his transition stage, cherished it with all the
strength of a passion. It seems to spring out of a latent timidity in
the yet undeveloped mind, that shrinks from grappling with the stern
realities of life, amid the crowd and press of the busy world, and
o'ershaded by the formidable competition of men already practised in the
struggle. I have still before me the picture of the "lodge in some vast
wilderness" to which I could have fain retired, to lead all alone a life
quieter, but quite as wild, as my Marcus' Cave one; and the snugness and
comfort of the humble interior of my hermitage, during some boisterous
night of winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the roof,
and the rain beating on the casement, but when, in the calm within, the
cheerful flame would roar in the chimney, and glance bright on rafter
and wall, still impress me as if the recollection were in reality that
of a scene witnessed, not of a mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But
it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on
former occasions, have avoided going to school--that best and noblest of
all schools, save the Christian one, in which honest Labour is the
teacher--in which the ability of being useful is imparted, and the
spirit of independence communicated, and the habit of persevering effort
acquired; and which is more moral than the schools in which only
philosophy is taught, and greatly more happy than the schools which
profess to teach only the art of enjoyment. Noble, upright, self-relying
Toil! Who that knows thy solid worth and value would be ashamed of thy
hard hands, and thy soiled vestments, and thy obscure tasks--thy humble
cottage, and hard couch, and homely fare! Save for thee and thy lessons,
man in society would everywhere sink into a sad compound of the fiend
and the wild beast; and this fallen world would be as certainly a moral
as a natural wilderness. But I little thought of the excellence of thy
character and of thy teachings, when, with a heavy heart, I set out
about this time, on a morning of early spring, to take my first lesson
from thee in a sandstone quarry.

I have elsewhere recorded the history of my few first days of toil; but
it is possible for two histories, of the same period and individual, to
be at once true to fact, and unlike each other in the scenes which they
describe, and the events which they record. The quarry in which I
commenced my life of labour was, as I have said, a s