Can you not believe that by the time he was as old as you were when you used to ride to the races on a pony, by the side of your sire the Squire, this boy was your equal in knowledge, though you had a private tutor all to yourself, and were then a promising lad, as indeed you are now after the lapse of a quarter of a century? True, as yet he "had small Latin, and no Greek;" but the elements of these languages may be learned--trust us--by slow degrees--by the mind rejoicing in the consciousness of its growing faculties--during leisure hours from other studies--as they were by the Atholl adolescent. A Scholar--in your sense of the word--he might not be called, even when he had reached his seventeenth year, though probably he would have puzzled you in Livy and Virgil; nor of English poetry had he read much--the less the better for such a mind--at that age, and in that condition--for "Accumulated feelings press'd his heart With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd By nature, by the turbulence subdued Of his own mind, by mystery and hope, And the first virgin passion of a soul Communing with the glorious Universe." But he had read Poetry--ay, the same Poetry that Wordsworth's self read at the same age--and "Among the hills He gazed upon that mighty Orb of Song, The divine Milton." Thus endowed, and thus instructed, "By Nature, that did never yet betray The heart that loved her," the youth was "greater than he knew;" yet that there was something great in, as well as about him, he felt-- "Thus daily thirsting in that lonesome life," for some diviner communication than had yet been vouchsafed to him by the Giver and Inspirer of his restless Being. "In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, Thus was he rear'd; much wanting to assist The growth of intellect, yet gaining more, And every moral feeling of his soul Strengthen'd and braced, by breathing in content The keen, the wholesome air of poverty, And drinking from the well of homely life." But he is in his eighteenth year, and "Is summon'd to select the course Of humble industry that promised best To yield him no unworthy maintenance." For a season he taught a village school, which many a fine, high, and noble spirit has done and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills he loved, and "That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains The Savoyard to quit his native rocks, The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales (Spirit attach'd to regions mountainous Like their own steadfast clouds), did now impel His restless mind to look abroad with hope."