308 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



His thoughts are detached ; mine are consecutive. His 

 descriptions, gorgeous with colour and exquisite in form, 

 delight only the sight ; mine, though less splendid, 

 appeal to the sentiments. His narratives are hung over 

 with splendid draperies ; mine are naked. He rarely 

 reasons on the nature of man ; I often. He is a Tory ; 

 I a Whig. What can I expect from such a critic ? ' 



' School-house of Nigg, Monday evening. 



' Here am I set in Mr Swanson's sleeping-room be- 

 side a not bad collection of books. I find I am not 

 nearly so great a literary glutton now as I was fifteen 

 years ago ; there was a keenness in my appetite at that 

 time which I have hardly ever seen equalled. The very 

 heaven of my imagination was an immense library ; and 

 my fondest desires asked nothing more from the future 

 than much time and many books. Have you marked 

 the progress of your mind from the days in which you 

 dressed your doll, to the days in which you are addressed 

 by your lover? I remember that from my fourth to my 

 sixth year I derived much pleasure from oral narrative, 

 and that my imagination even at this early period had 

 acquired strength enough to present me with vividly 

 coloured pictures of all the scenes described to me, and 

 of all the incidents related. My mind then opened to 

 the world of books. I began to understand the stories 

 of the Bible, and to steal into some quiet corner, that I 

 might peruse tales and novels unmolested by my com- 

 panions. In my twelfth year I could relish a volume of 

 the Spectator and some of the better essays of Johnson ; 

 in my fifteenth I was delighted with the writings of 

 the poets. About a year after I found that 'twas better 

 to be solitary than in company ; my mind had ac- 

 quired strength enough, as nurses say of their children, 



