"Far let me wander down thy craggy shore, With rocks and trees bestrewn, dark Loch Maree."--SMALL.
The restorative powers of a constitution which at this time it took much hard usage to injure, came vigorously into operation on my removal from the wet ditch and the ruinous hovel; and ere the close of winter I had got once more into my ordinary state of robust health. I read, wrote, drew, corresponded with my friend William Ross (who had removed to Edinburgh), re-examined the Eathie Lias, and re-explored the Eathie Burn--a noble Old Red Sandstone ravine, remarkable for the wild picturesqueness of its cliffs and the beauty of its cataracts. I spent, too, many an evening in Uncle James's workshop, on better terms with both my uncles than almost ever before--a consequence, in part, of the sober complexion which, as the seasons passed, my mind was gradually assuming, and in part, of the manner in which I had completed my engagement with my master. "Act always," said Uncle James, "as you have done in this matter. In all your dealings, give your neighbour the _cast of the bauk_--'good measure, heaped up and running over'--and you will not lose by it in the end." I certainly did not lose by faithfully serving out my term of apprenticeship. It is not uninstructive to observe how strangely the public are led at times to attach paramount importance to what is in reality only subordinately important, and to pass over the really paramount without thought or notice. The destiny in life of the skilled mechanic is much more influenced, for instance, by his second education--that of his apprenticeship--than by his first--that of the school; and yet it is to the education of the school that the importance is generally regarded as attaching, and we never hear of the other. The careless, incompetent scholar has many opportunities of recovering himself; the careless, incompetent apprentice, who either fails to serve out his regular time, or who, though he fulfils his term, is discharged an inferior workman, has very few; and further, nothing can be more certain than that inferiority as a workman bears much more disastrously on the condition of the mechanic than inferiority as a scholar. Unable to maintain his place among brother journeymen, or to render himself worthy of the average wages of his craft, the ill-taught mechanic falls out of regular employment, subsists precariously for a time on occasional jobs, and either, forming idle habits, becomes a vagabond _tramper_, or, getting into the toils of some rapacious task-master, becomes an enslaved _sweater_. For one workman injured by neglect of his school-education, there are scores ruined by neglect of their apprenticeship-education. Three-fourths of the distress of the country's mechanics (of course not reckoning that of the unhappy class who have to compete with machinery), and nine-tenths of their vagabondism, will be found restricted to inferior workmen, who, like Hogarth's "careless apprentice," neglected the opportunities of their second term of education. The sagacious painter had a truer insight into this matter than most of our modern educationists.