hands for everything--for very bread. Long years
ago--ay, even in childhood--adversity made me think, and feel, and
suffer; and would pride allow me, I could tell the world many a deep
tragedy enacted in the heart of a poor, forgotten, uncared-for boy .
. . But I thank God, that though I felt and suffered, the scathing
blast neither blunted my perceptions of natural and moral beauty,
nor, by withering the affections of my heart, made me a selfish man.
Often when I look back I wonder how I bore the burden--how I did not
end the evil day at once and for ever.

Such, is the man, in his normal state; and as was to be expected,
God's blessing rests on him. Whatever he sets his hand to succeeds.
Within a few weeks of his taking the editorship of The Leeds Times
its circulation begins to rise rapidly, as was to be expected with an
honest man to guide it. For Nicoll's political creed, though perhaps
neither very deep nor wide, lies clear and single before him, as
everything else which he does. He believes naturally enough in
ultra-Radicalism according to the fashions of the Reform Bill era.
That is the right thing; and for that he will work day and night,
body and soul, and if needs be, die. There, in the editor's den at
Leeds, he "begins to see the truth of what you told me about the
world's unworthiness; but stop a little. I am not sad as yet. . . .
If I am hindered from feeling the soul of poetry among woods and
fields, I yet trust I am struggling for something worth prizing--
something of which I am not ashamed, and need not be. If there be
aught on earth worth aspiring to, it is the lot of him who is enabled
to do something for his miserable and suffering fellow-men; and this
you and I will try to do at least."

His friend is put to work a ministerial paper, with orders "not to be
rash, but to elevate the population gradually;" and finding those
orders to imply a considerable leaning towards the By-ends, Lukewarm,
and Facing-both-ways school, kicks over the traces, wisely, in
Nicoll's eyes, and breaks loose.

Keep up your spirits (says honest Nicoll). You are higher at this
moment in my estimation, in your own, and that of every honest man,
than you ever were before. Tait's advice was just such as I should
have expected of him; honest as honesty itself. You must never again
accept a paper but where you can tell the whole truth without fear or
favour. . . . . Tell E. (the broken-loose editor's lady-love),