A UTHORS RECOLLECTIONS. 49 1 



contributed to an Edinburgh magazine at the time, I 

 dwelt on it at some length. The passage, slightly ab- 

 breviated, may as well be printed here. It conveys, in 

 spite of juvenility of expression, a more vivid notion of 

 what then struck me in his deportment than any words 

 I could now use. 



'Perhaps the highest compliment, all things con- 

 sidered, which we can pay to Hugh Miller is this, 

 that he is in the best sense a gentleman, that he is 

 truly and strictly polite. True politeness is one of the 

 rarest things ; it may be met with in the hut of the 

 Arab, in the courtyard of the Turk, in the cottage of the 

 Irishman ; and it is excessively scarce in ball-rooms. It 

 is independent of accent and of form ; it is one of the 

 constant and universal noble attributes of man, wherever 

 and howsoever developed. We venture to define it thus : 

 Politeness is natural, genial, manly deference, with 

 delicacy in dealing with the feelings of others, and 

 without hypocrisy, sycophancy, or obtrusion. This de- 

 finition excludes a great many people. We cannot agree 

 that Johnson was polite ; that is, if politeness is to be 

 distinguished from nobleness, courage, and even kindness 

 of heart ; in a word, from everything but itself. Burns 

 was polite, when jewelled duchesses were charmed with 

 his ways ; Arnold was polite, when a poor woman 

 declared that he treated her like a lady ; Chalmers was 

 polite, when every old woman in Morningside was 

 elated and delighted with his courteous salute. But 

 Johnson, who shut a civil man's mouth with ' Sir, I per- 

 ceive you are a vile Whig/ who ate like an Esquimaux, 

 who deferred so far to his friends that they dared to 

 differ with him only in a round-robin, was not polite. 

 Politeness is the last touch, the finishing perfection, of a 

 noble character. It is the gold on the spire, the sun- 



