34 THE BOY. 



at length concluded that we had fallen over the cliffs, 

 and were killed/ 



Last of all, written when he was turned of fifty, we 

 have the narrative of the occurrence as it appears in the 

 Schools and Schoolmasters. The passage, too long to 

 quote in its completeness, is one of the most rich and 

 elaborate in the works of Hugh Miller. The ' nothing 

 but white stones ' of the first description, and the ' melt- 

 less marble ' of the second, have become the blended 

 poetry and science of the following sentences. ' There 

 were little pools at the side of the cave, where we could 

 see the w r ork of congelation going on, as at the com- 

 mencement of an October frost, when the cold north 

 wind ruffles, and but barely ruffles, the surface of some 

 mountain lochan or sluggish mountain stream, and 

 shows the newly-formed needles of ice projecting mole- 

 like from the shores into the water. So rapid was the 

 course of deposition, that there were cases in which the 

 sides of the hollows seemed growing almost in proportion 

 as the water rose in them; the springs, lipping over, 

 deposited their minute crystals on the edges ; and the 

 reservoirs deepened and became more capacious as their 

 mounds were built up by this curious masonry.' The 

 idea x)f the telescope, which occurs first in the third 

 description, is finely worked out in the fourth. ' The 

 long telescopic prospect of the sparkling sea, as viewed 

 from the inner extremity of the cavern, while all around 

 was dark as midnight, the sudden gleam of the sea- 

 gull, seen for a moment from the recess, as it flitted past 

 in the sunshine, the black heaving bulk of the grampus, 

 as it threw up its slender jets of spray, and then, turning 

 downwards, displayed its glossy back and vast angular 

 fin, even the pigeons, as they shot whizzing by, one 



