428 
NATURE 
[Aucusr 28, 1902 
so long engrossed his thoughts, and most capable of helping 
him to clear away the difficulties that beset his progress. 
Meanwhile an important change had taken place in his con- 
dition of life. During the year 1834, after having worked for 
fifteen years in his calling of stone-mason, he was offered the 
accountantship of the Commercial Bank agency to be opened at 
Cromarty. This offer, which came to him unasked and un- 
expected, was a gratifying mark of the esteem and confidence 
with which his character was regarded. Tle accepted it, not 
without some diffidence as to his competence for the duties 
required, It would, however, retain him in his native town, 
enable him to marry the accomplished girl to whom he had for 
years been attached, and afford him opportunity to prosecute 
the researches in the Old Red Sandstone, of which he had now 
come to realise the importance. It likewise provided him with 
leisure to prepare contributions to different periodicals, which, 
though of no great consequence to his reputation, were of 
service in adding to an income narrow enough for the support 
of a wife and family. These writings had this further advantage, 
that they gave him a readier command of the pen and accus- 
tomed him to deal with lighter as well as with graver subjects 
of discussion, thus furnishing a useful training for what was ulti- 
mately to be the main business of his later life. 
At this time ecclesiastical questions occupie1 public attention 
in Scotland to the exclusion of almost everything else. The 
Church was entering on that stormy period which culminated in 
the great Disruption of 1843. Hugh Miller, who was at once 
an earnest Christian and a devoted son of the Church, watched 
the march of events with the deepest sympathy. As a 
thoroughly ‘* Establishment man” he had taken but slender 
interest in the previous Voluntary controversy, but the larger 
and more vital conflict now in progress filled him with concern. 
It was his firm conviction that the country contained ‘‘no other 
institution half so valuable as the Church, or in which the people 
had so large a stake.” The anxiety with which the situation 
impressed him affected his sleep, and he would ask himself, 
“*Can I do nothing for my Church in her hour of peril?” The 
answer which he found was to write his famous ‘‘ Letter from 
one of the Scotch people to Lord Brougham.” This pamphlet 
was soon after followed by another, entitled ‘‘ The Whiggism 
of the Old School, as exemplified in the past history and present 
position of the Church of Scotland.” These writings, so cogent 
in argument and so vigorous in style, had a wide circulation, 
and undoubtedly exercised much influence on the progress of 
the ecclesiastical controversy throughout the country. The 
leaders of the non-intrusion party, with whose cause he showed 
such keen and helpful sympathy, soon after the appearance of 
the first pamphlet invited Miller to confer with them in Edin- 
burgh, and offered him the editorship of their projected news- 
paper, the //’z¢ness. With some misgiving as to his competence 
to meet all the various demands of a journal that was to appear 
twice a week, he accepted the proposal. Thus, after his five 
years’ experience as a bank-accountant, he became at the begin- 
ning of 1840, when he was thirty-seven years of age, the editor 
of an important newspaper, and he retained that position until 
his death. 
Up to this time the name of Hugh Miller was but little 
known beyond his native district. His political pamphlets first 
gave it a wide reputation, and thenceforth his conduct of a 
journal that represented the interests of one of the great parties 
into which his country was divided kept him constantly before 
the eyes of the public. The Wz/ness rapidly attained a large 
circulation. It appealed, not merely to the churchmen whose 
views it advocated, but to a wide class of readers, who, apart 
from ecclesiastical polemics, could appreciate its high tone, its 
sturdy independence, its honesty and candour, and the unusual 
literary excellence of its leading articles. It not only upheld, 
but raised the standard of journalism in Scotland. As a great 
moral force it exercised a healthy influence on the community. 
There cannot be any doubt that the powerful advocacy of the 
Witness was one of the main agencies in sustaining the energies 
of the non-intrusion party and in consolidating the position of 
the young Free Church. It is my own deep conviction that the 
debt which that Church owes to Hugh Miller has never yet been 
adequately acknowledged. 
Before he had been many months in the editorial chair he 
began to publish in the columns of his paper the first of that 
brilliant succession of geological articles which attracted the 
attention of men of science, as well as of the general public, and 
which continued to be a characteristic feature of the W2tness up 
NO. 1713, VOL. 66] 
to the end of his life. The first articles, describing his dis- 
coveries in the Old Red Sandstone of Cromarty, created not a 
little sensation among the geologists who had gathered in the 
year 1840 at the memorable meeting of the British Association 
at Glasgow. It was there that Agassiz, who had come fresh 
from, the study of Swiss glaciers to the Scottish Highlands, 
announced that he had found clear evidence that the mountains 
of this country had once also nourished their glaciers and snow- 
fields. It was then, too, that the same illustrious naturalist gave 
the first account of the fossils found by Hugh Miller at Cromarty, 
one of which he named after its discoverer. In that gathering 
of eminent men, Murchison declared that the articles which had 
been appearing in the V2¢ness were ‘‘ written in a style so 
beautiful and poetical as to throw plain geologists like himself 
into the shade.” Buckland, famous for his own eloquent pages 
in the Bridgewater Treatise, expressed his unbounded astonish- 
ment and admiration, affirming that “he would give his left 
hand to possess such powers of description.” The articles were 
next year collected and expanded into his ‘‘ Old Red Sandstone, 
or New Walks in an Old Field”—the first and, in some re- 
spects, the freshest and most delightful of all his scientific 
volumes. 
In subsequent years there appeared in the same columns his 
“Cruise of the Betsy'’"—a series of papers written among the 
Western Isles, and full of the poetry and geological charm of 
that marvellous region ; his ‘f Rambles of a Geologist,” in which 
he included the results of his wanderings over Scotland between 
1840 and 1848, and other essays, the more important of which 
were collected with pious care by his widow and published in a 
succession of volumes after his death. His ‘‘ First Impressions 
of England and its People” appeared in 1846, and greatly 
increased the reputation of its writer as an observant traveller, 
an able critic and an accomplished writer, possessing a wide 
and sympathetic acquaintance with English literature. The 
** Footprints of the Creator,” which followed in 1847, was of a 
less popular character. Its detailed account of the structure of 
some of the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone is, however, of 
lasting value, though its controversy with the ‘‘ Vestiges of 
Creation ” has now little more than an historical interest. The 
** Schools and Schoolmasters,” after running as usual through 
the pages of the newspaper, was issued as a separate volume in 
1852, and was everywhere hailed as one of the most delightful 
and instructive of all his works. The ‘‘ Testimony of the 
Rocks,” with the final proofs of which he was engaged on the 
last day of his life, was issued a few months after he had been 
laid to rest beside his friend Chalmers. Altogether of his 
collected writings, including those that appeared in his lifetime, 
a series of twelve volumes has been published, but many 
hundreds of articles of less permanent interest, yet each marked 
by the distinctive charm of its writer, remain buried in the files 
of the Wrtness. 
If, from his writings alone, we judge of the extent and value 
of the work achieved by Hugh Miller, we can have little hesita- 
tion in believing that it is mainly his contributions to the 
literature of science that will hand his name down to future 
generations. Like so many other men who have attained dis- 
unction in the same field, he from the beginning to the end 
made geology his recreation, in the midst of other paramount 
preoccupations. It furnished him with solace from the toils of 
the quarry and the building yard, itsupplied him with a healthful 
relief from the labours of the bank, and when in later years he 
escaped each autumn for a few weeks of much-needed leisure 
from the cares and responsibilities of the editor’s desk, it led him 
to ramble at will all over his native country, and brought him 
into acquaintance with every type of its rocks and its landscapes. 
Unquestionably the most original part of his scientific work, 
that wherein he added most to the sum of acquired knowledge, 
is to be found in his reconstruction of the extinct types of 
fishes which he discovered in the Old Red Sandstone. The 
merit of these labours can hardly be properly appreciated unless 
it be borne in mind that he came to the study of the subject 
with no preliminary biological training save what he could 
pick up for himself from an examination of such denizens of 
the neighbouring firths as he could meet with. But after pro- 
longed search he could find in these northern seas no living 
creatures the structure of which afforded him any clue to that 
of the fossil fishes of Cromarty. Some men had concluded 
that the organisms were ancient turtles, others that they were 
crustaceans or even aquatic beetles. He had the sagacity, how- 
ever, to surmise that they were probably all fishes, and he 
