vable how, in the higher walks of art, one man
should excel a thousand--nay, how he should have neither competitor when
living, nor successor when dead. The English gentleman who, after the
death of Canova, asked a surviving brother of the sculptor whether he
purposed carrying on Canova's _business_, found that he had achieved in
the query an unintentional joke. But in the commoner avocations there
appear no such differences between man and man; and it may seem strange
how, in ordinary stone-cutting, one man could thus perform the work of
three. My acquaintance with old John Fraser showed me how very much the
ability depended on a natural faculty. John's strength had never been
above the average of that of Scotchmen, and it was now considerably
reduced; nor did his mallet deal more or heavier blows than that of the
common workman. He had, however, an extraordinary power of conceiving of
the finished piece of work, as lying within the rude stone from which it
was his business to disinter it; and while ordinary stone-cutters had to
repeat and re-repeat their lines and draughts, and had in this way
virtually to give to their work several surfaces in detail ere they
reached the true one, old John cut upon the true figure at once, and
made one surface serve for all. In building, too, he exercised a similar
power: he hammer-dressed his stones with fewer strokes than other
workmen, and in fitting the interspaces between stones already laid,
always picked from out of the heap at his feet the stone that exactly
fitted the place; while other operatives busied themselves in picking up
stones that were too small or too large; or, if they set themselves to
reduce the too large ones, reduced them too little or too much, and had
to fit and fit again. Whether building or hewing, John never seemed in a
hurry. He has been seen, when far advanced in life, working very
leisurely, as became his years, on the one side of a wall, and two stout
young fellows building against him on the other side--toiling,
apparently, twice harder than he, but the old man always contriving to
keep a little a-head of them both.

David Fraser I never saw; but as a hewer he was said considerably to
excel even his brother John. On hearing that it had been remarked among
a party of Edinburgh masons, that, though regarded as the first of
Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his
equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed