ESTIMATE OF HIM IN THE NORTH. 205 



rience of life. I have seen much of the goodness of the 

 Almighty. Twenty years ago I was a loose-jointed boy 

 in rather delicate health, taxed above my strength as a 

 labourer in a quarry. It is surely a much better thing 

 to be employed as an advocate of principles which I 

 have ever regarded as sacred, and of whose importance 

 the more carefully I examine I am convinced the more.' 

 Hugh Miller did not quit the North of Scotland 

 without some public recognition of his worth and 

 talents. His name was already well known through- 

 out the northern counties, and in Cromarty and its neigh- 

 bourhood he was not only looked upon with pride as the 

 literary wonder of the place, but regarded with affection- 

 ate confidence as a judicious counsellor on local affairs 

 and a ready friend and help in every little business 

 which his townsmen might have in hand. His friends 

 were many. He had not sought them, but they had 

 come, and he had never lost one. Sensible men in the 

 middle and upper classes are apt to be shy of workmen 

 who emerge into local celebrity by writing or speechify- 

 ing. In the vast majority of instances they turn out to 

 have no real basis of information or talent, and to pos- 

 sess no better claim to distinction than vehement volubil- 

 ity in the expression of political or religious opinions of 

 an extreme type. But Miller's poems were marked by 

 no extravagance ; his Letters on the Herring Fishery 

 were full of well-selected facts, and were written with 

 animation, picturesqueness, and good taste ; his Scenes 

 and Legends were remarkable for the quiet elegance of 

 their style and the vigorous simplicity and home-bred 

 force of their thinking. His scrupulous sense of honour 

 in money matters and pride of independence were felt 

 by all who became acquainted with him ; and it is a 

 painful but unquestionable fact that when a man of 



