396 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



William Thorn, the writer of the following letter, 

 was a man of fine and brilliant genius, his vein of 

 pathos as true as that of Burns. Born in Inverury, a 

 small town of Aberdeenshire, at the confluence of the 

 Ury and the Don, he earned a precarious livelihood by 

 hand-loom weaving, and found consolation in the pierc- 

 ing and tender melody of his songs. His Mitherless 

 Bairn, the subject of one of Faed's noblest pictures, 

 must live as long as the language. The following letter, 

 light as it is, has touches of an arch, brave, and piquant 

 humour, which bespeak the child of genius. He sank 

 mournfully, as the immense majority of his class have 

 done. 



' Inverury, March 4tb, 1844. 



' Accept my very sincere thanks for your lively 

 and kind notice of me and mine in your widely-spread 

 Journal. True enough, it is a significant way of re- 

 quiting such favours by dragging your care and kind- 

 ness into fresh work ; but, believing that you will as 

 well as word my prosperity, I take leave to hand my 

 Prospectus, in the hope that, should you meet a friendly 

 name, you will make my list all that the longer. My 

 book will be a little book, which is sometimes a great 

 mercy ; but however lowly its claims in other respects, 

 I assure you no page shall bear aught to disparage its 

 patrons or me. I would fain have waited yet a little, 

 and, in finishing what is pretty well en, have more 

 nearly come up to that expectation which a (perhaps too 

 partial) favouring press has taught to wait my appear- 

 ance. Here is the secret ; customar weaving is down, 

 fairly sunk before its leviathan rival, the big manu- 

 factory ; cheapness, elegance, durability, all spring ahead 

 of the solitary weaver. My loom, once my ship Hope 

 and Hardship, alternate steersmen is now seen ducking. 



