THE t VILLAGE OBSERVER: 57 



at the request of Baird, there is not one throb of scien- 

 tific enthusiasm. It was, I believe, at a time much later 

 than that of his apprenticeship that Hugh Miller, though 

 his eye had always beamed with delight when it rested 

 on an object of beauty, learned to take a geological in- 

 terest in the ammonite, ' graceful in its curves as those 

 of the Ionic volute, and greatly more delicate in its 

 sculpturing/ or to read, hour after hour, with scientific 

 curiosity, in the 'marvellous library of the Scotch Lias/ 

 Boys and girls are moralists and politicians before 

 they care about science. Charlotte Bronte and her 

 brother and sisters also played at Magazines, and 

 wrote solemn essays lauding the Duke and execrating 

 the Whigs. Hugh Miller and his boy friends in 1820 

 were ardent politicians, censuring the conduct of govern- 

 ment, bewailing the horrors of Peterloo, sternly criticis- 

 ing the motives and proceedings of the Reformers. One 

 of the most important articles in their Magazine is a 

 ' Retrospective Essay/ in which the events of the time 

 are reviewed in an ethico-historical spirit. There is no 

 name attached to the piece, but I take it' to be Miller's, 

 and it is at all events a specimen at first hand of the 

 kind of speculation and of talk which went on in the 

 circle of his acquaintance. The retrospective essayist 

 thinks that the cruelties committed at Manchester in the 

 Peterloo affair 'will be held in as much detestation by 

 future ages as the firing upon the inhabitants of Toulon, 

 or the massacre of Glencoe/ A clever simile, however, 

 catches his eye, and he follows the bright game even at 

 the risk of inconsistency. ' Smollett/ he says, ' has some- 

 where observed that an English mob, like a dancing 

 bear, may be irritated to a very dangerous degree of rage, 

 yet pacified by firing a pistol over his nose : such was it 

 with our British Radicals those whose vivid harangues 



