48 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



you will go on writing, and accumulating materials. 

 You speak of White's Selborne as a sort of model. Your 

 work resembles Crabbe's Borough, and his general style, 

 much more closely. The same faithful and minute 

 painting of humble objects, the same love of the sea 

 and all pertaining to it, fishes, men, and marine scenery. 

 Of course the characters are different, being modified by 

 national and local circumstances. We of Scotland have 

 the advantage in point of morality and staid demeanour. 

 But Crabbe's poachers and navigators, with their strong 

 unbridled passions, are perhaps better fitted for poetry. 

 What do you say to a series of sketches in verse of your 

 Cromarty worthies, their characters, passions, and ad- 

 ventures ? Of this, and fifty other subjects, I shall hear 

 you speak, I hope, soon. When the suns get warmer, 

 and spring is leading (as Wordsworth finely says) her 

 earliest green along the leaves, I shall steal away some 

 Friday or Saturday, and ruralize with you on the hill- 

 side over the bay. I hope sincerely that Wilson will 

 shine on you with one of his long, laudatory, imaginative 

 articles in BlacTcwood. Adam Black will take every 

 means of giving you publicity. But I see no fear of 

 your success, so that the pushing of the trade will be the 

 less necessary. I send you a capital review from the 

 Spectator, which you may not have seen. Tell me 

 from time to time how you get on, and how the work 

 goes off.' 



Miller sent at this time a copy of his book of poems 

 to Mr Robert Chambers, accompanying it with the fol- 

 lowing letter. 



'The Moray Frith has been so blocked up this 

 spring, by the westerly winds, that it is only now an 

 opportunity occurs of sending you the Jacobite Psalm 



