, are not less real than those of the man of
physic or of law. The barber is as unlike the weaver, and the tailor as
unlike both, as the farmer is unlike the soldier, or as either farmer
or soldier is unlike the merchant, lawyer, or minister. And it is only
on the same sort of principle that all men, when seen from the top of a
lofty tower, whether they be tall or short, seem of the same stature,
that these differences escape the notice of men in the higher walks.

Between the workmen that pass sedentary lives within doors, such as
weavers and tailors, and those who labour in the open air, such as
masons and ploughmen, there exists a grand generic difference. Sedentary
mechanics are usually less contented than laborious ones; and as they
almost always work in parties, and as their comparatively light, though
often long and wearily-plied employments, do not so much strain their
respiratory organs but that they can keep up an interchange of idea when
at their toils, they are generally much better able to state their
grievances, and much more fluent in speculating on their causes. They
develop more freely than the laborious out-of-door workers of the
country, and present, as a class, a more intelligent aspect. On the
other hand, when the open-air worker does so overcome his difficulties
as to get fairly developed, he is usually of a fresher or more vigorous
type than the sedentary one. Burns, Hogg, Allan Cunningham, are the
literary representatives of the order; and it will be found that they
stand considerably in advance of the Thoms, Bloomfields, and Tannahills,
that represent the sedentary workmen. The silent, solitary, hard-toiled
men, if nature has put no better stuff in them than that of which
stump-orators and Chartist lecturers are made, remain silent, repressed
by their circumstances; but if of a higher grade, and if they once do
get their mouths fairly opened, they speak with power, and bear with
them into our literature the freshness of the green earth and the
freedom of the open sky.

The specific peculiarities induced by particular professions are not
less marked than the generic ones. How different, for instance, the
character of a sedentary tailor, as such, from that of the equally
sedentary barber! Two imperfectly-taught young lads, of not more than
the average intellect, are apprenticed, the one to the hair-dresser, the
other to the fashionable clothes-maker of a large village. The barber
has to entertain