Volume 3 > Half-Volume 6

439
criticism, and while such was the manner in which
it was expressed, the same approving feelings were
uttered by those who were conversant with the highest
rules of art, and conversant with the productions of
ancient Greece and modern Italy. Here was evi-
dently a kindred genius with Burns himself�one
who had expressed in stone what the poet had
uttered in words; and the admiration which had
been exclusively reserved for the "Ayrshire plough-
man," was now shared by the Ayrshire stone-cutter,
who had shown himself such an able and congenial
commentator.
Thorn having thus attained, by a single stride, to
high celebrity, and been recognized as the Canova
of humble everyday life, was not allowed to remain
idle; orders for statues and groups poured in upon
him, which brought him not only fame but fortune;
and his productions in gray-stone, the first material
in which he had wrought, and to which he still ad-
hered, were eagerly sought, as choice ornaments for
princely halls and stately classical gardens. After
Mr. Thorn had been for some time thus employed
in London, he found it necessary to visit America,
in consequence of the agent who had been commis-
sioned to exhibit his "Tarn o' Shanter" group and
that of "Old Mortality," by the proprietors of these
statues, having made no returns, either in money or
report of proceedings. In this pursuit he was par-
tially successful; and having been gratified with his
reception by the Americans, he resolved to become
a citizen of the United States. In his new adopted
country his fame soon became as extensive as in the
old, so that his chisel was in frequent demand for
copies of those admirable statues upon which his
fame had been established. To this, also, he joined
the profession of builder and architect; and as his
frugality kept pace with his industry, in the course
of twelve or fourteen years of his residence in Ame-
rica, he acquired a comfortable competence. He
died of consumption, at his lodgings in New York,
on the 17th of April, 1850, at the age of fifty-one.
THOM, WILLIAM. This poet of humble life,
known by the title of the weaver-poet of Inverurie,
was born at Aberdeen in 1799. Even in earliest
life his misfortunes, which accompanied him to its
close, commenced, for while an infant his leg was
crushed under the wheel of a carriage, in consequence
of which he became lame. This misfortune not only
unfitted him for labours requiring much personal
activity or strength, but obliged him to use mechan-
ical appliances of his own contriving for the perform-
ance of the heavier parts of handloom occupations.
Being the son of a poor widow who could not afford
to keep him idle at home, he was placed in a public
factory where he was apprenticed for four years, and
at the end of that time entered another weaving
establishment, where he remained seventeen years.
During his apprenticeship, he tells us he "picked
up a little reading and writing," and afterwards com-
menced the study of Latin; but want of time, and
the necessity of supporting his mother, who was be-
coming frail, soon arrested his progress in classical
learning. He was more successful in the study of
arithmetic, of which he acquired as much proficiency
as might fit him for a better situation, should such
await him; and in flute-playing, in which he became
a tolerable proficient. Such appears to have been
the whole of his education, which was chiefly acquired
by his own industry; but although his opportunities
of intellectual improvement were so scanty and pre-
carious, even the little of his prose writings which
he published shows considerable vigour of thought,
as well as gracefulness and correctness of language.
Still, however, the opportunities of self-improvement
were at a stand, and he could not emerge from the
condition of a hard-working loom-weaver. At the
age of thirty he married, and while his family was
increasing, he, after several removals in the vain hope
of bettering his circumstances, at last settled at the
village of Newtyle, near Cupar-Angus, in Forfar-
shire.
It was here that the calamities of William Thorn
were to commence in earnest. When the great
commercial failures in America occurred, the work-
ing of more than 6000 looms was stopped in Dundee.
This calamity so sorely affected the weavers in New-
tyle, that all of them who could migrate left the
village, while those who had families only remained
from want of the means of removal. But hard was
their fate, a heavy week's work yielding only a return
of five shillings of wages. Among these sufferers
were poor Thorn and his family, whose condition he
has thus piteously described: "Imagine a cold spring
forenoon. It is eleven o'clock, but our little dwell-
ing shows none of the signs of that tune of day.
The four children are still asleep. There is a bed-
cover hung before the window to keep all within as
much like night as possible; and the mother sits be-
side the beds of her children to lull them back to
sleep whenever any shows an inclination to awake.
For this there is a cause, for our weekly five shillings
have not come as expected, and the only food in the
house consists of a handful of oatmeal saved from the
supper of last night. Our fuel is also exhausted.
My wife and I were conversing in sunken whispers
about making an attempt to cook the handful of
meal, when the youngest child awoke beyond its
mother's power to hush it again to sleep, and then
fell a whimpering, and finally broke out in a steady
scream, which, of course, rendered it impossible any
longer to keep the rest in a state of unconsciousness.
Face after face spring up, each with one consent
exclaiming, 'Oh, mother, mother, gie me a piece!'
How weak a word is sorrow to apply to the feelings
of myself and wife during the remainder of that dreary
forenoon!"
In this state the family lingered through the spring,
in the vain hope that matters would mend; and find-
ing that their strength would soon be too exhausted
for flight, Thorn resolved with his wife and children
to go forth either as homeless wanderers, or in quest
of some other residence, and trust the while to the
chances of the highway. For this purpose he pawned
at Dundee the last and most valued relic of his better
days, on which he raised ten shillings; and laying out
four shillings on the contents of a "pack," which his
wife was to carry, and other four on second-hand
books, which were to be his own stock in trade (and
which proved unsaleable), he and his famished house-
hold in 1837 departed on their do-or-die pilgrimage,
where a dinner, or a ditch for a grave, might be the
alternative. And seldom has such a piteous quest
been more pathetically detailed than in the descrip-
tion which he has left of it. The weather was bleak
and inclement; the mother, besides having an infant
at her breast, frequently had to carry the youngest
boy also, while the father had to look out for their
sustenance during the day, or accommodation for the
night. And need it be added, that the first was both
scanty and precarious, and the last often denied
them? Amidst these privations the poor infant
died, and the diminished family continued on their
route to Errol, and afterwards to Methven, finding
shelter at nights in the wretched houses of "tramps,"
where wanderers of every shade of poverty and
crime�the sweepings of the highway�were huddled
together. Finding by the time he had reached