il myself of the present opportunity of acknowledging
the kindness of Mr. Chambers. There is perhaps no other writer of the
present day who has done so much to encourage struggling talent as this
gentleman. I have for many years observed that publications, however
obscure, in which he finds aught really praiseworthy, are secure always
of getting, in his widely-circulated periodical, a kind approving
word--that his criticisms invariably bear the stamp of a benevolent
nature, which experiences more of pleasure in the recognition of merit
than in the detection of defect--that his kindness does not stop with
these cheering notices, for he finds time, in the course of a very busy
life, to write many a note of encouragement and advice to obscure men in
whom he recognises a spirit superior to their condition--and that the
compositions of writers of this meritorious class, when submitted to him
editorially, rarely fail, if really suitable for his journal, to find a
place in it, or to be remunerated on a scale that invariably bears
reference to the value of the communications--not to the circumstances
of their authors.

I can scarce speak of my contributions to the periodicals at this time
as forming any part of my education. I acquired, in their composition, a
somewhat readier command of the pen than before; but they, of course,
tended rather to the dissipation of previous stores than to the
accumulation of new ones; nor did they give exercise to those higher
faculties of mind which I deemed it most my interest to cultivate. My
real education at the time was that in which I was gradually becoming
initiated behind the bank-counter, as my experience of the business of
the district extended; and that which I contrived to pick up in my
leisure evenings along the shores. A rich ichthyolitic deposit of the
Old Red Sandstone lies, as I have already said, within less than half a
mile of the town of Cromarty; and when fatigued with my calculations in
the bank, I used to find it delightful relaxation to lay open its fish
by scores, and to study their peculiarities as exhibited in their
various states of keeping, until I at length became able to determine
their several genera and species from even the minutest fragments. The
number of ichthyolites which that deposit of itself furnished--a patch
little more than forty yards square--seemed altogether astonishing: it
supplied me with specimens at almost every visit, for ten years
together; n