120 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



One of Miller's Gairloch fellow-workmen, who 

 exerted a more important influence upon him, is de- 

 scribed with some detail in the Schools and School- 

 masters, but I have not found mention of him else- 

 where. I refer to John Eraser, one of three brothers, 

 who, if Mr Darwin's theory is sound, were a variation 

 of the human species adapted to found a race of super- 

 lative masons and stone-cutters, and to outlive and extir- 

 pate, by natural selection, all other masons and stone- 

 cutters. Miller states, on the authority of ' Mr Kenneth 

 Matheson, a gentleman well-known as a master-builder 

 in the west of Scotland/ that David Eraser, the most 

 remarkable of the brothers, could do three times as much 

 as an ordinary workman. John, even when advanced in 

 life, could build against ' two stout young fellows ' and 

 * keep a little ahead of them both.' ' I recognize old 

 John,' says Hugh Miller, ' as one of not the least useful 

 nor able of my many teachers ; ' and the justice of the 

 remark is attested by the admirably philosophic account 

 which he gives of the lesson old John taught him. The 

 secret of Eraser's power was that he saw ' the finished 

 piece of work/ as it lay within the stone, and cut down 

 upon the true figure at once, without repeating, like an 

 ordinary workman, his lines and draughts. And is not 

 this faculty of seeing with the mind's eye what the hand 

 has to execute, of conceiving the work as a whole so 

 that there shall be neither hurry nor delay in carrying it 

 out, essentially the faculty by which a Hannibal or a 

 Napoleon wins battles, a Dante or a Shakespeare writes 

 poems, a Titian or a Turner paints masterpieces ? 



Writing to Baird six years after this time, Miller 

 relates the following dream, which belongs to the Gair- 

 loch season, and is omitted from Schools and School- 

 masters. It is remarkable as containing a very definite 



