HIS MOTHER. 17 



weird atmosphere. Then a paroxysm of terror super- 

 venes and he is put to bed, to that bed in the corner, in 

 a recess in the wall, where he can still see the work pro- 

 ceed, and hear the monotonous click-click of those irons, 

 till his little eyes close, and the world of dreams mingles 

 with that of reality. I have no doubt that the over- ( 

 powering terror of those early times, the inability to 

 distinguish between waking and sleeping visions, re- 

 turned in his last days, stimulating the action of a dis- 

 eased brain. The peculiarity of his mother's character 

 told against him. There was plenty of affection, but no 

 counter-balancing grain of sense of a kind which would 

 qualify these tremendous doses of the supernatural. He 

 did not learn to read so early as most children though, 

 as he has told me, he learned his letters first when almost 

 in arms, off the sign-boards above the shop-doors so 

 that, until after six, the marvellous in its lighter and more 

 harmless forms, as in Jack and the Bean-stalk, &c., did not 

 mingle with its darker and stronger shadows. Prom his 

 mother Hugh undoubtedly drew almost all the materials 

 for his Scenes and Legends and Lykewake, &c., and 

 every minutest touch I have given you has been gathered 

 from his lips and hers! 



Hugh Miller's mother was evidently one who, in 

 the jargon of the spirit-rapping fraternity, would be 

 called a good medium. Interpreted into the language 

 of persons who are neither knaves nor fools, this will 

 mean that she was one who, having long permitted 

 fantasy to be sole regent of her mind, had fallen 

 into the habit of mistaking the pale shapes and 

 flitting shadows of its ghostly moonlight for the sub- 

 stantial forms of noon-day. Mrs Miller closes her 

 account of this singular woman with the following 

 anecdote. ' She told me that, on the night of Hugh's 



VOL. I. 



