RECOLLECTIONS BY A LADY. 345 



spoken without having something to say would never 

 have occurred to him. He had not the light, easy, in- 

 accurate manner of speech one usually meets with, every 

 word was deliberate, and might have been printed. 

 There was a total want of self-assertion about him, but 

 at the same time a dignified simplicity in the way he 

 placed his mind alongside that of the person with 

 whom he conversed. There is no doubt he was some- 

 what shy and proud and jealous of his independence, 

 and some found him inaccessible from this cause ; but 

 I happened somehow to overleap these barriers the first 

 day I met him, and they were never interposed during 

 our further intercourse. 



' When his family came to town, it was with no 

 common pleasure that I recognized in Mrs Miller a 

 young lady who had been a classfellow of mine. This 

 led me frequently to her house, and gave me the oppor- 

 tunity of seeing her husband, and my admiration of 

 and interest in him increased every time I met him. 

 There could be no greater or more exciting pleasure 

 than to converse with Hugh Miller. He did not 

 harangue but conversed, and raised those with whom 

 he did so for the time to his own level. One felt 

 amazed to hear one's own trifling remarks made the 

 means of bringing out his stores of observation and 

 thought; and if by good fortune one brought to his 

 notice some to him yet unknown fact or quotation from 

 the poets, to whose " terrible sagacity " he loved so 

 often to refer, it was indeed gratifying to see the look of 

 pleased attention with which he listened. It seemed as 

 if he could not but be thinking, and that everything 

 brought grist to his mill, set agoing some new train of 

 thought, or confirmed some old one. Then, of course, 

 there were all the exciting subjects of the time, a time 



