DR McCRIE. 137 



received very little interruption. There was something 

 in this little incident that gave me much pleasure. I 

 thought it told more truly of the discernment and good 

 temper of the doctor than even his discourse did : beauti- 

 ful and instructive as that was/ 



Very little is added to this in the Schools and 

 Schoolmasters. There is indeed a quiet accuracy in the 

 portrait which shows that Miller was beginning to find 

 his hand as a master of English prose. The pale com- 

 plexion and expressive features, the deep thought-written 

 lines of the forehead, the spare habit, the humble yet 

 dignified demeanour, which appear in the sketch of the 

 mason lad from Cromarty, bring Dr McCrie visibly 

 before us. The doctor was indeed a notable figure in 

 the Edinburgh of that time. He exercised a, profound 

 influence upon the intellectual society of Scotland, and 

 left behind him at least one work, the biography of 

 Knox, which has an imperishable place in the literature 

 of Europe. Connected ecclesiastically with a very small 

 religious denomination, he rose by a natural and effort- 

 less ascent, through the force of his solitary genius, until 

 he found his level among the most eminent men of his 

 time. Miller, long afterwards, finely compared him, in 

 relation to the co-religionists which clustered round him, to 

 a village church rearing its tower amid a group of cottages. 



But it was not only to burying-grounds and churches 

 that Miller betook himself during his residence in the 

 neighbourhood of Edinburgh. In our last extracts he 

 has appeared somewhat in the light of a philosopher and 

 critic, but we are reminded, as we accompany him to 

 the panorama, that he has not yet thrown off the boy. 

 It was rather hard in the autobiographer of fifty to omit 

 all notice of the event chronicled in the following ani- 

 mated sentences. 



