AUTHORS RECOLLECTIONS. 497 



tarianism, and maintained that Jean Paul intended to 

 deny the Divinity of Christ. His Unitarianism might 

 be more spiritual than that common in England, but 

 Unitarianism it was. Mrs Miller and I took the op- 

 posite view, arguing that it was legitimate in the 

 imaginative dreamer to introduce Christ as the re- 

 presentative of created being, and to illustrate the 

 ghastliness of atheism by letting us see Him, a home- 

 less orphan, filling with moans the black hollow of 

 the universal night ; but Miller held to his point. 



We did not speak often of the Church contro- 

 versy or the Disruption ; but once, in his most earnest 

 mood, he expressed that opinion as to the Jehu-like 

 driving of the Evangelical leaders which I formerly 

 mentioned. It was easy to perceive that he trans- 

 ferred to the Edinburgh Radicals that dislike with 

 which he had regarded those of Cromarty. He was 

 a steadfast Whig, but his sympathies were more with 

 Conservatism than Radicalism. One of his profoundest 

 enthusiasms was for the poetry of Burns, and I have 

 heard him declaim one of Burns 's grandest passages, 

 that about Scotland in the Vision, with great fervour 

 and deep rhythmic intonation. His memory seemed 

 to be full of English poetry, and, at sauntering times, in 

 waiting for omnibuses or the like, he would pour out 

 stanza after stanza with astonishing profusion. The last 

 conversation I ever had with him was at Shrub Mount 

 in 1855, when we walked about the garden in earnest 

 talk. There was a great noise at the time about the 

 antiquity of the human race, and the question whether 

 mankind have proceeded from one local centre, or from 

 more than one. He agreed with me in considering the 

 question of man's antiquity of slight importance com- 

 pared with that of the unity of the race ; and cordially 



VOL. n. 32 



