SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 369 



The last-mentioned intention Miller made good. A 

 separate biographical sketch of Ross from his pen I 

 have not, indeed, seen, and no second volume of Tradi- 

 tions was ever published ; but he has immortalized his 

 friend in the Schools and Schoolmasters. 



The letter of Mrs Grant of Laggan, author of the 

 once popular Letters from the Highlands, referred to 

 by Miller in the letter which follows, was written to her 

 friend Miss Dunbar, and contained a very favourable 

 opinion of Miller. 



1 Cromarty, April 22, 1834. 



' How shall I thank you for your elegant gift ? I 

 have already spent some hours in admiring it, and every 

 time it catches my eye I can gaze on it with fresh in- 

 terest. There are some faces which one never tires of 

 looking at transparent sort of faces, through which we 

 can see the soul ; and Sir James's is as decidedly one of 

 this class as any I ever saw. Did you ever before see 

 an expression so unequivocally indicative of the pure 

 good-tempered benevolence, which one cannot but love, 

 blent with that calm but awful dignity of thought which 

 one cannot but revere ? One of the first political works 

 I read with interest was Sir James's Vindicice Gallicce. 

 As a piece of argument it is superior to the exquisite 

 volume of his opponent, and little if at all inferior to it 

 as a piece of composition. The same year robbed us of 

 Sir James Mackintosh and Sir Walter Scott. When shall 

 another year find us with so much to lose ? 



' Speaking of faces it will be found that those we can 

 look longest at and with most pleasure bear the impres- 

 sion of the gentler and softer, rather than that of the 

 more violent passions. I once saw a dead infant on 

 whose placid features I could have gazed for hours to- 

 gether. They were so beautifully formed and reposed 



9 A 



