an be satisfied; nay, once
awakened, it never fails in the end fully to satisfy itself; and it has
occurred to me, that by simply laying before the working men of the
country the "Story of my Education," I may succeed in first exciting
their curiosity, and next, occasionally at least, in gratifying it also.
They will find that by far the best schools I ever attended are schools
open to them all--that the best teachers I ever had are (though severe
in their discipline) always easy of access--and that the special _form_
at which I was, if I may say so, most successful as a pupil, was a form
to which I was drawn by a strong inclination, but at which I had less
assistance from my brother men, or even from books, than at any of the
others. There are few of the natural sciences which do not lie quite as
open to the working men of Britain and America as Geology did to me.

My work, then, if I have not wholly failed in it, may be regarded as a
sort of educational treatise, thrown into the narrative form, and
addressed more especially to working men. They will find that a
considerable portion of the scenes and incidents which it records read
their lesson, whether of encouragement or warning, or throw their
occasional lights on peculiarities of character or curious natural
phenomena, to which their attention might be not unprofitably directed.
Should it be found to possess an interest to any other class, it will be
an interest chiefly derivable from the glimpses which it furnishes of
the inner life of the Scottish people, and its bearing on what has been
somewhat clumsily termed "the condition-of-the-country question." My
sketches will, I trust, be recognised as true to fact and nature. And as
I have never perused the autobiography of a working man of the more
observant type, without being indebted to it for new facts and ideas
respecting the circumstances and character of some portion of the people
with which I had been less perfectly acquainted before, I can hope that,
regarded simply as the memoir of a protracted journey through
_districts_ of society not yet very sedulously explored, and scenes
which few readers have had an opportunity of observing for themselves,
my story may be found to possess some of the interest which attaches to
the narratives of travellers who see what is not often seen, and know,
in consequence, what is not generally known. In a work cast into the
autobiographic form, the writer has always much to apol