HUGH MILLER 113 



servant. Time had softened the ecclesiastical asperities 

 of other years, and in 1853 Lord Dalhousie wrote to 

 Lord Aberdeen to secure his election for the vacant 

 Chair of Natural History in Edinburgh. But it fell to 

 Edward Forbes. Again he was singled out by Lord 

 Breadalbane, in 1855, and he was offered the post of 

 Distributor of Stamps for Perthshire, an office which 

 would to him have been a comfortable sinecure, 

 securing alike competence and much leisure. For 

 twenty-eight years Wordsworth in Westmoreland filled 

 such a post, and Miller's banking experiences would 

 have fitted him perfectly for it. But he felt that a man 

 turned fifty could not take up a new vocation with 

 success. That in this he was too modest there can be 

 no doubt ; but after a brief consideration he made up 

 his mind to decline. 'I find,' he said, 'my memory 

 not now so good as it was formerly. I forget things 

 which I was wont to remember with ease. I am not 

 clear, in such circumstances, about taking upon me any 

 money responsibility.' 



In fact, the long and severe strain of sixteen years 

 had told. Of the extraordinary memory whose failure 

 he regrets, Guthrie supplies a forcible example. In the 

 shop of Johnstone the publisher a discussion turned on 

 some debate in the Town Council, when Miller said it 

 reminded him of a scene in Gait's Provost. He repeated 

 the passage, halting at the speech of the convener of the 

 trades, but was evidently vexed at the temporary break- 

 down. He got a copy from the front shop, and turned 



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