on the one hand, and the discourage- 

 ment to enterprise found in the existence of heritable 

 jurisdictions and the repressive fiscal system of the 

 time on the other, had been only partially stirred at its 

 close. Old customs ; old habits of life, thought, and 

 speech ; antiquated implements, and obsolete modes of 

 operation still kept their place with a wonderful 

 tenacity ; and the march of improvement, clogged as it 

 was by sundry extraneous impediments, the weight of 

 which we have difficulty under our greatly altered con- 

 ditions in realising, was yet but slow and halting. 



