4 THE BOY. 



are several headstones chiselled by his hand when he 

 earned his bread as a journeyman mason. 



Hugh Miller broke suddenly upon the public of 

 Scotland in the prime of his years. He was already a 

 man of ripe thought and confirmed intellectual habits, 

 betraying none of the extravagance of opinion and spas- 

 modic vehemence of language usually characteristic of 

 self-trained genius. Solidity and sobriety of judgment, 

 sensitive dislike of paradox, contempt for the catch- 

 words of political sciolism and free-thinking conceit, 

 purity, vigour, and elegance of style which reminded 

 critics of Goldsmith and of Addison, were the results of 

 his self-education. Possessed of large stores of literary in- 

 formation, an original explorer in science, with definite and 

 firmly-held opinions on religious, political, and social ques- 

 tions, thoroughly understanding the character of his coun- 

 trymen and ardently sympathizing with its nobler elements, 

 he no sooner found a medium for the communication of 

 his ideas than he became a most influential guide of 

 opinion, and continued to be so to the hour of his death. 

 Adopting literature and science henceforward as the 

 business of his life, he produced a series of unique and 

 remarkable works, in which were intermingled racy and 

 sagacious observations on men and manners, with de- 

 lineations, exquisitely fresh and vivid, of nature's facts 

 and beauties. They were at once pronounced by 

 eminent critics to belong to a high and rare order of 

 literary productions ; they became popular, and have 

 retained their popularity, with the best class of readers 

 in Britain and America ; and they have been translated 

 into most European languages. It will be admitted that 

 they bear the impress of an original, determinate, and 

 admirable mind; noble in all its ground-tones, richly 

 endowed in respect both of intellect and of imagination, 



