344 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



ness of one for whom virtue was ' not the price of heaven 

 but heaven itself/ that lay the spell which constrained 

 men like Thomas Carlyle and Hugh Miller to pay him 

 kingly honours. We may read Chalmers's books and 

 think him overrated ; but we cannot read Lockhart's 

 description of him, or observe how profoundly his con- 

 temporaries felt the contagion of his moral intensity, 

 without recognizing him for a man of great genius. 

 One of his characteristics was an exquisite and joyful 

 appreciation of excellence, howevei different it might 

 be from his own ; and I can well understand his en- 

 thusiastic delight in the compositions of Miller, whose 

 sense of literary form was much finer than his own. 



In endeavouring to place before the reader a just 

 picture of Miller's Edinburgh life, I am happy to be 

 able to avail myself of the memoranda of a lady who 

 knew him intimately during the whole of the period, 

 and whose delineation will be perceived by all who even 

 partially shared that privilege to be delicately true. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS BY A LADY. 



1 1 first met Hugh Miller in the beginning of 1840, 

 when he came to Edinburgh to edit the Witness. He dined 

 at our house with some of the gentlemen who had been 

 the means of setting up that paper. I had the good fortune 

 to sit next to him at dinner, and so had a good deal of 

 conversation with him. We somehow got on the poets, 

 and found several of them to be intimate mutual friends. 

 The delight of that conversation is still fresh in my re- 

 membrance. His appearance then was that of a supe- 

 rior working-man in his Sunday dress. His head was 

 bent forward as he sat, but when he spoke he looked 

 one full in the face with his sagacious and thoughtful 

 eye. There was directness in all he said; to have 



