92 THE APPRENTICE. 



ings in woodland and by stream when sunset clothed 

 in ruddy light the old tower on the crag ; these con- 

 stituted the true education of Hugh Miller. Henceforth 

 we recognize him as the man he was, and are able to 

 trace in his countenance those lines of fortitude and re- 

 solution which so strongly marked that of his father. 

 He had won the first decisive victory of life, earnest 

 of all other victories, the victory of reason and conscience 

 over momentary inclination, of intelligent will over lag- 

 gard indolence and lawless impulse. He had disciplined 

 the wayward activity of boyhood into manly force. He 

 had chastened rude strength into ordered energy. Blus- 

 tering self-assertion, juvenile conceit, had given place to 

 deliberate self-respect; and that rebellious disposition 

 which had perplexed his uncles and been the despair of 

 his mother was calmed and concentrated into modesty, 

 into self-command, into the gentleness of conscious 

 power. The flawed and brittle iron had become steel. 

 'Noble, upright, self-relying Toil,' he exclaims, with 

 grand enthusiasm, 'who that knows thy solid worth 

 and value would be ashamed of thy hard hands, and thy 

 soiled vestments, and thy obscure tasks, thy humble 

 cottage, and hard couch, and homely fare ! ' 



Not, however, to all men is toil an education and 

 hardship a blessing. Hugh Miller came to his appren- 

 ticeship fortified against evil and prepared for good by 

 that training in courage and truthfulness, in just thought 

 and manly feeling, which he had unconsciously received 

 in companionship with his uncles. Those gentlemen of 

 nature's finest modelling were, though he knew it not, 

 the examples by which he shaped himself. He acted on 

 all occasions as he felt that Uncle James or Uncle Sandy 

 would have acted in the circumstances. Nor can we err 

 in affirming that the incidents and results of Miller's 



