While at York, I was informed by Mr. Wigglesworth, the partner of Messrs. Cooke, of an energetic young astronomer at Bainbridge, in the mountain-district of Yorkshire, who had not only been able to make a telescope of his own, but was an excellent photographer. He was not yet thirty years of age, but had encountered and conquered many difficulties. This is a sort of character which is more often to be met with in remote country places than in thickly-peopled cities. In the country a man is more of an individual; in a city he is only one of a multitude. The country boy has to rely upon himself, and has to work in comparative solitude, while the city boy is distracted by excitements. Life in the country is full of practical teachings; whereas life in the city may be degraded by frivolities and pleasures, which are too often the foes of work. Hence we have usually to go to out-of-the-way corners of the country for our hardest brain-workers. Contact with the earth is a great restorer of power; and it is to the country folks that we must ever look for the recuperative power of the nation as regards health, vigour, and manliness. Bainbridge is a remote country village, situated among the high lands or Fells on the north-western border of Yorkshire. The mountains there send out great projecting buttresses into the dales; and the waters rush down from the hills, and form waterfalls or Forces, which Turner has done so much to illustrate. The river Bain runs into the Yore at Bainbridge, which is supposed to be the site of an old Roman station. Over the door of the Grammar School is a mermaid, said to have been found in a camp on the top of Addleborough, a remarkable limestone hill which rises to the south-east of Bainbridge. It is in this grammar-school that we find the subject of this little autobiography. He must be allowed to tell the story of his life--which he describes as 'Work: Good, Bad, and Indifferent--in his own words: "I was born on November 20th, 1853. In my childhood I suffered from ill-health. My parents let me play about in the open air, and did not put me to school until I had turned my sixth year. One day, playing in the shoemaker's shop, William Farrel asked me if I knew my letters. I answered 'No.' He then took down a primer from a shelf, and began to teach me the alphabet, at the same time amusing me by likening the letters to familiar objects in his shop. I soon learned to read, and in about six weeks I surprised my father by reading from an easy book which the shoemaker had given me.