THE 



CANADIAN 



NATURALIST AND GEOLOGIST 



Volume II. MAY, 1857. Number 2. 



ART. IX. — The Testimony of the Rocks. By Hugh Miller. 



TMs work comes to iis with the melancholy interest which al- 

 ways attaches to the last thoughts of a great man, and especially 

 to those thoughts which by their consuming intensity, have aided 

 in wearing to the death the frail tenement in which a gifted soul 

 did its earthly work. In reading this book, so full of lofty faith 

 and true sympathy with God, with nature, and with man, the sad 

 end of its author ever recurs to us like a hideous dream which 

 cannot be true ; and we feel more forcibly impressed on our minds 

 the suspicion arising from many minute but important circum- 

 stances, that we do not yet know the real manner of Hugh Miller's 

 death ; and that the vulgar explanation of suicide under mental 

 aberration, is but the thought of common minds, seeking a com- 

 mon solution for a strange and almost unaccountable event. 

 Hugh Miller as we remember him, calm, thoughtful, and self- 

 possessed, yet full cf quiet enthusiasm, is the writer of this book 

 but not the subject of the coroner's verdict ; and though we must 



