492 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



light on the corn-field, the smile on the lip of the 

 noble knight lowering his sword-point to his ladye-love. 

 It results only from the truest balance and harmony of 

 soul. We assert Hugh Miller to possess it. A duke in 

 speaking to him would know he was speaking to a man 

 as independent as himself ; a boy, in expressing to him 

 an opinion, would feel unabashed and easy, from his 

 genial and unostentatious deference. He has been ac- 

 cused of egotism. Let it be fairly admitted that he knows 

 his name is Hugh Miller, and that he has a colossal head, 

 and that he once was a mason ; his foible is probably 

 that which caused Napoleon, in a company of kings, to 

 commence an anecdote with " When I was a lieutenant 

 in the regiment of La Fere." But we cannot think it 

 more than a very slight foible ; a manly self-conscious- 

 ness somewhat in excess. Years in the quarry have not 

 dimmed in Hugh Miller that finishing gleam of genial 

 light which plays over the framework of character, and 

 is politeness. Not only did he require honest manli- 

 ness for this ; gentleness was also necessary. He had 

 both, and has retained them; and therefore merits 

 fairly 



" The grand old name of gentleman." ' 



It was impossible to be long in Miller's company 

 without perceiving the ardour of his devotion to science. 

 He considered literature inferior to science as a gym- 

 nastic of the mind. For the facile culture of the age he 

 had great contempt, and ranked both religion and labour 

 as stimulating, training agencies for mind and character, 

 higher than what is commonly called education. 'As 

 for the dream,' he says in one of his books, ' that there 

 is to be some extraordinary elevation of the general 

 platform of the race achieved by means of education, it 

 is simply the hallucination of the age, the world's 



