WHO KNOWS? 49 



were sown in his frame. In that case, the tear and wear 

 of the severest of the intellectual professions, journalism, 

 though combined with unremitting attention to science, 

 might have failed to prevent his attaining a green old 

 age. In his letter to Baird, he refers to the obscurity 

 and hardship of his life as a mason, as ' punishment for 

 his early carelessness/ But why follow these specula- 

 tions further, or launch into the vainest and vaguest of 

 all philosophies, the philosophy of what might have 

 been? By natural endowment and the action of cir- 

 cumstances, in one word, by the will of God, Miller was 

 fitted for the work appointed him, and this is all we re- 

 quire to know or can know. 



VOL. 1. 



