THE GEOLOGY OF SCOTLAND. 337 



troversies on which they touch have assumed new aspects 

 or have given place to others. 



Having been a lover of nature all his life, Miller 

 deliberately chose, at the time when his powers were 

 reaching their maturity, to enroll himself among the 

 votaries of science. For about thirty years the ac- 

 tivity in which his mind chiefly delighted was that of 

 scientific research and reflection. Other labour might 

 be strenuous, but it was hard ; here he obeyed his ruling 

 impulse, and to obey was to enjoy. Science never 

 failed him. Year after year, as his. frame became un- 

 strung, and his nerves shaken by toil at the editorial 

 desk, he returned to the mountains, and in long pe- 

 destrian expeditions sought that health which was sure 

 to come with the pure air, and the bracing exercise, and 

 the glow of faculties at their congenial work. 



What he could have done as a man of science can 

 never be fully known. Almost all the scientific works he 

 has left are more or less marred by the controversial 

 ends he kept in view, or by imperfect unity arising 

 from publication in form of lectures. The Cruise of 

 the Betsy, in which he gives an account of his geological 

 investigations among the Hebrides, has been preferred 

 by some critics to his most elaborate controversial works. 

 Had he lived to realize the ambition of his life, to write 

 a comprehensive book on the geology of Scotland, the 

 world would have been able to take by sight, what must 

 now, to some considerable extent, be taken by faith, the 

 measure of his greatness. If, after an eight weeks' 

 ramble, he made so much of the geology of England as 

 is made in the First Impressions, what might we not 

 have expected from the observation and study of thirty 

 years in his beloved Scotland ? Records, no doubt, exist, 

 and have been published, of the geological tours in which 



VOL. ii. 22 



