AUTHOR'S RECOLLECTIONS. 495 



personal controversies, and I know no instance in which 

 he did not leave his adversary not only slain, but bat- 

 tered, bruised, and beaten out of shape. It seemed to 

 be a 'principle with him : the only principle on which 

 he could fight that a battle must always be a rout- 

 ranee, that there could be no victory short of the utter 

 extermination of the opposed organism. Hence, in the 

 course of his editorial career, not a few immense, un- 

 seemly exaggerations of the polemical spirit, much 

 sledge-hammering where a tap or two would have suf- 

 ficed. A duel of opinions was apt to become with him 

 a duel of reputations and of persons.' 



This is strongly put. I have not found in Hugh 

 Miller anything amounting to a disposition to kill. 

 But he possessed a huge capacity of wrath, and that 

 love of adventure, of danger, of battle, which distin- 

 guishes his nation. It has often occurred to me that 

 he had in him the making of a great general. His eye 

 would have embraced in a moment the points of a 

 position, and his spirit would have risen into clearness 

 and stern joy in proportion as difficulty and peril in- 

 creased. He would have inspired his men with abso- 

 lute faith in him, as a rock to stand, as an avalanche to 

 charge. 



It was frequently late at night when I took leave, 

 and he would insist on giving me convoy from Stuart 

 Street, near Portobello, where he lived at the time, to 

 the outskirts of Edinburgh. We used to part at the 

 Calton Hill. On one occasion he pulled out a pistol, 

 and remarked that he was prepared if any one should 

 attack us. Having no thought of danger, I was much 

 surprised. By way of explanation, he gave me an 

 account of his adventure when walking by night be- 

 tween Wolverton and Newport Pagnell, as detailed in 



