216 EDITOR. 



and delicate charity, to be of vast and infinite importance 

 to ourselves and all mankind, our first feelings impel us 

 to turn with angry contempt from those who doubt and 

 oppose it. Whenever our hearts are w^arrn, and our 

 objects great and excellent, intolerance is the sin that 

 does most easily beset us/ Few controversialists have 

 erred less on the side of severity than Hugh Miller, none 

 perhaps with keener contrition when he found that he 

 had been in the wrong. He told Mrs Miller that he 

 found it necessary to ' abstract ' men before he could 

 punish them, and that ' the sight of the human counte- 

 nance, if it had but a tinge of geniality, so softened and 

 unmanned him,' that he could not shake off the thought 

 of the individual, and had no heart to attack him. 



It has been said that Miller, as editor of the Witness, 

 felt himself in his place. The stimulus of a strong ex- 

 citement was useful in rousing his mind to full exertion, 

 and in dispelling the meditative, pensive, almost languid 

 mood in which, in the stillness of Cromarty, he might 

 have indulged. His style, after he came to Edinburgh, 

 compared with that of the Scenes and Legends, is 

 improved in energy and fervour. To do his best, he 

 required to be moved ; and his most powerful composi- 

 tions are, I think, his earnest newspaper articles and 

 the Letter to Lord Brougham. Dr Guthrie said with 

 reference to the article on the siege of Acre, that he 

 would rather have written it than taken the fortress. 

 Doubtless, also, Miller was at this time happy. ' He 

 drank delight of battle with his peers.' Fervid emotion 

 bathed the framework of his intellect in flame. The ex- 

 citement brought its own reward. The additional power 

 and keener sympathetic joy, which a great agitation pro- 

 duces, more than compensate for the daintier pleasures of 

 the intellectual recluse. But of course, in this heroic joy 



