BEGINNINGS OF TOIL. 55 



Ben Wyvis rose to the west, white with the yet unwasted 

 snows of winter, and as sharply defined in the clear at- 

 mosphere as if all its sunny slopes and blue retiring hol- 

 lows had been chiselled in marble. They reminded me 

 of the pretty French story, in which an old artist is 

 described as tasking the ingenuity of his future son-in-law, 

 by giving him, as a subject for his pencil, a flower-piece 

 composed of only white flowers, of which the one half 

 were to bear their proper colour, the other half a deep 

 purple hue, and yet all be perfectly natural ; and how 

 the young man resolved the riddle and gained his mis- 

 tress by introducing a transparent purple vase into the 

 picture, and making the light pass through it on the 

 flowers that were drooping over the edge. I returned 

 to the quarry, convinced that a very exquisite pleasure 

 may be a very cheap one, and that the busiest employ- 

 ments may afford leisure enough to enjoy it/ This is 

 beautiful writing and excellent philosophy ; but there is 

 not a word in any degree resembling it, whether descrip- 

 tive or philosophical, in the ' Monthly MSS./ edited by 

 Hugh Miller at the time. Nor is mention made of the 

 ripple-marked sandstone, on beholding which, on the 

 same day, he ( felt as completely at fault as Robinson 

 Crusoe did on his discovering the print of the man's 

 foot on the sand.' 



What is perhaps still more surprising, there is a 

 similar absence of reference to ornithological, geolo- 

 gical, or aesthetic alleviations of his early toil in the 

 account of this period, written by him ten years sub- 

 sequently for Principal Baird. 'My first six months 

 of labour, 'he writes to Baird in 1829, 'presented only 

 a series of disasters. I was at the time of a slender 

 make and weak constitution ; and I soon found I was 

 ill fitted for such employments as the trundling of loaded 



