The Late Hugh Miller. 67 



In tliis respect, however, Mr Miller suffered, we suspect, from a 

 somewliat peculiar temperament — lie did not work easy, but with 

 laborious special preparation, and then with throes that tortured 

 him during the process, and left him exhausted afterwards. In say- 

 ing this, however, we speak only of the more recent years ; and it is 

 at least six or seven years since we heard him complain that hard 

 work had left him only half a 7nan^ and that he could do only 

 half work with double toil." 



" Although apparently a man of physical as well as moral courage, 

 he had a curious tendency to keep fire-arms about his house and 

 person. Wlien he lived at Sylvan Place, to the south of the 

 Meadows, he was accustomed, when going home after nightfall, to 

 carry a loaded pistol, and from some allusions in his work — "First 

 Impressions of England" — it appears thathe followed the same prac- 

 tice when travelling, or at least when on his pedestrian excursions- 

 ******** 



To that habit, we have apparently in great part to ascribe the event 



we to-day deplore, and which a large proportion of the Scottish 



people will hear with startling and grief." 



* * * * * * *.* 



"Beginning his literary career as a correspondent o{ the Inver- 

 ness Courier — whose accomplished editor will be among his sin- 

 cerest lamenters — he asserted his claims as a delightful sketcher of 

 manners and of natural scenery and objects, and next as a powerful 

 writer on ecclesiastical politics. It was only when the comparative 

 ease and leisure he enjoyed as editor of the Witness enabled him 

 to follow the natural bent of his inclinations and genius, that he 

 developed that power of observation and research which he had 

 cultivated, almost furtively, throughout his whole career, that he 

 became known as a discoverer in science, and as one of the most 

 felicitous of its popular illustrators. He was born in October 1802, 

 as he himself tells us in the fascinating narrative of his life already 

 alluded to. He has thus been cut off at the early age of fiftj^-four, 

 while engaged on works to which he had devoted years of toil and 

 research, and from which the geological world expected a rich har- 

 vest of new ideas and valuable results. His " Scenes and Legends 

 of the North of Scotland," published about twenty years ago, (which 

 was intended for a narrow circle,) revealed his poetical imagination 

 and his extraordinary power of writing. The "Old Red Sandstone," 

 published in 1841, while it placed him in the first class of geolo- 

 gists, and made his name known over Europe as a man of science, 



