he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done
and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than
all the missionaries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent
among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more
than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of
Scotland to England for the purpose to _carry the pack_, was considered
as going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune of a gentleman.
When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment,
he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded
as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known
gentlemen who had carried the pack--one of them a man of great talents
and acquirements--who lived in his old age in the highest circles of
society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage--_for
he was then very rich_; but you could not sit ten minutes in his company
without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging
to the "aristocracy of Nature."

You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious
Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon--and sometimes absurdly called
the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted
in colours that will never die--the Birds of the New World. He was a
weaver--a Paisley weaver--a useful trade, and a pleasant place--where
these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar.
Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this
day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored
the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what
have I gained by it?--only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an
invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in
glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair
daughters of wealth and indolence--the ample mirror, flowery floor, and
magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his
wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting
echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with
squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the
resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting
this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there
sits poverty and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill r