I COULD linger with pleasure on the memory of the three weeks that I spent under this good old man's roof. That time, that brief time, appears to me like a spot of shaded green in the midst of a wild moorland. But I must leave it, and pass on to the Moor of Life, which I was about to enter so barely.

In the course of the conversations we held together, Mr Meikle did not fail to discover how anxious I really was to be set upon some honest scheme of industry; and, considering how limited his own experience of the world had been, it was no wonder that he should have fancied the best way I could choose, was the same by which he had in early life worked out the means of finishing his own education, and afterwards of advancing himself to the respectable situation in which I found him. In a word, he told me that the classical learning of which I was master, was at least equal to that which most young men who act as tutors in the families of the Scotch gentry possess: and that, if I could procure a situation of that sort, I might, while discharging its duties, find sufficient opportunities of pursuing any particular branches of study that might appear most advantageous to my own future establishment in the world. At first, I must say, the repugnance I felt to what I had been accustomed to consider, on the rough, as but a better sort of servitude, was so strong, that I had some difficulty in fairly bringing my mind to consider the particulars of his plan; but, by degrees, I was satisfied, that unless I bound myself an apprentice to some Leech or Lawyer, there really was little chance of my being able to support myself except in this way—or, at least, by teaching in some shape—until I should have time to prepare myself for the exercise of any profession that seemed to be within my reach.