But Daniel’s principal ambition was to know and name the planets and the stars. It was at the time when the discoveries of foreign astronomers had peopled the heavens with fresh imagery, and our own Newton had given to the ethereal phenomena of the sky a “local habitation and a name.” It is very striking to discover when the minds of any nation are flooded with new ideas and original trains of thought, how soon the strange tidings will reach the very skirts of the population, and borne, how we know not, will thrill the hamlet and the village with the wonders that have roused and instructed the far-off and civilised city. Thus even Daniel’s distant district became aware of the novel science of the stars, and this intelligence failed not to excite and foster the faculties of his original mind. Local legends still record and identify the tall and craggy places where the youthful “scholar” was wont to ascend and to rest all night with his face turned upward to the sky, “learning the customs of the stars,” and “finding out by the planets things to come.” Nor were his studies unassisted and alone. A master-mind of those days, Cookworthy[70] of Plymouth, a learned and scientific man, still famous in the west, found out and fostered the genius of the intelligent youth. He gave him access to his library, and allowed him to visit his orrery and other scientific instruments; and the result of this kindness was shown in the tastes and future peculiarities of the mind of Gumb. The stern necessities of life demanded, in the course of time, that Daniel should fulfil the destiny of his birth, and win his bread by the sweat of his brow; for the meagre resources of his cottage-home had to be augmented by his youthful labour. In the choice of an occupation his early habits were not without their influence. He selected the craft of a hewer of stone, a very common calling on the surrounding moors; and there he toiled for several years of his succeeding life, amid the cyclopean models of the early ages. The pillared rocks of that wild domain were the monoliths of Celtic history, and the vast piles of the native moor were the heaped and unhewn pyramids of an ancient and nameless people. All these surrounding scenes acted on his tastes and impulses. “So the foundations of his mind were laid!” His father died, and Daniel became his own master, and had to hew his way through the rugged world by what the Cornish call “the pith of his bones.” That he did so his future history will attest; but it was not unsoothed nor alone; nor was it without the usual incident of human existence. No man ever yet became happily great or joyfully distinguished without that kindling strength, the affectionate presence of a woman. “He who Joy would win, Must share it: Happiness was born a twin.”