ot argue, and which enables men to pick their stepping
prudently through the journey of life, I found that the classical
education gave no superiority whatever; nor did it appear to form so
fitting an introduction to the realities of business as that course of
dealing with things tangible and actual in which the working man has to
exercise his faculties, and from which he derives his experience. One
cause of the over-low estimate which the classical scholar so often
forms of the intelligence of that class of the people to which our
skilled mechanics belong, arises very much from the forwardness of a set
of blockheads who are always sure to obtrude themselves upon his notice,
and who come to be regarded by him as average specimens of their order.
I never yet knew a truly intelligent mechanic obtrusive. Men of the
stamp of my two uncles, and of my friend William Ross, never press
themselves on the notice of the classes above them. A minister newly
settled in a charge, for instance, often finds that it is the dolts of
his flock that first force themselves upon his acquaintance. I have
heard the late Mr. Stewart of Cromarty remark, that the humbler
dunderheads of the parish had all introduced themselves to his
acquaintance long ere he found out its clever fellows. And hence often
sad mistakes on the part of a clergyman in dealing with the people. It
seems never to strike him that there may be among them men of his own
calibre, and, in certain practical departments, even better taught than
he; and that this superior class is always sure to lead the others. And
in preaching down to the level of the men of humbler capacity, he fails
often to preach to men of any capacity at all, and is of no use. Some of
the clerical contemporaries of Mr. Stewart used to allege that, in
exercising his admirable faculties in the theological field, he
sometimes forgot to lower himself to his people, and so preached over
their heads. And at times, when they themselves came to occupy his
pulpit, as occasionally happened, they addressed to the congregation
sermons quite simple enough for even children to comprehend. I taught at
the time a class of boys in the Cromarty Sabbath-school, and invariably
found on these occasions, that while the memories of my pupils were
charged to the full with the striking thoughts and graphic illustrations
of the very elaborate discourses deemed too high for them, they
remembered of the very simple ones, specially lower