104 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



'Cromarty, March 15, 1823. 



'DEAR WILLIE, '1823 would have sounded 

 oddly seven years ago, about which time we first got 

 acquainted, yet by the natural course of things it has 

 become the present time, and the bypast years live only 

 in the memory of the evil or good committed in them. 

 In 1815 I was a thoughtless, careless schoolboy, who 

 proved his spirit by playing truant three weeks in the 

 four, and his genius by writing rhymes which pleased 

 nobody but himself. In 182 3, that same schoolboy finds 

 himself a journeyman mason, not quite so free from care, 

 but as much addicted to rhyming as ever. But is this 

 all ? Can he boast of no good effect produced by the 

 experience of a space of time which brings him from his 

 thirteenth to his twentieth year? Has that time passed 

 away in a manner useless to himself and uninteresting to 

 others ? Not entirely so, for in that time he got acquainted 

 with William Ross ; in that time he changed the thought- 

 less hilarity of nature for the placid, tideless composure of 

 sentiment ; and in that time the gay hopes of fortune 

 and of fame which engaged him even in the simplest 

 days of his childhood have changed into a less noble, 

 though not a less pleasing form. His happiness no 

 longer depends upon the hope of the applause of others 

 not even upon the approbation of his friends he acts 

 and he writes for himself. His own judgment is his 

 critic his own soul is the world to which he addresses 

 himself ; but do not imagine that his own tongue sounds 

 his own praise, which I am afraid, if I went on any 

 longer in this strain, you might justly say.' 



