HUGH MILLER 19 



happened the circumstance which he himself relates, 

 and which we mention here in this place both for 

 the interest attaching to it in the history of his own 

 mental development, and for various subtle psychological 

 reasons to which we shall advert later, and which can- 

 not fail to be observed by the careful student of his 

 works. The last letter to his wife had been written 

 by his father from Peterhead, and on its receipt, 'the 

 house-door, which had been left unfastened, fell open, 

 and I was despatched from her side to shut it. I saw 

 at the open door, within less than a yard of my breast, 

 as plainly as ever I saw anything, a dissevered hand 

 and arm stretched towards me. Hand and arm were 

 apparently those of a female : they bore a livid and 

 sodden appearance; and, directly fronting me, where 

 the body ought to have been, there was only blank 

 transparent space, through which I could see the dim 

 forms of the objects beyond. I commemorate the 

 story as it lies fixed in my memory, without attempting 

 to explain it.' In after years he would say of such 

 mental or visual hallucinations that they were such as 

 ' would render me a firm believer in apparitions, could 

 I not account for them in this way, as the creatures of 

 an imagination which had attained an unusual and even 

 morbid strength at a time when the other mental 

 faculties were scarcely at all unfolded.' In this con- 

 nection the similar case of Chatterton need only be 

 alluded to, but the question will be treated again in 

 describing his later years. 



