122 REVIEWS. 



their baneful influence on the u youthhood ;" and so, from rudimental books — 

 books that make themselves truly such by their thorough assimilation with the 

 rudimental mind — he passed on, without being conscious of break or line of division, 

 to books on which the learned are content to write commentaries and dissertations, 

 but which he found to be quite as nice books as any of the others." 



From a very early period, one of his uncles (Alexander) appears to have 

 exercised a very strong influence on his after life ; and it is interesting to 

 find that " he had a decided turn for natural history." Mr. Miller's collec- 

 tion still contains a murex which " Uncle Sandy" had transformed from 

 the bank to his pocket, during the landing in Egypt, under Sir Kalph 

 Abercrombie — for he was a sailor. In his twelfth year he was transferred 

 to the grammar school of the parish, where, among other studies, he 

 learned a good deal of "pig-anatomy," and "the take and curing of her- 

 rings," both of which he had ample opportunities of observing, and which 

 his even then keen, intelligent eye did not neglect. The school, in its 

 ordinary acceptation, was not where Mr. Miller was fitted to write the 

 " Foot-prints of the Creator," or " The Old Ked Sandstone ;" his leisure 

 hours were spent on the Cromarty beach, sauntering over the pebble beds, 

 observing the component parts of the different rocks which lay strewed 

 around ; and totally deficient of a scientific vocabulary, by a self- devised 

 system of notation he had learned to form an idea of the mineralogical 

 character of the rocks he was studying. The self-reliant, thoughtful boy 

 now was truly father to the man ; such mental exercise was true educa- 

 tion, and worth more, for all the practical purposes of life, than hours 

 trifled away in profitless labour, where neither the head nor the heart are 

 really engaged. We cannot loiter over the tempting narrative of the early 

 days of the poet ; for then he wrote verses ; and naturalist ; not even the 

 description of the dreamer, " Francie," who certainly must have been a 

 playmate and fellow-trifler of our own boyhood, may tempt us ; nor will we 

 pause to describe the never-to-be-forgot ten wonders of the " Doocot Cave," 

 and the dreary nights the young votaries of science passed in it. If our 

 readers take up " My School and Schoolmasters," and really can love or 

 appreciate a truthful picture, they will not quickly lay it down ; and when 

 they do, visions of beauty will pass before their eyes which they would 

 gladly realize. We must pass over a few years of the boy-student's life, 

 spent with profit in the great school of nature, not because they do not 

 furnish much material for reflection, as we have learned much in 

 the perusal of their history, and we enter on a new school where young 

 Miller found himself standing, face to face, with a life of labour and restraint. 

 If we felt an interest in the education of his mind to this point, it is now 

 deepened by our admiration of the manly, high-toned principle that led 



