CHAPTER I. 



BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 



AS the voyager passes from the blue expanse of the 

 Moray Frith into the land-locked bay of Cromarty, 

 he sees on the left, crowning a swell of green upland which 

 runs crescent-like along the coast, a pillar of red sand- 

 stone, rising fifty feet into the air, and surmounted by a 

 statue. The few white houses, embowered in garden 

 foliage, which form the better part of the village of Cro- 

 marty, cluster beneath ; and the sea, faced by a row of 

 thatched fishermen's cottages, comes rippling, at every 

 flow of the tide, to within a bow-shot of its base. The 

 statue represents a grave, strong-built man, of massive 

 head and thoughtful face, who seems to look out stead- 

 fastly upon the waves. Statue and pillar constitute the 

 monument reared by his countrymen to Hugh Miller. 



Almost at the foot of the pillar stands a humble cot- 

 tage, and on the sward from which it rises is placed the 

 village churchyard. In that cottage Hugh Miller was 

 born ; and during his boyhood and early youth he was 

 dependent on a widowed mother, who maintained herself 

 and her family by the ' sedulously plied but indifferently 

 remunerated labour ' of her needle. In that churchyard 



