1 3 6 J? /SEN B Y PERSE VERA NCR. 



"Convener of the Trades," he came suddenly to a halt. 

 Notwithstanding our satisfaction with what he had reported, 

 he was annoyed at having forgotten the speech of the con- 

 vener, and, getting a copy of the novel from the shelves in 

 Johnstone's front shop, he turned up the place and read it, 

 excusing himself for his failure of memory. But what was 

 our astonishment, on getting hold of the book, to find that 

 Miller had repeated pages almost verbatim, though it was 

 some fifteen years or more since he had read the novel.' 



More at home in the fields of literature and science, his 

 Old Red Sandstone, which had appeared as a series of seven 

 articles in the columns of the Witness, was issued in 1841. 

 His charming book. First Impressions of England and its 

 People, was the result of eight weeks' autumnal wandering in 

 7845, and the writing of it occupied six months of his editorial 

 leisure. His fame was now established, and without ambition 

 to shine in fashionable society, he politely declined all the 

 invitations where he felt he would be out of his true sphere. 

 A lady who met him shordy after his coming to Edinburgh 

 as editor of the Witness, says : — ' His appearance was that of 

 a superior working man in his Sunday dress. His head was 

 bent forward as he sat, but when he spoke he looked one full 

 in the face with his sagacious and thoughtful eye. There 

 was directness in all he said ; to have spoken without having 

 something to say would never have occurred to him. He had 

 not the light, easy, inaccurate manner of speech one usually 

 meets with : every word was deliberate, and might have been 

 printed. There was a total want of self-assertion about him, 

 but at the same time a dignified simplicity in the way he 

 Placed his mind alongside that of the person with whom he 

 conversed. ... His manner to women I always thought 



