ATTAINABLE IDEALS. 49 



as an ornament on his watch-chain. A great many 

 other navvies, it is to be feared, if they had found 

 the coin, would have sold it at once for its high- 

 est market-value, and contributed the greater por- 

 tion of the proceeds to the joint benefit of the 

 revenue and the licensed victualler. But that is 

 no reason, so far as we can see, why we should 

 say the particular navvy in question has acquired 

 tastes above his station. It is to be hoped that, 

 as time goes on, all our navvies will not indeed be 

 converted into professors of archaeology in the 

 Universities, but that more and more of them will 

 every day be induced to follow this good example, 

 and to take an interest, we do not say necessarily 

 in stone implements and ancient British coins, but 

 in something other than the coarse and vulgar 

 pursuits to which it may be feared most of the 

 class are at present addicted. 



For this reason, it has often seemed to us, lives 

 like that of Thomas Edward, the Banff shoemaker, 

 who devoted his whole spare time to the study of 

 marine animals, or that of Robert Dick, the Thurso 

 baker, who became one of the most successful and 

 useful of British botanists, are far more really 

 encouraging in their way to the people for whose 

 encouragement they are specially intended than 

 any number of glowing biographies devoted to the 

 doings of the " men who have risen," and have 

 ended by accumulating for themselves, through 



