With nothing but the most elementary education, without books, without advisers, the young shoemaker made up for everything by immense diligence, by sobriety, and a keen disregard of personal inconvenience. In his assigned hours of labour he worked hard. He never spent a moment idly. He never entered a public-house, nor drank anything stronger than water. In his expenditure he was rigorously economical. All his spare time was devoted to his favourite pursuit, that of acquiring a knowledge of animals by painstaking practical inquiry. When he began these inquiries, he did not even know the correct names of the animals he sought for, because he had no books and nobody to tell him. He was a thoroughly original student of nature. He learned everything by personal observation. Nothing but a degree of enthusiasm amounting to fanaticism could have impelled him to endure cold, wet, hunger, want of sleep, in order to add to his stock of facts. His fellow-shoemakers jeered at him for not joining in their vicious and costly indulgences; but he held on his way. There, we think, was manifested his heroic, his noble struggle--not that he ever esteemed it to be a struggle, for he only followed the bent of a simple self-sacrificing character; but his conduct in this respect was not less worthy of admiration. Whatever were the sacrifices made by Edward, he was compensated, as an intense lover of Nature. Describing his tastes and pursuits, Mr Smiles says: 'Everything that lived and breathed had charms for him. He loved the fields, the woods, the moors. The living presence of the earth was always about him, and he eagerly drank in its spirit. The babbling brooks, the whispering trees, the aspects of the clouds, the driving wind, were all sources of delight.... He felt himself free amidst the liberty of Nature.... As his wanderings were almost invariably conducted at night, he had abundant opportunities of seeing not only the ocean, but the heavens in their various aspects. What were these stars so far off in the sky? Were they worlds? Were they but the outposts of the earth, from which other worlds were to be seen, far beyond the ken of the most powerful telescope? To use Edward's own words: "I can never succeed in describing my unbounded admiration of the works of the Almighty; not only the wonderful works which we ourselves see upon earth, but those countless orbs which roll both near and far in the endless immensity of space--the Home of Eternity. Everything that moves or lives, everything that grows, everything created or formed by the hand or will of the Omnipotent, has such a fascinating charm for me, and sends such a thrill of pleasure through my whole frame, that to describe my feelings is utterly impossible."'