HUGH MILLER XQ^^P 115 



father's death. Professor Masson, we see, notes this 

 point, and he believes that Miller felt a strange fascina- 

 tion for all stories of second-sight. Though he never 

 wrote or spoke of such, except in the sober tone of 

 science, yet 'my impression,' he says, 'is that Hugh 

 Miller did all his life carry about him, as Scott did, but 

 to a greater extent, a belief in ghostly agencies of the 

 air, earth, and water, always operating, and sometimes 

 revealing themselves. One sees his imagination clinging 

 to what his reason would fain reject.' The only hope 

 lay in a total cessation from all work, but this was 

 found impossible through the almost second nature 

 which over-exertion had become to him. He had 

 also a rooted dislike for all medicines, and it was with 

 difficulty that he was induced to put himself under 

 the management of Dr. Balfour and Professor Miller. 

 The last day of his life was given to the revision of the 

 proof-sheets of his Testimony of the Rocks^ and in the 

 evening he turned over the pages of Cowper, whose 

 works had ever been among his standard favourites. By 

 a curious fatality his eye rested on The Castaway, written 

 by the poet in a similar mental condition, and which for 

 sustained force and limpid expression is unrivalled as a 

 religious lyric. He retired to rest on the night of the 

 24th December 1856. Next morning, his body, half- 

 dressed, was found with a bullet from a revolver through 

 his left lung. He had lifted a heavy woven jersey over 

 his chest before he fired, which showed that death had 

 not been accidental. On a table a loose sheet of paper 



