411 



CHAPTER XVII. 



MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 



HHHERE are a few letters of a miscellaneous kind, 

 JL some dated, some undated, written to various corre- 

 spondents in the Journeyman period, which it will be as 

 well to take in here. Two or three of them are addressed 

 to Mr Strahan, and one to Mr Forsyth, containing 

 Miller's ' theory of the moral character of the people of 

 Scotland/ To these are added, first, the account, re- 

 ferred to in preceding letters, drawn up by Miller of 

 ' Black Russel/ one of the ' old light ' clergy satir- 

 ized by Burns in the ' Holy Fair/ secondly, a sample of 

 those descriptive paragraphs contributed by Hugh to 

 the Inverness Courier ; and, thirdly, a letter to Mr 

 George Anderson, of Inverness, giving an account of the 

 writer's scientific explorations, and interesting as con- 

 taining the first allusion, made by Hugh Miller, in black 

 and white, to the ptericthys. Allan Cunningham printed 

 but half the sketch of Russel in his edition of Burns, 

 and Miller thought that Allan had left out more than 

 half its brains. The short description of the boat acci- 

 dent is in no respect to be distinguished from others of 

 the same kind, but it characteristically exhibits the sim- 

 plicity, compactness, and sincerity of style, on which, in 

 preference to sentimental effusion, rhetorical ornament, 



