90 THE APPRENTICE. 



(a query of difficulty when one measures one's circum- 

 stances by the standards of either hope or fear) by a test 

 extremely simple. I deem the balance to incline to the 

 side of happiness when I prefer consciousness to uncon- 

 sciousness, when I consider sleep merely a thing of 

 necessity, instead of regarding it as a refuge from the 

 tedium of waking inanity, or unpleasant occupation. 

 The converse leads me to a contrary conclusion/ In the 

 letter from which this is quoted he pronounces the 

 spring and summer of the first year of his apprenticeship 

 the gloomiest seasons of his life ; ' in the Schools and 

 Schoolmasters, the closing period is declared to have 

 been ' by far the gloomiest he ever spent/ At both 

 periods he suffered about as much as man can suffer ; 

 but in the intermediate stages there were glimpses, nay, 

 abiding gleams, of enjoyment. On the llth of Novem- 

 ber, 1822, his apprenticeship came to an end. 



He was now an accomplished workman, and perhaps 

 in all his books there is no passage more weighty or 

 valuable than that in which he gives his estimate of the 

 importance of this fact, and impresses upon artisans the 

 supreme necessity of being masters of their trade. ' It 

 is not uninstructive/ he writes, ' to observe how strangely 

 the public are led at times to attach paramount import- 

 ance to what is in reality only subordinately important, 

 and to pass over the really paramount without thought 

 or notice. The destiny in life of the skilled mechanic 

 is much more influenced, for instance, by his second 

 education that of his apprenticeship, than by his first 

 that of the school; and yet it is to the education of 

 the school that the importance is generally regarded as 

 attaching, and we never hear of the other. The careless, 

 incompetent scholar has many opportunities of recover- 

 ing himself; the careless, incompetent apprentice, who 



