338 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



lie prepared himself for his high undertaking, but these 

 are no more than disjecta membra, valuable and interest- 

 ing apart, yet offering no hint by which imagination 

 itself can picture the living whole into which they would 

 have been moulded by the hand of Miller. No man 

 ever knew the geology of Scotland as he knew it. 

 Others may have grappled as vigorously with a particular 

 problem suggested by it here and there, but who ever 

 studied it so long and so lovingly as a whole? And 

 not only would the book have been a masterpiece of 

 geological literature ; it would have been unique as a 

 manual of Scottish landscape, doing in prose for Scottish 

 scenery what Scott has done for it in poetry ; and it 

 would assuredly have displayed, in soft idealizing gleams 

 across the rugged features of its general framework, that 

 proud and tender affection for Scotland, that reverent 

 acquaintance with all that is noblest in Scottish history 

 and character, which fitted Miller so admirably to have 

 become the historian of his country. As I think of 

 what a work the Geology of Scotland by Hugh Miller 

 might have been, I cannot but recall those words, more 

 fanciful, perhaps, than Thackeray commonly permitted 

 to his masculine genius, in which he referred to an 

 unfinished picture, containing a few figures dimly 

 sketched, by his frierjd Leslie. ' The darkling forest/ he 

 said, 'would have grown around them, with the stars 

 glittering from the midsummer sky : the flowers at the 

 queen's feet, and the boughs and foliage about her. 

 They were dwelling in the artist's mind, no doubt, and 

 would have been developed by that patient, faithful, 

 admirable genius : but the busy brain stopped working, 

 the skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart 

 ceased to beat. What was she to have been that fair 

 Titania when perfected by the patient skill of the 



