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diff --git a/44530-0.txt b/44530-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f982fa4 --- /dev/null +++ b/44530-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3789 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44530 *** + +Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected +without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have +been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with +underscores: _italics_. + + + +HUGH MILLER + + +BY + +W. KEITH LEASK + + +FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES + + +PUBLISHED BY +OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER +EDINBURGH AND LONDON + +The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and +the printing from the press of Messrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In the absence of material dealing especially with his last years in +Edinburgh a complete _Life_ of Hugh Miller will probably never be +attempted. I am informed by his daughter, Mrs. Miller Mackay, F. C. +Manse, Lochinver, that the letters and materials sent out to Australia +to form the basis of a projected biography by his son-in-law and +daughter disappeared, and have never been recovered. The recent deaths +of his son and of others who knew Hugh Miller in Cromarty and in +Edinburgh still more preclude the appearance of a full and authentic +presentation. To the scientist the works of Miller will ever form the +best biography; to the general reader and to those who, from various +causes, regard biography as made for man and not man for biography some +such sketch as the following may, it is believed, not be unacceptable. + +To treat Hugh Miller apart from his surroundings of Church and State +would be as impossible as it would be unjust. Accordingly the +presentation deliberately adopted has been from his own standpoint--the +unhesitating and undeviating traditions of Scotland. + +Geology has moved since his day. In the last chapter I have accordingly +followed largely in the steps of Agassiz in the selection of material +for a succinct account of Miller's main scientific and theological +standpoints or contributions. My best thanks are due to Principal +Donaldson of the University of St. Andrews for looking over the +proof-sheets; to Sir Archibald Geikie, Director-General of the +Geological Survey, London, for his admirable reminiscence of his early +friend contained in the last pages of this work; and to my friend J. D. +Symon, M.A., for the bibliography of Miller in the closing appendix. + +W. K. L. + +ABERDEEN, _April_ 1896. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +CHAPTER I + +EARLY DAYS--IN CROMARTY 9 + + +CHAPTER II + +IN EDINBURGH--THE CROMARTY BANK 37 + + +CHAPTER III + +THE SCOTTISH CHURCH, 1560-1843--'THE WITNESS' 68 + + +CHAPTER IV + +IN EDINBURGH--LAST YEARS 96 + + +CHAPTER V + +IN SCIENCE 119 + + +APPENDIX: BIBLIOGRAPHY 154 + + + + +HUGH MILLER + + + + +CHAPTER I + +EARLY DAYS--IN CROMARTY + + 'A wet sheet and a flowing sea, + A wind that follows fast.' + + ALLAN CUNNINGHAM + + +The little town of Cromarty lies perched on the southern shore of the +entrance to the Firth of that name, and derives its name from the +Cromachty, the crook or winding of the magnificent stretch of water +known to Buchanan and the ancient geographers as the _Ecclesiastical +History_, 'in which the very greatest navies may rest secure from +storms.' In the history of Scotland the place is scarcely mentioned; +and, indeed, in literary matters is known only from its association +with the names of Hugh Miller and the rare figure of Sir Thomas +Urquhart of Cromarty, who had followed Charles II. to the 'crowning +mercy' of Worcester fight, to land at last in the Tower. But for the +silence of history the imagination or the credulity of the knight has +atoned, by the production of a chronicle which rivals fairly the +_Ecclesiastical History_ of the old wandering Scottish scholar +Dempster, who had in Italy patriotically found the Maccabees to be but +an ancient Highland family. According to Urquhart, whose translation of +Rabelais has survived his eccentric disquisitions in genealogy and +history, Alypos, the forty-third lineal descendant of Japhet, was the +first to discover Cromarty, and, when the Scythians under Ethus pitched +on the moor bounding the parish on the north, they had been opposed by +the grandson of Alcibiades; in proof of which Sir Thomas could +triumphantly point to remaining signs of 'trenches and castrametation' +with a confidence which would have won the heart of Jonathan Monkbarns +in _The Antiquary_. + +The population of the district is essentially a mixed one, and strongly +retains the distinctive features of the Scandinavian and the Gael. From +Shetland to the Ord of Caithness, the population of the coast is +generally, if not wholly, of the former type. Beyond the Ord to the +north of the Firth of Cromarty, we find a wedge of Celtic origin, while +from the southern shore to the Bay of Munlochy the Scandinavian element +again asserts itself. Thus, as Carlyle escaped being born an Englishman +by but a few miles, the separation from the Celtic stratum was, in +Miller's case, effected by the narrow single line of the one-mile +ferry. In later years, at all events, he would refer with evident +satisfaction to his Teutonic origin. There was, as we shall have +occasion to notice, a certain Celtic lobe of imagination on the +mother's side, but in his mental and political character the great +leading features of the other race were undoubtedly predominant. + +Whence Buchanan drew the possibilities of great fleets in the Firth of +Cromarty is unknown unless he had in his memory some of the vessels of +the old mariners, such as Sir Andrew Wood and the bold Bartons, or even +the 'verrie monstrous schippe the Great Michael' that 'cumbered all +Scotland to get her to sea.' Certain it is that for many a day its +position had marked out the town as the natural centre of a coasting +trade, though shortly after the Union the commerce of the place which +had been considerable had declined. The real commencement of the +prosperity of the place was due to the energy of a native, William +Forsyth, whose life Miller has sketched in a little memoir originally +drawn up for the family, and subsequently republished in his _Tales and +Sketches_ under the title of 'A Scottish Merchant of the Eighteenth +century.' Forsyth had been appointed by the British Linen Company, +established about 1746 in Edinburgh to promote the linen trade, its +agent in the North throughout the whole district extending from Beauly +to the Pentland Firth. The flax which was brought in vessels from +Holland was prepared for use in Cromarty, and distributed by boats +along the coast to Wick and Thurso. In the early days of the trade the +distaff and the spindle were in general use; but Forsyth's efforts were +successful in the introduction of the spinning-wheel, though the older +means of production lasted far into this century in the west of Ross +and in the Hebrides. The coasting schooners of the agent were the means +of introducing into the town teas and wines, cloth, glass, Flemish +tiles, Swedish iron, and Norwegian tar and spars. The rents of the +landed proprietors were still largely paid in kind, or in the feudal +labour by which the Baron of Bradwardine managed to eke out a rather +scanty rent roll. In this way the _mains_ or the demesnes of the laird +were tilled and worked, and the Martinmas corn rents were stocked in a +barn or 'girnal,' like that of the Antiquary's famous John of legend, +often to cause a surplus to hang on the hands of the proprietor, until +the idea was fortunately devised of exporting it to England or to +Flanders for conversion into malt. + +Ship-carpentry or boat-building upon a humble scale had been long +established, and the coasting trade lay between the North, Leith, +Newcastle, and London. The Scottish sailors then on the eastern coast +enjoyed a strong reputation for piety, such as, we fear, their +descendants have not maintained. John Gibb of Borrowstouness, the +antiquary may remember as the founder of the now forgotten sect of +Gibbites or 'sweet singers,' who denounced all tolls and statutory +impositions, abolished the use of tobacco and all excisable articles, +and finally made a pilgrimage to the Pentland Hills to see the smoke +and the desolation of Edinburgh as foretold by their founder. The +wardrobes and scrutoires of the local cabinet-maker, Donald Sandison, +enjoyed a reputation through the North, and were, far into this +century, found in the houses of Ross, together with the old eight-day +clocks made in Kilwinning. But the great founder of its modern +prosperity was George Ross, the son of a small proprietor in Easter +Ross, who, after amassing a fortune as an army-agent as the friend of +Lord Mansfield and the Duke of Grafton, had in 1772 purchased the +estate of Cromarty. When he started his improvements in his native +district, there was not a wheeled-cart in all the parish, and the +knowledge of agriculture was rude. Green cropping and the rotation of +crops were unknown, and in autumn the long irregular patches of arable +land were intersected by stretches of moorland that wound deviously +into the land, like the reaches of the Cromarty and the Beauly Firths. +Though long opposed by tenacious local prejudices, he at length +triumphed over the backward habits of the people, who yoked their oxen +and their horses by the tail, and who justified their action by an +appeal to the argument from design, and by a query as to what other end +in creation such tails had been provided? Ross also established in the +town a manufactory for hempen cloth, and erected what at the time was +the largest ale-brewery in the North. A harbour was built at his own +expense, and a pork trade of a thriving nature set on foot, wheat +reared, the rotation of crops introduced, a nail and spade manufactory +set up, and lace manufactures brought from England. Such, then, was the +condition of Cromarty at the beginning of the present century. + +Far different was that of the surrounding Highlands. Protestantism had +been at an early period introduced into Ross and Sutherland by its +Earls and by Lord Reay. The Earl of Sutherland had been the first to +subscribe the National Covenant in Greyfriars; and, after the +suppression of the first Jacobite rising, Sir Robert Munro of Fowlis, +as commissioner of the confiscated estates, had set himself to the +creation of parishes and presbyteries in remote districts, where the +Church of Scotland before had been unknown. In the better class of +houses the old Highland fireplace, like a millstone, still occupied its +place in the centre, with no corresponding aperture in the roof for the +smoke. In the Western districts the greatest distress prevailed, for +the country was at the parting of the ways in a time of transition. +About the beginning of the present century the results of the French +Revolution began to make themselves felt. Through the long war the +price of provisions rose to famine price, and the impecunious Highland +laird, like his more degenerate successor that battens on the sporting +proclivities of the Cockney or American millionaire, set himself to the +problem of increasing his rent-roll, and the system of evictions and +sheep-farming on a large scale commenced. The Sutherland clearances +forced the ejected Highlanders to Canada and the United States, while +the poorer classes drifted down from the interior to the already +overpopulated shore-line, where they eked out, as crofters or as +fishermen, a precarious existence without capital or the acquired +experience of either occupation, and laid the seeds of the future +crofter question. The manufacture of kelp, which for a time rendered +profitable to many a Highland proprietor his barren acres on a rocky +shore, was not destined to long survive the introduction of the +principles of Free Trade. The potato blight succeeded finally in +reducing the once fairly prosperous native of the interior to chronic +poverty and distress. + +On the West Coast, the heavy rainfall is unfavourable to agriculture on +any extended scale. From Assynt to Mull the average rain-gauge is +thirty-five inches, and the cottars of Ross were threatened with the +fate of the Irish in Connemara, through periodic failures in the +herring fishery and liabilities for their scanty holdings to their +landlords. Miller found the men of Gairloch, in 1823, where the public +road was a good day's journey from the place, still turning up or +scratching the soil with the old Highland _cass-chron_, and the women +carrying the manure on their backs to the fields in spring, while all +the time they kept twirling the distaff--old and faded before their +time, like the women in some of the poorer cantons the traveller meets +with in Switzerland. Their constant employment was the making of yarn; +and, as we have seen, the spinning-wheel was for long as rare as the +possession of a plough or horse. The boats built for the fishing were +still caulked with moss dipped in tar and laid along the seams, the +ropes being made of filaments of moss-fir stripped with the knife, +while the sails were composed of a woollen stuff whose hard thread had +been spun on the distaff, for hemp and flax were practically unknown. +Such, in 1263, had at Largs been the equipment of the galleys of Haco, + + 'When Norse and Danish galleys plied + Their oars within the Firth of Clyde, + And floated Haco's banner trim + Above Norweyan warriors grim.' + + _Marmion_, iii. xx. + +Such, too, had been the traditional custom for centuries after of the +boatbuilders in the Western Highlands. + +In Cromarty, then, on the 10th of October 1802, Hugh Miller was +born--in a long, low-built six-roomed house of his great-grandfather, +one of the last of the old buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who had +thriftily invested his pieces of eight in house-property in his native +place. His mother was the great-granddaughter of Donald Roy of Nigg, of +whom, as a kind of Northern Peden or Cargill, traditions long lingered. +In his early days, Donald had been a great club and football player in +the Sunday games that had been fostered in the semi-Celtic parish by +King James's _Book of Sports_, and which, it may be remembered, had +been popular in the days of Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch at a time when +the observance of the seventh day and of the King's writ never ran +beyond the Pass of Killiecrankie. At the Revolution, however, Donald +had become the subject of religious convictions; and when, on the death +of Balfour of Nigg in 1756, an unpopular presentee, Mr. Patrick Grant, +was forced upon the parish, resistance was offered. Four years before +this, Gillespie of Carnock had been deposed on the motion of John +Home, author of _Douglas_, seconded by Robertson of Gladsmuir, the +subsequent historian of _Charles V._, for his refusal to participate in +the settlement of Richardson to Inverkeithing; and when some of the +presbytery, in fear of similar proceedings, had met for the induction, +they found an empty church and an old man protesting that 'if they +settled a man to the walls of that kirk, the blood of the parish of +Nigg would be required at their hands.' For long the entire parish +clung to the Church of Scotland, but never could they be induced to +enter the building again, and so they perforce allied themselves to the +Burgher Secession. Thus early was the non-intrusion principle made +familiar to Miller, and thus early were made manifest the miserable +effects of the high-handed policy which, begun in the long reign of +Robertson, was destined a century later to have such disastrous +results. + +In early youth his father had sailed in an East Indiaman, and during +the intervals of his Indian and Chinese voyages had learned to write +and add to his nautical knowledge stores of general reading and +information not then common among sailors. Storing up, instead of +drinking, his grog-money, he drove a small trade with the natives of +these countries in little articles that had excited their curiosity, +and for which, hints his distinguished son, the Custom-house dues were +never very punctually or rigorously paid. Pressed, however, by a +man-of-war that had borne down upon the Indiaman when in a state of +mutiny, after a brief experience of the stern discipline of the navy +not yet tempered by the measures of reform introduced after the mutiny +of the Nore, he returned when not much turned thirty to Cromarty, where +his savings enabled him to buy a coasting sloop and set up house. For +this the site was purchased at £400, a very considerable sum in those +days, and thus his son could, even in the high franchise qualifications +after the Reform Bill, exercise the right of voting for the Whig party. +The kelp trade, of which we have spoken, among other things engaged the +efforts of his father, who had been appointed agent in the North and +Hebrides for the Leith Glass-works. Driven by a storm round Cape Wrath +and through the Pentland Firth, the vessel, after striving to reach the +sheltered roadstead of the Moray Firth, was forced to put in at +Peterhead. On the 9th of November 1807 he set sail, but foundered with +all hands, by the starting, as was believed, of a plank. During more +than one hundred years the sea had been the graveyard of the family: +Miller's father, grandfather, and two grand-uncles had been all drowned +at sea. + +At the time of his father's death the son had just by one month +completed his fifth year. At that time happened the circumstance which +he himself relates, and which we mention here in this place both for +the interest attaching to it in the history of his own mental +development, and for various subtle psychological reasons to which we +shall advert later, and which cannot fail to be observed by the careful +student of his works. The last letter to his wife had been written by +his father from Peterhead, and on its receipt, 'the house-door, which +had been left unfastened, fell open, and I was despatched from her side +to shut it. I saw at the open door, within less than a yard of my +breast, as plainly as ever I saw anything, a dissevered hand and arm +stretched towards me. Hand and arm were apparently those of a female: +they bore a livid and sodden appearance; and, directly fronting me, +where the body ought to have been, there was only blank transparent +space, through which I could see the dim forms of the objects beyond. I +commemorate the story as it lies fixed in my memory, without attempting +to explain it.' In after years he would say of such mental or visual +hallucinations that they were such as 'would render me a firm believer +in apparitions, could I not account for them in this way, as the +creatures of an imagination which had attained an unusual and even +morbid strength at a time when the other mental faculties were scarcely +at all unfolded.' In this connection the similar case of Chatterton +need only be alluded to, but the question will be treated again in +describing his later years. + +Like Burns, Carlyle, and Scott, Miller seems to have borne the powerful +impress, mentally and physically, of his father. Yet, like the mothers +of the first two, Mrs. Miller bequeathed to her son his store of legend +and story and the imagination that was thus so early awakened. The new +house which his father had built remained for some little time after +his death untenanted; and, as the insurance of the sloop was deferred +or disputed by an insolvent broker, his mother had recourse to her +needle as the means by which she could best support her family. Three +children had been born, and her brothers came to her assistance and +lightened her task by taking her second daughter, a child of three, to +live with them. Both of the girls died of a fever within a few days of +each other, the one in her twelfth, and the other in her tenth year. + +Of these two uncles, the James and Sandy of his _Schools and +Schoolmasters_, Miller has spoken with deserved affection and loyalty. +To them he confesses he owed more real education than ever he acquired +from all other sources; and, belonging as they do to the class of +humble and worthy men that seems pre-eminently the boast and pride of +Scottish life, they will merit a detailed account. Of this type some +little knowledge had been made known by Lord Jeffrey in his review of +Cromek's _Reliques_, where such men as the father of Burns and those of +his immediate circle were first introduced to their proper place as +those 'from whom old Scotia's grandeur springs.' In his own +_Reminiscences_, Carlyle has added to our acquaintance with these men +through his sketch of his own father and others, who are, says +Professor Blackie, the natural outcome of the republican form of our +Scottish Church government, and of the national system of education so +early developed by Knox and the first Reformers. + +The elder of the two brothers, James, was a harness-maker in steady +employment in the surrounding agricultural district, so that from six +in the morning till ten at night his time would be fully occupied, thus +leaving him but scanty leisure. But, in the long evenings, he would fix +his bench by the hearth, and listen while his nephew or his own younger +brother or some neighbour would read. In the summer, he would occupy +his spare hours upon his journeys to and from his rural rounds of +labour in visiting every scene of legend and story far and near, and so +keen were his powers of perception and ready expression in matters of a +historical and antiquarian nature, that his nephew regrets he had not +become a writer of books. Some part of this information, however, he +has attempted to preserve in his _Scenes and Legends_. + +To the younger brother, Alexander, he seems to have been even more +indebted. If to the one he owed his gift of ready and natural +expression, it was to the other that he was indebted for his powers of +observation. Originally educated as a cart-wright, he had served for +seven years in the navy, sailing with Nelson, witnessing the mutiny at +the Nore, the battle of Camperdown under Duncan, and sharing the +Egyptian campaign of Abercromby. Even on his discharge, he was still +ready in 1803 to shoulder a musket as a volunteer, when Napoleon at +Boulogne 'armed in our island every freeman.' The scientific interest, +too, of the man may be judged from the fact that in the Egyptian +expedition, during the landing, he managed to transfer a murex to his +pocket from the beach, and the first ammonite which formed the nucleus +of his nephew's geological collection was also brought home from an +English Liassic deposit. Facts like these and the presence of such men +should go far to dispel much of the cheap sentiment introduced into the +current of Scottish life by writers such as Smiles and others, who +profess to be ever finding some 'peasant' or 'uneducated genius' in the +subjects of their all too unctuous biographies. Such a class has really +no existence in Scotland, and between such men as Miller, Burns, or +even the unfortunate and sorely buffeted Bethunes, there is a great +gulf fixed when they are sought to be brought into relation with men +like John Clare and Robert Bloomfield. All the Scotchmen, born in +however originally humble circumstances, had the advantage of education +at the parish school; and, slight though in some cases the result may +have been, it yet for ever removes the possibility of illiteracy +which the English reader at once conjures up at the sound of such +surroundings. The more the critic studies the facts of Burns' early +years and education, and the really remarkable stock of information +with which he was to rouse the honest wonder of Dugald Stewart--his +mathematical attainments and his philosophical grasp, not to mention +his possession of a very powerful English prose style that makes every +line of his _Letters_ really alive and matterful--the less we shall +hear of peasant genius and untaught writers. We question if one half of +the members of the Edinburgh bar, such as Lockhart has described them +at the arrival of Burns in Edinburgh, had reached such an amount of +general and poetical literature as that easily held in command by the +poet. We have heard an old schoolfellow of Edward Irving and Carlyle at +the burgh school of Annan remark on the misconception of Froude as to +the true social rank of their respective parents. Horace and Burns +seem, as Theodore Martin has shown, not unlike in the matter of their +fathers, and the possession of such sets their children far out of that +circle of contracted social and moral surroundings in which the +biographers of the Smiles class have too long set them. + +The knowledge of his letters Miller seems, like the elder Weller, to +have acquired from a study of the local signboards, and in his sixth +year he was sent to a dame's school, where he spelt his way through +the old curriculum of a child's education in Scotland--the Shorter +Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New Testament. He managed to discover +for himself the story of Joseph; and even in the old six-volume edition +of Lintot the genius of Homer was early made manifest. _The Pilgrim's +Progress_, evidently in some such form as Macaulay has described, made +for the cottage, followed; and, in course of time, the collection of +books which his father had left was eagerly devoured. Among them were +_Robinson Crusoe_, _Gulliver's Travels_--both never so familiar in +Scotland to boys as they are in England--Cook's _Voyages_, John Howie +of Lochgoin's _Worthies_, the _Voyages_ of Anson, Drake, Raleigh, +Dampier, and Byron, 'my grand-dad's narrative' of the poet. It was not +till his tenth year that he became, as he says, 'thoroughly a Scot,' +and this was effected by a perusal of Blind Harry's _Wallace_, that +'Bible of the Scottish people,' as Lord Hailes has called it, following +or anticipating the remark by Wolf as to the similar position of the +_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ among the Greeks. No one now need be informed +about the influence that quaint old work had produced in Burns, and +through him on the subsequent re-awakening of the national spirit at +the end of the eighteenth century. Barbour's _Bruce_ has remained the +possession of the scholar and the antiquary, while this work of the old +minstrel, literally 'sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, +at festivals and other days of merriment,' as Bentley had said of his +great predecessor, has had an abiding influence on literature, and on +the national character. 'Up to Crummade (Cromarty) and through the +Northland' had blind Harry, with a fine patriotism, and, we fear, a +total disregard for geography, made his hero effect a raid. When a man +has got a view from Dan to Beersheba in which to smite the enemy hip +and thigh, he need not be troubled with a few outlying counties. + +The parish school of Cromarty which Miller attended numbered about a +hundred and twenty boys and girls. The windows of the building fronted +the opening of the Cromarty Firth, recalling at least by 'the mystery +of the ships' the Portland of Longfellow's own early days. The tax of +twenty peats to the school from the Highland boatmen paid for every +boat in the trade recalls the salary of the public hangman of Inverness +and Aberdeen, and the dues often formed the subject of debate between +the boys and the irate Gaels, who did not fail to retort the taunt of +the hangman's perquisite. The schoolmaster was a worthy that might have +sat for the figure of Jonathan Tawse in Dr. Alexander's _Johnny Gibb_, +and was, though a fair scholar, rather inefficient as a disciplinarian +and teacher. Yet it was his boast--one now, alas, in these days sadly +becoming obsolete--that he sent forward more lads to the bursary +competition at the Northern university than any other teacher, and his +'heavy class' of a few boys in Latin was increased by his persuading +the willing Uncle James to set Miller to the _Rudiments_ in that +time-honoured volume by Ruddiman, who had in his own days been a first +bursar at Aberdeen. The teaching of Latin had been one of the props to +education introduced by the Reformers, and so distinct had been the +little note of pedantry, perhaps in this way fostered, that Smollett +makes the barber in _Roderick Random_ quote Horace in the original, and +Foote in a farce has made a valet insist on its possession as a +shibboleth of nationality. We need but mention the favourite quotations +in the ancient tongue by the Baron of Bradwardine and Dugald Dalgetty +as a reminiscence of his own old days 'at the Marischal College'; while +Miller also could remember an old cabinet-maker who carried for the +sake of the big print a Latin New Testament to church. But no more with +him than with Darwin could the linguistic faculty be stimulated. The +_Rudiments_ he thought the dullest book he had ever seen, and though in +after-life he regretted the lost opportunity that at five-and-twenty +might have made him a scholar and thus have saved ten of the best +working years of his life, it may be doubted if in his case the loss +amounted to more than in the case of Macaulay, who affected to bewail +his loss of mathematics. In their truest form, scholars, like +naturalists, are born and not made, nor will any labour in the +linguistic field yield much to the scientist. The poet Gray wisely +lamented the loss of time in his own case through forced labour at +mathematics, a remark not even yet fully appreciated in Scotland, where +the system of general excellence--that system under which Johnson so +happily remarked that, while each man got a bite, no one got a +bellyful--has too long stunted the learning of the country and proved +the bane alike of her schools and universities. 'As for Latin, I +abominate it,' we find him writing from Cromarty in December 1838, in a +letter now before us, 'and ever did since I burnt my _Rudiments_.' + +More congenial amusement he found in the exercise of his story-telling +faculty. When the master's back was turned, the _Sennachie_, as the +master called him, would gather round him the other boys and narrate to +them the adventures of his uncle, the story of Gulliver, and the +shipwreck of Robinson Crusoe, or even the mysteries of Mrs. Radcliffe. +When the sixty volumes of his father and the hundred and sixty of his +uncles had been consumed, he fell in with a collection of essayists +from Addison to Henry Mackenzie, the influence of which, along with +Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_, remained to the last as a powerful +impress upon his prose style. But he was rapidly finding his national +and true school. The Hill of Cromarty, part of De Beaumont's Ben-Nevis +system, and the rich Liassic deposit of Eathie, were his favourite +haunts, and his uncle Alexander, after his own work was done, would +spend with him many an hour in the ebb tide. To the training thus +acquired from this untaught naturalist he owed much of his own close +powers of observation, which led, however, well-nigh to a fatal +termination through an adventurous visit to the Doo-cot caves, from +which he was rescued late at night during a high tide. This formed the +subject of his first copy of juvenile verse, which was recited 'with +vast applause' by the handsomest girl at the Cromarty boarding +establishment kept by Miss Elizabeth Bond. In her own early days she +had known the father and mother of Scott; and, when in 1814 she had +published her _Letters of a Village Governess_, she had dedicated them +to the great novelist, who later on in the midst of his own troubles, +living in lodgings away from Abbotsford, could yet remember to send her +ten pounds 'to scare the wolf from the door,' as he cheerily remarked, +when she had found the truth of her own saying that it was hard for a +single woman to get through the world 'without a head'--unmarried. + +His reading at this time received a curious extension through there +falling into his hands a copy of _Military Medley_ belonging to a +retired officer, and on the shore he would carry out plans of +fortification as therein set forth by the great French engineer Vauban. +With sand for towers, and variegated shells and limpets for soldiers, +he worked his way through the evolutions of troops, and no reader of +Scott will fail to remember the similar action by Sir Walter which, in +the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_, he describes as +taking place at Sandy Knowe, in the air of the Cheviots, near the old +tower of Smailholme that 'charmed his fancy's waking hour':-- + + 'Again I fought each combat o'er, + Pebbles and shells in order laid + The mimic ranks of war displayed.' + +Nor will he fail to note the exact and characteristic point of +difference in the two children, and how in each the child was father of +the man. So early in both was the natural instinct of the future +historian and the geologist awakened. + +At a later period he seems rather to have become an unruly lad, and to +have proved too much for his relations to manage. He was in the stage +when such boys run away to sea or enlist, and his father's own calling +might, from its well-nigh hereditary nature, have been thought to be +the one most likely to be adopted. He enjoyed a somewhat dangerous +reputation through carrying a knife and stabbing a companion in the +thigh, but these escapades may in later years have been unconsciously +heightened by remorse for wasted opportunities, and which in his case +we have seen to amount to little or nothing. But the circle of his own +companions was changing or breaking up, and it became necessary to +decide on the future. His mother, after being a widow for well-nigh a +dozen years, had married again, and he determined on being a mason, an +occupation which he thought would, by his being employed in labour at +intermittent seasons, afford him plenty leisure. Against this +resolution both his uncles stoutly protested, and were prepared to +assist him to the Northern university. 'I had no wish,' he says, 'and +no peculiar fitness to be either lawyer or doctor; and as for the +Church, that was too serious a direction to look in for one's bread, +unless one could necessarily regard one's-self as called to the +Church's proper work, and I could not.' His uncles agreed to this view +of the case; and so, reluctantly, the proposed course was abandoned. +'Better be anything,' they said, 'than an _uncalled_ minister.' His was +not the feeble sense of fitness possessed in such a high degree by the +presentees to Auchterarder and Marnoch. As a member of the Moray nation +he would naturally have proceeded to King's College in Aberdeen, then +at the very lowest ebb of its existence as regards the abilities, or +the want of them, of the wondrous corps of professors who filled its +chairs. Carlyle in his _Sartor_ has drawn certainly no flattering +picture of the Edinburgh of his days, and his friend Professor Masson +in the early volumes of _Macmillan's Magazine_ has put before us the no +less wonderful spectacle of the Marischal College of his own student +life; nor would the state of King's College about 1820 yield much +material for respect. The professoriate was grossly ignorant and +conceited, and nepotism was rampant. As a child, we can recall the last +expiring flicker of the race, and when we add that one aspiring +graduate had published a pamphlet to refute Newton, and that the +theology was of the wintriest type of even Aberdonian moderatism, +couched in the most remote imitation of the rhetorical flights in +_The Man of Feeling_, we have said enough to show that Miller certainly +lost nothing by non-attendance at the classes in Aberdeen. + +But it was not without reluctance that his resolve to become a mason +was allowed by his uncles. However, at last, there being another uncle +on the mother's side who was a mason contracting for small jobs, and +who employed an apprentice or two, he was bound apprentice for three +years, from February 1820 to November 1822 and entered on the trade of +mason and quarryman, for in the North the combination was constant. +Long after, in the _Old Red Sandstone_ he has described his first day's +experience in the sandstone quarry, when, in that early spring morning +and with a heavy heart, he set out to experience his first battle in +the stern school of the world: + + 'I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the + pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad + awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work at what Burns has + instanced in his _Twa Dogs_ as one of the most disagreeable of all + employments. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few + gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone + by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer + among rocks and woods--a reader of curious books when I could get + them--a gleaner of old traditional stories; and now I was going to + exchange all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind of + life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, + and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry in + which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or + firth rather (the Bay of Cromarty), with a little clear stream on + the one side and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened + in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a + huge bank of diluvial clay, and which rose over it in some places + to the height of nearly thirty feet.' + +He was to experience constant fits of depression and exhaustion, which +caused sleep-walking; and though this after a time passed away, it was +yet in later years to recur with fatal effects. In his master he was +fortunate. He was one who would fully have come up to Carlyle's +standard of his own father, 'making a conscience of every stone he +laid.' Unconsciously, also, the apprentice was laying the foundations +of the educated sense of sight so essential to the mason, and which +was to stand him in excellent service in later years of geological +ramblings. But the life was a hard one, from the surroundings in which +the trade of a north-country mason had to be carried on. Living in a +small village, where the lack of steady employment was naturally often +felt, he had to eke out a living by odd jobs in the country, building +farm-steadings or outhouses, with but scanty shelter and in +surroundings too often unfavourable to comfort or morality. His +experience of the bothy-system thus acquired by personal hardship he +was in later years to turn to account in his leaders in _The +Witness_--'I have lived,' he says, 'in hovels that were invariably +flooded in wet weather by the over-flowings of neighbouring swamps, +and through whose roofs I could tell the hour at night, by marking +from my bed the stars that were passing over the openings along the +ridge.' He was now to feel the truth of his uncles' warnings in +dissuading him from the occupation. They had pointed to a hovel on a +laird's property, who had left it standing that at some future date it +might be turned to profit when he should have a drove of swine, or +when a 'squad' of masons would pass that way. The life which had been +introduced by the large farm system had been criticised already by +Burns, who in the jottings of his _Highland Tour_ had been struck by +the superior intelligence of the Ayrshire cottar to the stolid +boorishness of the agricultural labourer in the districts of the +Lothians and the Merse. Recent legislation has largely mitigated the +evils of the system which, even in a higher scale of comfort, has +received a stern indictment in the eighth chapter of Dr. William +Alexander's excellent work which we have before quoted, and to which, +as the classic of the movement with which Miller's life is associated, +we shall again refer. 'Better,' said Cobbett, who had studied it +during a brief sojourn in the country, 'the fire-raisings of Kent than +the bothy system of Scotland.' + +Even geological rambles and communings with the Muse afforded but scant +alleviation of the hardships endured. During rainy weather the food +would often be oatmeal eaten raw, at times with no salt save from a +passing Highland smuggler, or consist of hastily prepared gruel or +_brochan_. In time he learned to be a fair plain cook and baker, +so as at least to satisfy the demands of the failing teeth of his old +master. Accordingly, he was not sorry when the three years of his +apprenticeship closed, and as a skilled labourer he could retire about +the Martinmas of 1822 to Cromarty, where his first piece of work was a +cottage built with his own hands for his aunt. + +In 1823 he was with a working party at Gairloch, and was there for the +last time to experience the discomforts in the life of the working +mason when employed by a niggard Highland laird. Forced from the barn +in which they were at first domiciled into a cow-house to make room for +the hay, they found themselves called upon to convert the materials of +this hovel into the new building upon which they were engaged. This +they effected by demolishing the entrance gradually, and hanging mats +over it, leaving themselves ultimately to the cold October wind which +not even Miller's experiences as a boy of the caves in the Sutors of +Cromarty could render tolerable. But he had begun to see that the +sphere of constant employment was narrow and narrowing in his native +place, and, as the building mania in the South at the time seemed to +afford a better opening for a steady workman, to Edinburgh accordingly +he resolved to betake himself. + +There was the additional reason in a desire to free the family from +the burden of a house on the Coalhill of Leith, which had long before +fallen to his father through the legacy of a relative, and which had +threatened, through legal expenses, lack of tenants, and depreciated +value, to become a serious legacy indeed. The parish church of North +Leith had been erected, and he had been rated as a heritor for a sum +so considerable that the entire year's rental of the dilapidated +tenement was swallowed up, together with most of his savings as a +mason. He had come of age when in the miserable hovel at Gairloch we +have described, and was now competent to deal with his luckless +property. Setting sail in the Leith smack running between Cromarty and +that port, he entered the Firth of Forth four days after losing sight +of the Sutors. He saw with interest Dunottar Castle and the Bass Rock +chronicled in the well-known lines of his friend, Dr. Longmuir of +Aberdeen. Indeed the latter had for him peculiar associations through +one of the Ross-shire worthies in the times of Charles II.--James +Fraser of Brea;--for, when the sun set on the upland farm on which he +had been born, Miller knew that it was time to collect his tools at +the end of his day's labour. In 1847, when he visited the rock on the +geological expedition which he has commemorated by his paper on the +structure of the Bass, his thoughts again reverted to Fraser, and to +two other captives from his own district, Mackilligen of Alness and +Hog of Kiltearn. His uncle James had at an early period introduced him +to Burns and Fergusson, while from his boyish days the old novel of +Smollett, _Humphrey Clinker_, had been no less familiar than from the +pages of _David Copperfield_ we know it to have been to Dickens. It +was, therefore, with no small interest that he caught his first view +of Arthur Seat and the masts of the shipping in the harbour of Leith. +It was still the veritable Auld Reekie' of Fergusson, preserving its +quaint distinctiveness by the happy blending of the divisions of the +old town and the new--the old town through which, says Lockhart, the +carriage of Scott would creep at the slowest of paces, driven by the +most tactful and discriminating of Jehus, while every gable and +buttress in what a recent prosaic English guide-book denominates the +most dilapidated street in Europe would crowd its storied memories +upon the novelist and poet of the _Chronicles of the Canongate_. To +the last, like Carlyle, he preserved the memory, ever a landmark to +the patriotic Scot, of his first day in the old 'romantic town' of Sir +Walter, and of his impressions of the most picturesque of European +capitals. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN EDINBURGH--THE CROMARTY BANK + + 'I view yon Empress of the North + Sit on her hilly throne.' + + SCOTT. + + +He had not long to experience what Gilbert Burns said was to his +brother the saddest of all sights, that of a man seeking work. He had +called on the town-clerk to see whether some means could be devised of +setting himself free from the property when, on mentioning his +occupation, he was not only told the prospect of a sale was not so +hopeless as he had expected, but was introduced to a builder erecting a +mansion-house in the south of Edinburgh. He lodged in the village of +Niddry Mill, and found his experience of life among metropolitan +labourers the very reverse of favourable. + +His not very high opinion of the working classes, for, as we shall +see, Miller remained a Whig to the last with a wholesome horror for +Radicals and Chartists, was doubtless due to the circumstances under +which he found himself, and not to any feeling of superiority on his +part. The social condition of the working classes was then on the eve +of transition, and the organisation of even skilled labour was but in +a rudimentary condition. In Edinburgh at least, the better class of +mechanics sought within the walls of the city a more remunerative +sphere for their labour, so that it was only the inferior body of +workmen that was found on the outskirts. At first, he was subjected +to a good deal of low and petty tyranny from his fellow-labourers, +which was not calculated to improve his opinion of the class. Some +slight relief, however, he managed to find in the new geological +surroundings--the carboniferous deposits--and by observation and +theory he made his way to some good results in his own science, at +a time when there was no map, manual, or even geological primer +in existence. The policies of Niddry and walks in the ruins of +Craigmillar were a solace from the drunken and intemperate habits of +the men, whose forty-eight shillings for the fortnight's wage were +soon consumed by Sunday drives to Roslin or Hawthornden, or by +drinking bouts in the lower rookeries of the High Street. There still +largely prevailed the convivial habits such as Fergusson has described +as characteristic of the Edinburgh of his day, the tavern 'jinks' +alluded to by Scott in _Guy Mannering_, and by Lockhart in his _Life +of Burns_. In the taverns the landlords kept a cockpit or a badger as +a necessary part of their attraction. Employment being constant +through the pressure of the building mania prevalent throughout this +year, the masters were largely at the mercy of the men, so that +strikes were rife and the demands of the workers exorbitant. +Altogether it was no favourable school for Miller to learn regard for +his own class. Again and again, to the end, do we find not undeserved +denunciations of the dangers of Chartism, and his own reiterated +belief that for the skilled workman there is no danger, and for the +thriftless no hope. + +The collier villages round Niddry have long since disappeared. The +seams have for all practical purposes been worked out, or have been +given up as unprofitable. There he found the last surviving remains of +slavery in Scotland, for the older men of the place, though born and +bred 'within a mile of Edinburgh toun,' had yet been born slaves. The +modern reader will find much curious information upon this subject in +Erskine's _Institutes_; but, in passing, we may recall the fact that +Sir Walter Scott has mentioned the case of Scott of Harden and his +lady, who had rescued by law a tumbling-girl who had been sold by her +parents to a travelling mountebank, and who was set at liberty after +an appeal to the Lords, against the decision of the Chancellor. Scott +was assoilzied; but, even as late as 1799, an Act of Parliament had to +be passed dealing specially with this last remnant of feudal +slavery--the salters and the colliers of Scotland. The old family of +the Setons of Winton had, along with others, exercised great political +influence and pressure on the Court of Session, and had repeatedly +managed to defeat or evade measures of reform. A law had even been +passed enacting that no collier or salter, without a certificate from +his last place, could find work, but should be held as a thief and +punished as such, while a later ordinance was that, as they 'lay from +their work at Pasche, Yule and Whitsunday, to the great offence of God +_and prejudice of their masters_,' they should work every day in the +week except at Christmas! Clearly there was no Eight Hours Bill in Old +Scotland. + +His lodging was a humble one-roomed cottage in Niddry, owned by an old +farm-servant and his wife. The husband, when too old for work, had been +discharged by his master, whose munificence had gone the length of +allowing residence in the dilapidated building, on the understanding +that he was not to be held liable for repairs. The thatch was repaired +by mud and turf gathered from the roadside, and in this crazy tenement +the old man and his wife, both of whom had passed through the world +without picking up hardly a single idea, were exposed to the biting +east winds of the district. A congenial fellow-lodger was fortunately +found in the person of another workman, one of the old Seceders, deep +in the theology of Boston and Rutherfurd, and such works as had formed +the reading of his uncles in Cromarty, for at this time the sense of +religion, at least among the humbler classes, was well-nigh confined to +the ranks of dissent. Many of the inhabitants of the place were or had +been nominal parishioners of 'Jupiter' Carlyle of Inveresk. But the +doctor had not been one to do much for the social or religious advance +of his people. Jupiter, or 'Old Tonans,' as he was called from sitting +to Gavin Hamilton the painter for his portrait of Jupiter, had been the +fanatical defender of the theatre at a time when his friend John Home, +the writer of _Douglas_, had been compelled by public opinion to seek +relief from pulpit duties, and a more fitting sphere for his rants of +'Young Norval on the Grampian Hills' in the ranks of the laity. Carlyle +and his friend Dr. Hugh Blair were constant patrons of the legitimate +drama in the old playhouse in the Canongate, when the burghers at night +would 'dauner hame wi' lass and lantern' after the manner described +with such power by Scott in the Tolbooth scene of _Rob Roy_. On one +occasion, the doctor had, for once in his long life, to play the part +of non-intrusionist, when he repelled vigorously with a bludgeon the +attempt of some wild sparks to force an entry into his box! Missions he +denounced in the spirit of a fanatical supporter of the repressive +régime of Pitt and Dundas. He trusted to the coming of Christ's Kingdom +by some lucky accident or sleight of hand, 'as we are informed it shall +be in the course of Providence.' He had no belief in 'a plan which has +been well styled visionary.' In the closing years of his own life, the +very slight modicum of zeal for the discharge of his ministerial duties +ebbed so low that he left these entirely to an assistant, and spent the +Sunday on the Musselburgh race-course. Yet this is the man whom Dean +Stanley with exquisite infelicity selects as one of the heroes of the +Church of Scotland. In the picture of old 'Jupiter' there is something +that recalls the belief of the erratic Lord Brougham, when he voted +against the Veto Act and the right to protest against unsuitable +presentees, from fear that it might end in 'rejecting men too strict in +morals and too diligent in duty to please our vitiated tastes!' +Carlyle's _Autobiography_ is one of the most instructive of books; like +the similar disclosure by Benvenuto Cellini, it is the presentation of +a man who is destitute of a moral sense. + +Although in the pulpits of the metropolis Moderatism was but only too +well represented, there were yet some striking exceptions. Sir Walter +Scott, whose feelings led him strongly in the direction of the +Latitudinarian party, has yet drawn in _Guy Mannering_ an admirable +sketch of Dr. John Erskine, the colleague of Principal Robertson in the +Greyfriars, and for long the leader of the Evangelical party in the +Church of Scotland. Some of the members of that party were gladly heard +by Miller, but his greatest delight he confesses to have been in +hearing the discourses of the old Seceder, Dr. Thomas M'Crie. 'Be +sure,' said his uncles to him on leaving Cromarty, 'and go to hear +M'Crie.' The doctor was no master of rhetoric or of pulpit eloquence, +but the doctrine was the theology of the true descendant of the men of +Drumclog and Bothwell. Nothing is more characteristic of the university +system of Scotland than that the greatest ecclesiastical scholar she +could produce was to be found in a humble seceding chapel at the foot +of Carrubber's Close. In Scotland, at least within the present century, +no more influential book has been published than his _Life of Knox_, +which silently made its appearance in 1811. In the revival of +ecclesiastical and national feeling in the country the book will ever +remain a classic and a landmark. There it occupies the place which, in +the field of classical and historical scholarship, is taken by Wolf's +_Prolegomena to Homer_. Lord Jeffrey could truly declare that to fit +one's-self for the task of even a reviewer of M'Crie, the special +reading of several years would be necessary. Its influence was at once +felt. The 'solemn sneer' of the Humes, Gibbons, Robertsons, and +Tytlers, and, be it mentioned with regret, of even Scott in that +unworthy squib against the religion of his country, _Old Mortality_, +had done much, at least among the _literati_ and the upper classes, to +obliterate and sap a belief or knowledge of the great work which had +been accomplished for civil liberty by the early reformers; but now +the school of flimsy devotees of Mary, Montrose and Claverhouse, +with its unctuous retention of the sneer (or, historically meant, +compliment) of the Merry Monarch as to Presbyterianism being no fit +religion for a gentleman, the school whose expiring flicker is seen in +Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, was for ever exploded by +the research of M'Crie. It was in an unlucky hour that Scott ventured +a reply to the strictures of his reviewer. Never was humiliation more +deep or more bitterly felt by the novelist. The novel of Scott is +about as gross a caricature as 'Carrion' Heath's _Life_ of Oliver +Cromwell, and for the historical restoration of the great Reformer, +M'Crie has done in his book what Carlyle, in his _Letters of +Cromwell_, has for ever effected for the true presentation of the +Protector. + +In the bookstalls of the city he would pick up some new additions to +his shelf. At odd hours, too, he would hang about Castle Street in the +hope of seeing Sir Walter Scott. The capital at this time, though sadly +shorn of its old literary coteries in the days of Burns, still numbered +such men as Jeffrey, Cockburn, Dugald Stewart, and Professor Wilson; +and he did manage, one evening, to spend some hours with a cousin in +Ambrose's, where the famous club used to hold their meetings in a room +below. But none of these faces was he then destined to know in the +flesh, and the 'pride of all Scotsmen' whom Carlyle met in the +Edinburgh streets, 'worn with care, the joy all fled,' had passed away +the next time when Miller visited the capital. + +Work, we have seen, was plentiful in the town. The great fire had swept +Parliament Close and the High Street, carrying with it the steeple of +the old Tron, and many of the lofty tenements that formed such a +feature of Old Edinburgh. But he was feeling the first effects of the +stone-cutters' disease, and his lungs, affected by the stone dust, +threatened consumption. He states that few of his class reached the age +of forty through the trouble, and not more than one in fifty ever came +to forty-five. But circumstances fortunately enabled him at this +critical juncture to leave work for a time. The house on the Coalhill +had turned out better than was expected, and, with a clear balance of +fifty pounds in his pocket, he could set sail for Cromarty, where, +after a weary seven days' voyage through fog and mist, he was met on +landing by his uncles. Not for ten years, and then under very different +circumstances, was he again to see Edinburgh. + +During this period of convalescence he experienced a religious change, +leading to positions from which he never saw reason to recede. 'It is,' +he says, 'at once delicate and dangerous to speak of one's own +spiritual condition, or of the emotional sentiments on which one's +conclusions regarding it are so often doubtfully founded. Egotism in +the religious form is perhaps more tolerated than any other, but it is +not on that account less perilous to the egotist himself. There need +be, however, less delicacy in speaking of one's beliefs than of one's +feelings.' This last remark is eminently characteristic at once of the +individual and of the national type of severe reticence on internal +religious experience. This may serve to throw some light on the taunt +flung by Dr. Johnson, in one of his most boisterous moods in Skye, at +the head of Boswell. 'Can you,' he asked, 'name one book of any value +on a religious subject written by the Scottish clergy?' Johnson does +not seem to be dwelling on specifically theological works; he has +rather in his mind the manuals of a homiletic or devotional order, in +which he rather wildly asserts 'the clergy of England to have produced +the most valuable works in theory and practice.' It might fairly have +been retorted on Johnson that, were this so, the physicians at least +had ministered but poorly to themselves, by quoting to him his own +remark that he had never once met with a sincerely religious English +clergyman; but Bozzy, patriotic for once, fell upon the defence of +faithful discharge of pulpit ministrations and poor endowments. It +might have been wiser to have fallen back on the long and militant +struggle of the Church of Scotland for her existence, wiser still to +have based the defence on national and psychological grounds. Nothing +in the Scottish character is more remarkable than the absence of the +feeling that led Luther and Wesley to a constant introspection, or at +least to its frank outward expression and effusive declaration of their +spiritual state. Some little knowledge of this national trait we think +would have saved much windy and remote declamation about fanaticism, +gloomy austerity, and enthusiasm--that mental bugbear of the eighteenth +century, and well-nigh sole theological stock-in-trade of the +gentlemanly and affected school of Hume and Robertson. The absence of +anything like mysticism either in the nation or in its theology has +been, therefore, unfavourable to the appearance of any cheap or verbal +pietism. Calvinism, it may be added, is poor in comparison with +Lutheranism, poorer still when contrasted in this respect with the +Roman Church; for, while the former has Behmen and Swedenborg, and the +latter many names such as Guyon and Rosmini among a host, Scotland has +nothing of this kind, unless in the case of Erskine of Linlathen or +Campbell of Row. The reason for this would seem to be that Calvinism +has both a religious and a political side. As a philosophic creed, at +least in details, it affords a completeness of presentation that leaves +no room or indeed desire to pass behind the veil and dwell on the +unknowable and the unknown. + +Miller, at all events, found that hitherto his life had lacked a +'central sun,' as he expresses it, round which his feelings and +intellect could anchor themselves. This he found by a curiously +instructive combination of historical and geological reasoning. +Professor Blackie has pointed out that the true secret of the vitality +of the old Paganism and its logical internal consistency simply lay in +the fact of the great humanity of the deities it created. This, also, +as Miller himself no less clearly shows, is at the bottom of the +enduring element in the lower reaches of Catholicism. 'There is,' says +our Scottish Neander, Rabbi John Duncan, 'an old cross stone of granite +by the roadside as you wind up the hill at Old Buda, in Hungary, upon +which a worn and defaced image of our Saviour is cut, which I used +often to pass. The thorough woebegoneness of that image used to haunt +me long--that old bit of granite, the ideal of human sorrow, weakness +and woebegoneness. To this day it will come back before me--always with +that dumb gaze of perfect calmness--no complaining--the picture of meek +and mute suffering. I am a Protestant and dislike image-worship, yet +never can I get that statue out of my mind.' This, then, to Miller +formed the 'central sun'--'the Word made flesh;' not merely as a +received mental doctrine, but as a fact laid hold of, and round which +other facts find their true position and explanation. 'There may be,' +he allows, 'men who, through a peculiar idiosyncrasy of constitution, +are capable of loving, after a sort, a mere abstract God, unseen and +unconceivable; though, as shown by the air of sickly sentimentality +borne by almost all that has been said and written on the subject, the +feeling in its true form must be a very rare and exceptional one. In +all my experience of men I never knew a genuine instance of it. The +love of an abstract God seems to be as little natural to the ordinary +human constitution as the love of an abstract sun or planet.' + +No less interesting are his arguments from the geological position. It +was a difficulty which had long lain heavy on the mind of Byron when, +the reader may remember, in his last days in 1823 he beat over much +theological and metaphysical jungle with the Scottish doctor +Kennedy--the greatness of the universe and the littleness of the +paragon of animals man, and the consequent difficulty of satisfactorily +allowing a redemptive movement in Heaven for man in all his petty +weakness. Pascal had attempted to meet this by what Hallam calls 'a +magnificent lamentation' and by a metaphysical subtlety, reasoning from +this very smallness to his ultimate greatness. But the geological +reasoning of Miller has the undoubted merit of being scientific and +inductive. In geology the dominant note is, in one word, progress. +'There was a time in our planet,' and it will be noted that the +argument is perfectly independent of the appearance of man, late with +himself, early with Lyell, 'when only dead matter appeared, after which +plants and animals of a lower order were made manifest. After ages of +vast extent the inorganic yielded to the organic, and the human period +began,--man, a fellow-worker with the Creator who first produced it. +And of the identity of at least his intellect with that of his Maker, +and, of consequence, of the integrity of the revelation which declares +that he was created in God's own image, we have direct evidence in his +ability of not only conceiving of God's own contrivances, but even of +reproducing them, and this not as a mere imitator, but as an original +thinker.' Man thus, as Hegel says, re-thinks Creation. But higher yet +the tide of empire takes its way. The geologist is not like the +Neapolitan thinker, Vico, with his doctrine of recurring cycles in man. +The geologist 'finds no example of dynasties once passed away again +returning. There has been no repetition of the dynasty of the fish--of +the reptile--of the mammal. The long ascending line from dead matter to +man has been a progress Godwards--not an asymptotical progress, but +destined from the first to furnish a point of union; and occupying that +point as true God and true man, as Creator and created, we recognise +the adorable Monarch of all the future.' Such an argument is indeed a +reach above the vaguely declamatory theory of Swinburne of man being +the master of all things, and above the theory of Feuerbach that finds +God merely in the enlarged shadow projected by the Ego. + +His somewhat impaired strength led him to think of a livelihood through +little jobs of monumental stonework in a style superior to that +introduced as yet into the countryside, and to this period of +observation of the Scottish character acquired through living in the +vicinity of farm-houses, villages, churchyards, as the varying means of +lodging were afforded him, he ascribed much of the knowledge which he +turned to so good an editorial account. In the company, too, of the +parish minister Stewart he was happy, for, according to his own +conviction and the testimony of many others, he was a man of no +ordinary acuteness and of unquestioned pulpit ability. Indeed, Miller +never hesitated to declare that for the fibre of his whole thinking he +was more indebted to Chalmers and to this almost unknown Cromarty +minister than to any two other men. Stewart's power seems to have lain +in the detection of subtle analogies and in pictorial verbal power, in +which he resembled Guthrie. In an obituary notice in _The Witness_ of +Nov. 13, 1847 he dwells with affection on the man, and illustrates +admirably the type of intellect and its dangers. 'Goldsmith,' he +observes, 'when he first entered upon his literary career, found that +all the good things on the side of truth had been already said; and +that _his_ good things, if he really desired to produce any, would +require all to be said on the side of paradox and error. Poor Edward +Irving formed a melancholy illustration of this species of originality. +His stock of striking things on the side of truth was soon expended; +notoriety had meanwhile become as essential to his comfort as ardent +spirits to that of the dram-drinker; and so, to procure the supply of +the unwholesome pabulum, without which he could not exist, he launched +into a perilous ocean of heterodoxy and extravagance, and made +shipwreck of his faith. Stewart's originality was not the originality +of opening up new vistas in which all was unfamiliar, simply because +the direction in which they led was one in which men's thought had no +occasion to travel and no business to perform. It was the greatly +higher ability of enabling men to see new and unwonted objects in old +familiar directions.' For sixteen years Miller sat under his ministry, +and for twelve was admitted to his closest intimacy. + +But in time work of even the 'Old Mortality' order grew scarce. +Accordingly, in the summer of June 1828, he visited Inverness, and +inserted in the local papers an advertisement for employment. He felt +that he could execute such commissions with greater care and exactness +than were usual, and in a style that could be depended upon for correct +spelling. He mentions himself the case of the English mason who mangled +Proverbs xxxi. 10 into the bewildering abbreviation that 'A virtuous +woman is 5s. to her husband,' and he might also have mentioned the case +of the statue to George II. in Stephen's Green, Dublin, erected +doubtless under municipal supervision, and which yet in the course of a +brief Latin inscription of thirteen lines can show more than one +mistake to the individual line. He had the curious, yet perhaps after +all not unpractical, idea that his scheme for employment might be +materially improved by his sending a copy of verses to the paper, in +the belief that the public would infer that the writer of correct verse +could be a reliable workman. But nothing came of this. In justice to +the editor it may be allowed that the versification, if easy, was +nothing remarkable, and felicity of epithets may be no guarantee for +perfection of epitaphs. The reflection, however, came to him that there +was no advantage to be won in thus, as he says, scheming himself into +employment. It was not congenial, and walking 'half an inch taller' +along the streets on the strength of this resolution, he was actually +offered the Queen's shilling, or the King's to be chronologically +correct, by a smart recruiting sergeant of a Highland regiment who from +the powerful physique of the man had naturally inferred the possession +of a choice recruit. + +He determined, accordingly, to face the worst and publish. He made a +hasty selection of his verses through the last six years and approached +the office of the _Inverness Courier_. This was a highly fortunate +opening, for that paper was, then and up to 1878, edited by Robert +Carruthers of Dumfries, who had been appointed editor of the _Courier_ +in the very same year of Miller's visit. His _Life of Pope_ published +in 1853 is still a standard production, and altogether Carruthers was +one of the ablest editors in Scotland, and his paper which was edited +on Liberal lines was a very powerful organ in his day. The friendship +then begun lasted till the death of Miller unbroken, and was mutually +advantageous. While he was still in the Highland capital he received +word of the fatal illness of his uncle James, and his first work on his +return was a neat tombstone for this close friend of his father and +worthy to whom he was so deeply indebted for much of his own subsequent +distinction. + +His volume of verse under the title of _Poems Written in the Leisure +Hours of a Journeyman Mason_ issued slowly in 1829 from the press, and +its appearance in the disillusionising medium of black and white +convinced him that after all his true vocation was not to be found in +poetry, for many lines which had appeared as tolerable, if not more, to +the writer in the process of composition were now robbed of their charm +by commission to print. Indeed, at no time does his versification rise +beyond fluent description. It lacks body and form, and was really in +his case nothing but a sort of rudimentary stratum on which he was to +rear a very strong and powerful prose style. He was lacking in ear, and +he confessed to an organ that recognised with difficulty the difference +of the bagpipe and the big drum. The critics were not very partial to +the venture. The tone of the majority was that of the _Quarterly_ upon +Keats, and the autocrats of poetical merit declared that he was safer +with his chisel than on Parnassus. One little oasis, however, in the +desert of depreciation did manage to reach him in a letter, through his +friend Forsyth of Elgin, from Thomas Pringle of Roxburgh who had seen +the book. In early days the poet had been a clerk in the Register House +of Edinburgh, where his _Scenes of Teviotdale_ had secured him an +introduction to Scott, who extended to him the same ready support which +he had bestowed on Leyden. By his influence he was appointed editor of +_Blackwood's Magazine_, and later on emigrated with a party of +relatives to the Cape, where his unsparing denunciations of the +colonial policy in its treatment of the natives, and his advocacy of +what would now be called the anti-Rhodes party brought him into +complications with the officials in Downing Street and the colonial +authorities. Poor Pringle!--among the one-song writers, the singers of +the one lilt that rises out of a mass of now forgotten verse, his name +is high, and he has won for himself an abiding niche in the hearts of +his countrymen by his _Emigrant's Lament_, where he touches with a +faultless hand the scenery of 'bonnie Teviotdale and Cheviot mountains +blue.' + +The volume of verses was not without its more immediate results in a +local circle. It brought him under the notice of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder +of Relugas, who is now remembered by his _Wolf of Badenoch_--a not +quite unsuccessful effort at bending the bow of Ulysses, though without +the dramatic force of Scott. By Carruthers he was introduced to +Principal Baird, and thus a link with the past was effected through a +man who had edited the poems of Michael Bruce, had befriended Alexander +Murray for a short period the occupant of the Oriental chair in +Edinburgh, and been a patron of Pringle and a close friend of Scott. By +Baird he was strongly pressed to venture on a literary life in the +capital, but the time was not propitious, and he wisely resolved to +devote himself to several years of accumulation and reflection before +he should embark on a vocation for which he had no great liking, and in +which, even to the last, he had but little belief. For an ordinary +journalist he would indeed have been as little qualified as Burns when +offered a post on Perry's _Morning Chronicle_. The justness of his +resolution was fully shown when the opportunity found him, and he was +then fully prepared for the work he was to do. He was induced by the +Principal to draw up for him a brief sketch of his life, and of this a +draft bringing it up to 1825 was composed and sent to Edinburgh. + +There existed at this time in the North the remains of a little coterie +of ladies, numbering among its members Henry Mackenzie's cousin,--Mrs. +Rose of Kilravock, whom Burns had visited on his Highland tour, Lady +Gordon Cumming, and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, whose once well-known +_Letters from the Mountains_ have yielded in popularity to her song of +_Highland Laddie_, which commemorates the departure in 1799 of the +Marquis of Huntly with Sir Ralph Abercromby. By none of them, however, +was he more noticed than by Miss Dunbar of Boath, who occupies in his +early correspondence the place taken in the letters of Burns by Mrs. +Dunlop. During his visits to this excellent lady he explored the +curious sand-dunes of Culbin which still arrest the attention of the +geologist and traveller in his rambles by the Findhorn. By Miss Dunbar +he was pressed to embark on literature, while Mrs. Grant was of the +opinion that he might follow the example of Allan Cunningham, who was +engaged in the studio of Chantrey. But such patronage was in his case +no less wisely exercised than admitted, nor was his the nature to be +in any way spoiled by it; his self-reliant disposition suffered no +such baneful effects as were felt by the much weaker nature of Thom +of Inverurie, the one lyrical utterance of Aberdeenshire, or by Burns +in the excitement of his Edinburgh season. He even became a town +councillor, though he admits that his masterly inactivity was such as +led him to absent himself pretty wholly from the duties, whose onerous +nature may be inferred when the most important business before the +council was, on one occasion, clubbing together a penny each to pay a +ninepenny postage in the complete absence of town funds. + +Into his life at this period a new vision was introduced through the +appearance on the scene of a young lady whom he was afterwards to make +his wife. Sauntering through the wood on the hill overlooking the +Cromarty Firth he met Miss Lydia Fraser, who was engaged in reading 'an +elaborate essay on Causation.' The reader may remember--with feelings, +we hope, of contrition for Mr. Lang's railway lyric on the _fin de +siècle_ students of Miss Braddon and Gaboriau, and for the degenerate +tendencies of the age,--the curiously fitting parallel in which the +geologist Buckland met in a Devonshire coach, his future wife, Miss +Morland, deep in a ponderous and recently issued folio of Cuvier, into +which even he himself had not found time to dip! Miller was ten years +the senior of his young friend, whose father had been in business in +Inverness, and whose mother had retired to Cromarty to live in a +retired way upon a small annuity, added to by her daughter's private +pupils. As a girl Miss Fraser had been a boarder in the family of +George Thomson, whose _Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs_, +enriched by the hand of Burns with about a hundred songs, forms an +abiding monument of their joint taste and judgment. The acquaintance +ripened into intimacy and an agreement that for three years they were +to make Scotland their home, when, should nothing then turn up they +were to emigrate and try their fortune in America. But fortunately an +opening occurred which was to retain him at home for the work he was so +naturally fitted to perform. + +Cromarty had hitherto been without a bank. Now, through the +representation of local landowners and traders, the Commercial Bank of +Scotland was induced to extend one of its branches to the town. The +services of a local shipowner were secured for the post of agent, and +Miller was offered the place of accountant. It was necessary, of +course, that he should qualify himself for his new duties, and so he +sailed to Leith to acquire his initiation at Linlithgow. He was now in +his thirty-second year. + +Before leaving Cromarty he had been engaged upon his _Scenes and +Legends_ of the traditional history of the country, and on his +forwarding his manuscript to Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, to whom it is +dedicated, he was invited by the hospitable baronet to meet Mr. Adam +Black the publisher, whose long retention of the copyright of the +Waverley Novels has shed distinction on the firm of which he was the +head. By him very generous terms were offered, and Miller by his +venture realised £60 over his second book, which still seems to enjoy +in its thirteenth edition no slight share of popularity. He was even +pressed by Sir Thomas to make his own house at Grange his residence +while in the south, but, Linlithgow having been already fixed upon he +took his passage in the fly-boat running on the canal between Edinburgh +and Glasgow and soon 'reached the fine old burgh as the brief winter +day was coming to a close, and was seated next morning at my desk, not +a hundred yards from the spot on which Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh had +taken his stand when he shot the Good Regent.' At first he was rather +diffident of his ability for the work, the swiftness of mechanical +summation never to the end coming to him perfectly natural; though, in +the course of a brief two months' absence from Cromarty, he was able to +join the bank with such a working acquaintance with the details of the +business that, when the policy of Sir Robert Peel threatened an attack +upon the circulation of the one-pound note, he was competent to publish +a series of articles, _Words of Warning to the People of Scotland_, in +which he defended the cash credit system of Scottish banking. This had +before been fully expounded by Hume and Scott, and Miller could show +its peculiar ability for enabling men to 'coin their characters should +they be good ones, even should houses, ships, and furniture be +wanting.' In the years to come his experience enabled him to write his +own business and commercial leaders in his paper, but as yet his income +did not exceed one hundred pounds, and he willingly joined in the +continuation of Wilson's _Tales of the Borders_. This work has retained +its popularity, though probably few are aware of the complexity of the +authorship. As edited by Leighton, it preserves the names of several +writers who occupy a more or less humble niche among the minor singers +of Scotland, and in the list of contributors, along with Miller, to the +work are found the two Bethunes, Alexander and John. He wrote for the +_Tales_ a good deal of rather poorly remunerated work, and his papers +on Burns and Fergusson afford a not unpleasing attempt to weave the +lives of the two poets into an imaginative narrative. On their +appearance, the papers were quoted as original reminiscences, though a +more discriminating criticism could not have failed to detect their +real nature. Miller possessed the logical and personal element too +strong to merge his own individuality successfully in the characters of +others. The dramatic faculty was deficient. Yet it was not quite an +unfortunate attempt to thus anticipate such a sketch as Dr. Hutchison +Stirling has so admirably worked out in his _Burns in Drama_. + +Into a very different arena he was now to be drawn. Politically and +ecclesiastically, it was a period of excitement. In 1829 Catholic +Emancipation had no sooner been passed than O'Connell brought in his +motions for the Repeal and the Tithe War. The latter was a protest by +the Romanists against paying tithes for the maintenance of the Irish +Church, whose incumbents were a mere outpost of the Tory and +Episcopalian party, converting, as Lord Rosebery has said, nobody, and +alienating everybody. On the withdrawal of Grey, and the fall of Peel, +Lord Melbourne had carried on for years a sort of guerilla warfare with +a varying majority, too dependent on the Irish vote to give general +satisfaction. The Tithe Act, however, was passed, and this made the +support of the English clergy in Ireland a charge upon rent. The +position in which matters then stood with the Government will be +clearly seen by a reference to the admirable speech of Macaulay, in May +1839, to the electors of Edinburgh. In Ross-shire, the tension of +affairs had been rendered more acute by a wave of Tory reaction which +induced the Church of Scotland to cast the weight of her influence +against the Whigs; but the people, as has ever been the case upon such +aberrations from the national policy, had steadily declined to follow +this lead, although the endowment scheme for new chapels had been dealt +with by the Whigs in a niggard and unsatisfactory way. + +In Cromarty the cause of the Church was strong. Since the Revolution, +the succession in the parish had been at once popular and able. The +position taken up hitherto by Miller and his uncles had been a middle +one. With strong hereditary attachment to the national establishment +they united personal leanings which led them to a sympathy with the +standpoint and the theology of the Seceders. But as yet Miller was, he +says, 'thoroughly an Established man.' The revenues of the Church he +regarded as the patrimony of the people; and he looked not unnaturally +to a time 'when that unwarrantable appropriation of them, through +which the aristocracy had sought to extend its influence, but which +had served only greatly to reduce its power in the country, would come +to an end.' Still he confesses that as yet there were no signs of what +he would himself have desired to see--a general and popular agitation +against patronage--though he noted with approval the 'revival of the +old spirit in the Church.' The time had, however, come when he could +hesitate no longer. He saw with anxiety the decisions go against the +Church in March 1838, and of the Lords in May 1839, the victory of his +case by the presentee to Auchterarder, and the declaration of the +illegality of the Veto Act of 1834. 'Now,' he says, 'I felt more +deeply; and for at least one night--after reading the speech of Lord +Brougham and the decision of the House of Lords in the Auchterarder +case--I slept none.' Could he not, he reasoned with himself, do +something in the hour of danger to rescue the patrimony of his country +out of the hands of an alien aristocracy, which since 1712 had +obstinately set itself in hereditary opposition to the people? In the +morning he wrote a letter addressed to Lord Brougham, the grandson of +the historian Robertson, to which we shall have occasion later on +to refer in detail. This admirable piece of reasoning and clever +statement--the result of a week's work--was sent to Robert Paul, the +manager of the Commercial Bank in Edinburgh. By him its value was +quickly seen, and by the strenuous advice of Dr. Candlish it was at +once put in print. Four editions in the course of well-nigh as many +weeks proved its excellence; and it was fortunate enough to secure +encomiums from two men so different in their leanings as Daniel +O'Connell and Mr. Gladstone. + +The writer who could at such a critical position produce a pamphlet of +this nature was, of course, a marked man. The leaders of the +Evangelical party of the Church in Edinburgh had been engaged in a +scheme for the starting of a paper. From the press of the capital, and +from such provincial organs as _The Aberdeen Herald_ and _The +Constitutional_, as edited by Mr. Adam and Mr. Joseph Robertson, the +'travelled thane Athenian Aberdeen' who drifted into the Crimean War +later on, and who drifted with the Parliament House party in a +reactionary ecclesiastical policy at this time, had been content to +draw such scanty information as he ever possessed on the real issues +at stake in the Church of Scotland. Indeed, his lordship had gone so +far as to taunt the Evangelical Party as composed but of the +intellectual _débris_ of the country, and of the 'wild men' in the +Church. Sir Robert Peel, who really knew nothing of the intricacies of +the question, was content to believe that there was a conspiracy to +defeat the law and to rend the constitution. But the ignorance of the +Premier and the taunt of Lord Aberdeen came but with an ill grace from +them when flung against such men as Sir David Brewster, Chalmers, +Welsh, Guthrie, Bonar, Duff, and Miller, and the whole intellectual +force of the country at large. Indeed, to the very last, the +indecision and the ignorance as to the state of the country shown by +Lord Aberdeen were but the natural results of his holding his +ecclesiastical conscience in fee from such men as Robertson of Ellon, +Paull of Tullynessle, and Pirie of Dyce--these bucolic personages, +'like full-blown peony-roses glistening after a shower,' whose triple +and conjunct capacity, joined to that of their master, might have been +cut, to borrow the eulogy of Sir James Mackintosh upon Burke, out of +the humblest of their rivals and never have been missed. It was really +high time that something should be done, when Lord Medwyn could pose +as an ecclesiastical scholar by a few garbled quotations from Beza, +professing to set in their true light the views held by the Reformers +upon patronage; and when these very extracts, together with the +copious errors of the press, had been worked up by Robertson of Ellon +to be quoted by Lord Aberdeen third-hand as an embodiment of oracular +learning and wisdom! + +No apology, therefore, need here be made for the inclusion of an +extract from that remarkable work by Dr. William Alexander--_Johnny +Gibb_--to which we have before had occasion to refer, and which must +ever rank as the classic of the movement with which Miller's own name +is associated. It deals with the sort of windy pabulum then served up +by the Aberdeen papers to obscure the real issues, and it describes in +the raciest and most mellow style of the lamented writer the meeting +in the schoolhouse of Jonathan Tawse, at whose hospitable board are +assembled the three farmers and the local doctor. Readers in the North +of Scotland can from their own knowledge read much between the lines; +and they will not forget that Mr. Adam and Mr. Joseph Robertson were +the only two men who could be found with effrontery sufficient to +shake hands with Mr. Edwards in the all-too notorious induction at +Marnoch. + + 'Jonathan took up an Aberdeen newspaper, wherein were recorded + certain of the proceedings of the Evangelical ministers, who were + visiting different parishes for the purpose of holding meetings. + First he put on his "specs," and next he selected and read out + several paragraphs, with such headings as "THE SCHISMATICS IN + A----," "THE FIRE-RAISERS IN B----," and so on, winding up this + part with the concluding words of one paragraph, which were + these:--"So ended this compound of vain, false, and seditious + statements on the position of the Church, and which must have been + most offensive to every friend of truth, peace, or loyalty who + heard it." + + "I say Amen to ilka word o' that," said Dr. Drogemweal. "Sneevlin' + hypocrites. That's your non-intrusion meetin's. It concerns every + loyal subject to see them pitten doon." + + '"Here's fat the editor says, in a weel-reason't, and vera calm an' + temperate article," continued Jonathan--"he's speakin' o' the + fire-raisers": "How much reliance could be placed on the kind of + information communicated by these reverend gentlemen will be + readily imagined by such of our readers as have read or listened to + any of the harangues which the schismatics are so liberally dealing + forth. If simple laymen, in pursuing objects of interest or of + ambition, were to be guilty of half the misrepresentations of facts + and concealment of the truth which are now, it would seem, thought + not unbecoming on the part of _Evangelical_ ministers, they would + be justly scouted from society." "That's fat I ca' sen'in the + airrow straucht to the mark."' + + "Seerly," interposed Mains, who had been listening with much + gravity. + + "A weel-feather't shaft, tae," said Dr. Drogemweal. + + '"An' it's perfectly true, ilka word o't. They're nae better o' the + ae han' nor incendiaries, wan'erin' here an' there to raise strife + amo' peaceable fowk; and syne their harangues--a clean perversion + o' the constitutional law, an' veelint abuse o' the institutions o' + the countra."' + +How many specimens of that style of 'calm and temperate article' were +produced in the North, no one with a recollection for either history or +for humour need recall at this hour. Somewhat later, Miller could say +in _The Witness_ that in a few days he had clipped out of the papers +what he had seen written against such a man of position and courtesy as +Mr. Makgill Crichton of Rankeilour in the course of a fortnight. It +amounted to eleven feet six inches when pieced together, and was for +the most part gross abuse and vulgar personalities. + +The hour, then, had come and the man. Miller was invited to Edinburgh +to meet the leaders of the Evangelical party, and he was offered the +position of editor of the newspaper, which started its first issue on +January 15, 1840, appearing bi-weekly upon Wednesdays and Saturdays. +At the end of the bank's financial year, he was presented by his +fellow-townsmen with a breakfast service of plate, and the presence +of his uncle Alexander was to Miller a circumstance of peculiar +satisfaction. In a few days later he was seated at the editorial desk. +For sixteen years he was with undiminished success to edit _The +Witness_. But here we pause. The conflict in which he was to engage +calls for a special chapter. The question has been approached from all +sides, civil as well as ecclesiastical. But it is fitting that here, at +least, an attempt be made to connect the struggle with the history and +the peculiar mental and moral characteristics of the Scottish people. +It will be seen that the question involves far-reaching, deep-rooted, +and closely connected points of issue. It will therefore be the attempt +of the next chapter to show the really national and democratic features +of the conflict, and to briefly indicate how the civil and religious +rights of the people, long before staked and won by the early +Reformers, were again, when surrendered by an alien nobility, saved for +them--from the point, at least, of abiding literature--by two men; who, +sprung themselves from the people, the one the son of a Cromarty sailor +and the other of an Aberdeenshire crofter, wrote the leaders in _The +Witness_ and _Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk_. The best years of Miller's +own life, sixteen years of unceasing turmoil and overwork, were spent +in making these issues abundantly clear to the people. No apology need +then be made for an effort to reset these positions in their historical +connection, and to exhibit the logical nexus of affairs from 1560 to +1843. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE SCOTTISH CHURCH, 1560-1843--'THE WITNESS' + + 'The fate of a nation was riding that night.' + + _Paul Revere's Ride_, LONGFELLOW. + + +When Andrew Melville said to King James VI., 'Sir, as divers times +before have I told you, so now again must I tell you, there are two +kings and two kingdoms in Scotland; there is King James, the head of +the Commonwealth, and there is Christ Jesus, the King of the Church, +whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a +king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member,' he expressed what, from +its foundation as an Establishment in 1560 till now, has been in every +one of its constituent parts the belief and practice of the indomitable +Kirk of Scotland. + +These were words which the British Solomon was to remember. Over the +border, where the obedient English clergy, who looked from the humblest +curate to the highest dignitary to the throne alone for their support, +professed to find in the pedantic pupil of the great Buchanan the +wisdom of a present deity and regarded his slobbering utterances as +'the counsels of a god,' James found himself in more congenial society +for the promulgation of his views on kingcraft which were to embroil +the nation and drive his descendants from the throne. The preface to +the Authorised Version of the Bible by the translators of 1611 shews +the depth to which the Anglican clergy could sink. No wonder that James +found such men ready tools to his hand. In their company he could +complacently vapour about 'No bishop, no king,' or express his joy in +finding himself for the first time in the company of 'holy and learned +men.' When Melville, as professor of divinity at Sedan, was dying an +exile in 1622 James was dismissing the two English houses of Parliament +for what he was pleased to call an invasion of his prerogative; the +rumours of the Spanish marriage were in the air, the first instalment +of the royal legacy of kingcraft. 'No bishop, no king': The nation was +to take him at his word, and to demonstrate pretty effectively that +kingdoms can do without either--and both. + +'Not a king--but a member;' 'in all matters ecclesiastical as well as +civil head supreme'--the whole history of Scotland was to run for three +hundred years in these grooves. This is the doctrine which, from 1560 +till now, has in Scotland been known as the Headship of Christ. Without +a correct understanding of this question, not as a mere metaphysical or +theological figment, but as a reality most vitally 'within practical +politics' carrying effects direct and visible into every corner of the +national life, the history of Scotland must of necessity be a sealed +book--the play of _Hamlet_ without the royal Dane. To the English +reader this has been largely obscured, from the fact that the chief +sources of information open to him are not such as present a rational +or connected story. George Borrow found that Scott's caricature of _Old +Mortality_ was what Englishmen had in their minds, and that some thin +romanticism about Prince Charles Edward was the end and substance of +their knowledge. Yet such a presentation would be no less absurd than +_Hudibras_ would be for the men of the Long Parliament. Scott was too +much occupied with the external and material conditions of the country, +too much engrossed by obvious necessity of materials in the romantic +element of Scottish history, and too little in sympathy with the +spiritual and moral forces at work to present anything like a complete +narrative, while his feudal sentiments were nourished by the almost +entire lack of the political instinct. The ecclesiastical chapters in +John Hill Burton's _History_ are not equal to the main body of his +work; and, if the _Lectures_ of Dean Stanley are the characteristically +thin production of one confessing to but a superficial knowledge of the +vast literature of the field,' the _Ecclesiastical History_ of Grub is +only the work of a mere Episcopalian antiquary, and the lack of +judgment and political insight appears on every page. 'It seems to me,' +says Carlyle, 'hard measure that this Scottish man Knox, now after +three hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the +world, intrinsically for having been, in such way as was then possible +to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen'--harder still, say we, that the +subject of Milton's great eulogy should be judged by minds of the +notes-and-queries order, or by those of the class of Hume and +Robertson, who have such a gentlemanly horror at everything that +savours of enthusiasm as to miss the central point, the _coincidence_ +of civil and religious liberty. + +'In every sense a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. +A man's, or a nation of men's.' Yet we find Hume writing to Robertson +that if the divine were willing to give up his Mary, the philosopher +was willing to give up his Charles, and there would at least be the +joint pleasure of seeing John Knox made completely ridiculous. 'Who,' +writes Robertson to Gibbon, 'is Mr. Hayley? His Whiggism is so bigoted, +and his Christianity so fierce, that he almost disgusts one with _two +very good things_!' Christianity was then only a good thing when it +had good things to offer to pluralists of the Warburtonian order. Yet +these two garbled and distorted narratives are still the most widely +known versions in England. Little wonder, therefore, is it that Carlyle +should ask, 'I would fain know the history of Scotland; who can tell it +me? Robertson, say innumerable voices; Robertson, against the world. I +open Robertson; and find there, through long ages too confused for +narrative, a cunning answer and hypothesis--a scandalous chronicle (as +for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but +over light-headed; and Henry Darnley, a Booby who had fine legs. Thus +is History written.' + +In England, the Reformation took place in a way quite different from +that in which it was effected in Scotland. The strong hand of Henry +VIII. piloted the nation for a time through a crisis, and for a space +at least it would appear that the nation was content to surrender its +religious conscience into the hands of the king. He attempted, says +Macaulay with perfect truth, to constitute an Anglican church differing +from the Roman Catholic on the point of the Supremacy, and on that +alone. There can be little doubt that to the court of Henry the king +was the head of both church and state, and that the power of the keys +temporal as well as ecclesiastical resided in the Crown. So far did +Cranmer carry out this idea that, regarding his own spiritual functions +as having ceased with the death of Henry, he renewed his commission +under Edward VI., and for mere denial of the Act of Supremacy More and +Fisher were sent to the block. It is true that Elizabeth was induced to +part with a good deal of this exaggerated prerogative, yet she still +exercised such a domineering and inquisitorial power as threatened to +unfrock any refractory creature of her creation. It was natural, +therefore, that the church created almost exclusively by the will of +the Crown should for her rights and privileges rest entirely upon the +Crown. The people had never been consulted in her creation, and it was +to the Crown alone that the clergy could look. Her constitution, her +traditions, and her government were all monarchical; and if, at first, +she was moderate in her tone of adulation, it was easy to see that, led +largely by interest, she would begin to assert the divine origin of the +powers of the king, with the deduction of 'no bishop, no king' and of +passive obedience, which made itself heard from the pulpits of Laud, +Montagu, and Mainwaring, and in the treatise of Filmer. + +Passing from the more servile ranks of the clergy to those of the laity +it appeared as the party cry of a class. To many it has often appeared +strange how such an absurd and illogical doctrine could become even the +shibboleth of a political party. Yet at bottom the doctrine of the +divine right of the king was not very unfavourable to the divine right +of squires, and king and cavaliers were bound together by obvious ties +of interest in the maintenance of the royal prerogative against the +rising tide of political opposition. Holy Alliances in recent times +have not found this doctrine strange to them, and a high elevation of +the prerogative and the mitre was the very breath of existence to a +church whose being depended on the stability of the throne. Passive +obedience was a convenient cry for those who never dreamed that the +breath of the king could unmake them as a breath had made. Never till +James VII. began to oppress the clergy did they begin to see what was +logically involved in their abject protestations of loyalty, and in +their professions of turning the right cheek to the royal smiter. Only +when the seven bishops were sent to the Tower, not for any loyalty to +the country or to the constitution, but through a selfish maintenance +of their own interests as a class, did the Anglican body bethink +themselves of resistance, and of texts that reminded them of the hammer +of Jael and the dagger of Ehud no less than of the balm of the anointed +of the Lord. History has repeated itself. The landed and clerical +classes associated their triumph with the triumph of Episcopacy, and +their humiliation with the triumph of the Independents. The exaltation +of the prerogative, therefore, again made its appearance at the +Restoration, to be shaken by the high-handed measures of James, and +pass to extinction at the Revolution. The same thing has practically +been seen in Spain. Spain, remarks Borrow, is not naturally a fanatical +country. It was by humouring her pride only that she was induced to +launch the Armada and waste her treasures in the wars of the Low +Countries. But to the Spaniard, Catholicism was the mark of his own +ascendency; it was the typification of his elevation over the Moor. The +Most Catholic King was therefore flattered to exalt the claims of the +Holy See no less than the English clergy had exalted the prerogative of +the king. Far different the condition of affairs in Scotland. When Knox +landed at Leith, in May 1559, he found the whole people ripe for a +change, so that by August of next year the Scottish Parliament could +pass a resolution to abolish the Papacy with the entire consent of the +nation, and in December 1560 the First General Assembly met. Its laic +element was strong and was emphasised from the beginning. To six +ministers there were thirty-four elders, and it met by no sanction of +the Crown, but by its own authority. At its second meeting, Maitland of +Lethington could craftily raise the question as to the legality of such +conventions without the consent of the Queen. It was retorted that, if +they were dependent merely upon the Queen for their liberty of meeting, +they would be deprived of the public preaching of the gospel. 'Take +from us,' said Knox, 'the freedom of assemblies, and take from us the +Gospel'; but it was left to her to send a commissioner. So early was +the doctrine of the Headship maintained by the Church of Scotland. In +1560, no less than 1843, the question was clear. In 1557 they had +resolved that the election of ministers, according to the custom of the +primitive church, should be made by the people; and in the First Book +of Discipline of 1560, re-enacted in 1578, it was laid down that 'it +appertaineth to the people and to every several congregation to elect +their minister, and it is altogether to be avoided that any man be +violently intruded or thrust in upon any congregation.' The fabric was +laid: three hundred years have not started a plank. + +The difference of the Reformation in England and in Scotland at once +emerges. Knox had the nation at his back; and, besides being, as Milton +said, 'the Reformer of a nation,' he had found the people by mental +temperament, or by concurrent historical reasons, anchored to a +doctrinal system with a political side which has coloured ever since +the stream of its existence. Calvinism, in every one of its forms, +exaggerated or diluted, has this double side. It is felt in this way. +To a nation believing that the divine decree of election has singled +out the individual, the claims of a church with the greatest of +histories and the most unbroken of descents are of slight value. To the +individual believing it is God's own immutable decree that has made his +calling and election sure, the whole retinue of priests and priestly +paraphernalia appears but an idle pageant. To the nation, and to the +individual alike, regarding itself or himself as fellow-workers with +God in the furtherance of His immutable decrees, thrones, dominions, +principalities and powers have for ever lost their awe or a power to +coerce. Wherever the belief has been carried these results have been +seen. There has been, what Buckle failed completely to see, a rooted +aversion to ecclesiasticism, and a no less rooted aversion to tyranny. +And in no better words could the doctrinal and political principles be +laid down than in the famous words of Andrew Melville which we have set +at the head of this chapter. + +Again, when Knox laid hold of the nation his schemes in their very +first draft embraced the people as a whole. It was not a merely +piecemeal or monarchical business as in England. The Reformers were not +content with merely formulating an Act like Henry; they proceeded to +carry out in detail their plans for a national system of education. +They had no idea of setting up a church of their own invention. There +is something in the Scottish intellect, in this resembling the French, +that seeks for the completest realisation in detail of its ideas. As +Professor Masson has said, its dominant note is really not caution, +with which it is so frequently credited, but _emphasis_. While the +English Independents during the later years of the Civil War appear as +either sectaries or as individualists, the contention of the Scots was +ever for a national system. This feature in the character of the nation +is really at the root of what Hallam calls the 'Presbyterian +Hildebrandism' of the elder M'Crie. Johnson, too, could with some +considerable truth say to Boswell, 'You are the only instance of a +Scotchman that I have known who did not at every other sentence bring +in some other Scotchman.' But this is the very feature that Buckle has +overlooked, and it is this that explains how the new church spoke in +the authoritative tones of the old; this, too, which explains how, +outside of the waning Episcopalian sect, there are no dissenters in +Scotland in the true sense. We have parties, not sects. While the +Secession, the Relief, the Cameronians, the Burghers were all mere +branches of the parent stock, retaining in detail its fundamental +nature in discipline and worship, the established church in England +finds itself face to face with organised and hostile dissent. So +entirely has the national unity been preserved in Scotland that +Professor Blackie has said, with no less truth than pith, that while +Presbyterianism is the national and the rational dress of the land, +Episcopacy is but the dress coat by which the nakedness is hid of the +renegade from the nation, and the apostate from its church. Dean +Stanley found that 'the questionable idols' of the Episcopalian sect +were Mary Queen of Scots, Montrose, and Dundee. These have never been +the idols of the Scottish people: the last, indeed, occupies in its +memory the peculiar niche of infamy. + +The political side of the national religion is expressed no less +clearly in facts. The Scottish Crown is held by a contract,[1] and the +coronation oath is the deliberate expression of it. In his _De Jure +Regni_ in 1579, dedicated to the king, Buchanan had made this apparent +to Europe, and in his _Lex Rex_, in 1644, Buchanan was reinforced by +Rutherfurd in the doctrine that the people is the source of power, and +his officers are merely _ministri regni non regis_, 'servants of the +kingdom, not of the king.' Startling doctrine this to the slobbering +vicegerent of God, conceding to the people acts to be revoked at his +pleasure. In the light of ordinary facts, therefore, what are the +national covenants of 1580 and 1638, but very simple Magna Chartas or +Reform Bills with a religious colouring? One half of the statements of +Hume and Robertson about fanaticism, austerity, gloom, enthusiasm, +democracy, and popular ferocity, and all the bugbears of the writers so +terribly 'at ease in Zion,' would be discounted by a simple regard for +facts. When Leighton and Burnet went into the west in 1670 to try and +induce the people to recognise the establishment of Charles, what did +they find? Wranglings or harangues after the manner of Scott's Habbakuk +Mucklewrath? 'The poor of the country,' says Burnet, 'came generally to +hear us. We were amazed to see a poor commonalty so capable to argue +upon points of government, and on _the bounds to be set to the power of +the civil magistrate_ and princes in matters of religion: upon all +these topics they had texts of Scripture at hand, and were ready with +their answers to everything that was said to them. This measure of +knowledge was spread even among the meanest of them, their cottagers +and servants.' Leighton might well have remembered the case of his own +father. History loves not the Coriolani, says Mommsen, and Miller has +well seized this incident to bring out the popular side of the national +religion. To the question, in an inn at Newcastle, what the Scottish +religion had done for the people, he could reply, 'Independently +altogether of religious considerations, it has done for our people what +your Societies for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and all your Penny +and Saturday Magazines will never do for yours; it has awakened their +intellects and taught them to think.' + + [1] For this important point in its bearing upon the position + of the Cameronians, and the 'Testimony' of Richard Cameron at + the market-place of Sanquhar, June 22, 1680, see Buchanan's + _History_, XX. 36-47, and Milton's _Tenure of Kings and + Magistrates_, with the coins of James VI. stamped in 1570. + Thus, while James VII.'s creatures, the Bishops, maintained + the 'divine right' of their creator, led by Paterson, the + Archbishop of Glasgow, Dalrymple could carry the resolution + on the constitutional question of tenure that the king had + 'forfaulted the throne.' + +But the exigencies of the romance-writer are often the means of +corrupting history, and the largest class of readers will ever prefer +to read it, in the phrase of Macaulay, with their feet on the fender. +To that class, therefore, the political crisis of 1638, one of no less +magnitude than the French Revolution, will ever be obscured by airy +talk about religious intolerance and popular fanaticism. The history of +Scotland in consequence becomes either, as Carlyle said, a mere +hunting-ground for intriguing Guises or else is left to the novelist +with the Mucklewraths, wild men, and caricatures. Even yet the mere +English reader of Hume and Robertson has not got beyond the phrases of +'iron reformers' and 'beautiful queens.' The intrepidity of Knox, like +the conduct of Luther at the Diet, becomes material for the +sentimentalist to decry or the latitudinarian to bewail. The courtly +Dean Stanley approaches the maudlin in his remarks at this stage, and +he thinks of Scott as he 'murmured the lay of Prince Charlie on the +hills of Pausilippo, and stood rapt in silent devotion before the tomb +of the Stuarts in St. Peter.' But the admirers of the greatest of all +novelists will remember also no less his statement that he gave the +heart without giving the head, and will even regard it as a merely +temporary aberration, like his presence at Carlton House with the +Prince Regent, where, says Lockhart with curious lack of humour, 'that +nothing might be wanting, the Prince sang several capital songs!' The +spell of Sir Walter should not blind us to the real and the false in +the national story. Eminently clear-headed and politically sound were +the men of 1638, worthy compeers of the great men that sat in England's +Long Parliament. The Jacobite Rebellions are a mere extraneous incident +in the history of Scotland, and the events of 1638, 1698, and 1843 will +show the peculiar spirit of the people in a fairer flowering. How +curiously illusory are the generalisations of philosophers! +Calculation, shrewdness, pawkiness--these are the traditional marks of +the stage-Scotchman from the days of Smollett. But Buchanan's +_perfervidum ingenium_ is surely much truer, and mere calculation +is just what is _not_ the national mark. If her poverty and pride +were seen in Darien, no less truly was her religious and political side +seen in these other events. But the question of the Headship still +awaits us. On the accession of William, the shattered remnants of the +kirk were gathered together by Carstares after twenty-eight years of +persecution: _nec tamen consumebatur_. Perhaps, in the circumstances +under which both king and country found themselves, no other compromise +could so well have been come to as that of 1690. The election was left +in the hands of elders and the heritors, to be approved of by the +people, leaving an appeal to the Presbytery. At the Union, Scotland +seeing the danger to which she was exposed by her scanty band of +forty-five members being swamped in the English or Tory phalanx--a +danger to which every year subsequent has added but too evident a +commentary--had exacted the most strenuous obligations for the +unalterable preservation of her ecclesiastical system. But five years +witnessed the most shameless breach of public faith, by an Act which +had the most ruinous effects, political and religious, upon the people. +The Tories had come into power on the crest of the Sacheverel wave, and +in 1712 Bolingbroke proceeded to carry out his scheme of altering the +succession and securing the return of the Pretender. An Act of +Toleration was passed for the Episcopalian dissenting sect in Scotland, +and an oath of abjuration sought to be imposed upon the Scottish Church +for the sake of exciting confusion. An Act restoring patronage was +rushed through the House by the Tory squires, who composed five-sixths +of the House of Commons. Against this the Whigs and Carstares protested +vigorously, and appealed to the Treaty of Union, but appeal was lost +upon the ignorant class, who were not overdrawn in the Squire Western +of Fielding's novel. For a hundred years this Act bore evil fruits. The +nobility of the land were only too ready to seize upon the poor spoils +of the national endowment in order to renew their waning power in the +country, and in so doing they managed to set themselves and their +descendants in hereditary opposition to the great mass of the people. +The English peerage has done much for the English people. In Scotland, +it may be asked, which of the four Scottish Universities has had a +farthing of the money of the nobility, and what have they done for the +Church in any one of her branches? + +In Miller's _Letter to Brougham_ this cardinal point of 1712 is made +clear:-- + + 'Bolingbroke engaged in his deep-laid conspiracy against the + Protestant succession and our popular liberties; and again the law + of patronage was established. But why established? Smollett would + have told your Lordship of the peculiarly sinister spirit which + animated the last Parliament of Anne; of feelings adverse to the + cause of freedom which prevailed among the people when it was + chosen; and that the Act which re-established patronage was but one + of a series, all bearing on an object which the honest Scotch + member who signified his willingness to acquiesce in one of those, + on condition that it should be described by its right name--an + Act for the Encouragement of Immorality and Jacobitism in + Scotland--seems to have discovered. Burnet is more decided. Instead + of triumphing on the occasion, he solemnly assures us that the + thing was done merely "to spite the Presbyterians, who, from the + beginning, had set it up as a principle that parishes had, from + warrants in Scripture, a right to choose their ministers," and "who + saw, with great alarm, the success of a motion _made on design_ to + weaken and undermine their establishment"; and the good Sir Walter, + notwithstanding all his Tory prejudices, is quite as candid. The + law which re-established patronage in Scotland--which has rendered + Christianity inefficient in well-nigh half her parishes, which has + separated some of her better clergymen from her Church, and many of + her better people from her clergymen, the law through which + Robertson ruled in the General Assembly, and which Brougham has + eulogised in the House of Lords, that identical law formed, in its + first enactment, no unessential portion of a deep and dangerous + conspiracy against the liberties of our country.' + +The immediate result was seen in the conduct of the patrons. As the +Regent Morton had established tulchan bishops and secured the revenues +of the sees, the patrons now named such presentees as they deliberately +saw would be unacceptable to the people, protected as they were by the +appeal to the Presbytery, so that during the protracted vacancy they +drew the stipend. No actual case of intrusion, however, seems to have +occurred until 1725, but the rise of moderatism[2] within the Church +gave too frequent occasion for such forced presentations as, we have +seen, took place at Nigg, in 1756, in the days of Donald Roy, Miller's +relative. The secessions of the Erskines in 1733 and of the Relief +under Gillespie in 1752 were the results of intolerant Moderatism, and +its long reign under Robertson the historian, lasted for well-nigh +thirty years in the Assembly, till his withdrawal in 1780. + + [2] For the similar rise of the spirit in England see Mark + Pattison's excellent paper in _Essays and Reviews_, + 'Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750. + +Were we to credit the eulogies of Dean Stanley and others upon Home, +Blair, and Robertson, we should regard this as the golden age of the +Church of Scotland. Robertson he describes as 'the true Archbishop of +Scotland.' But there are men who seem fated, in the pregnant phrase of +Tacitus, to make a solitude and call it peace. The reign of Robertson +was simply coincident with the very lowest spiritual ebb in the +country, to which his own long régime had in no slight degree +contributed. The Spaniard dates the decline and fall of his own country +from the days of Philip II., _segundo sin segundo_, as Cervantes +bitterly calls him, 'the second with (it was to be hoped) no +successor.' Even in 1765, such had been the spread of religion outside +the national establishment that the Assembly was forced to reckon with +it. They found 'a hundred and twenty meetinghouses, to which more than +a hundred thousand persons resorted.' Patronage was found, after +debate, to be the cause. It is no tribute to Alva that he found the Low +Countries a peaceful dependency of Spain and left them a free nation; +none to the policy of 'thorough' that it sent Laud and Strafford to the +block. An impartial verdict will be that Robertson undermined for ever +the edifice which Carstares had reared. + +An attempt has been recently made again to cast a glamour over the old +Scottish moderates of the eighteenth century. Their admirers point to +Watson the historian of Philip II., to Henry the historian of Britain, +to Robertson, to Thomas Reid the philosopher, Home the dramatist, Blair +the sermon-writer, Adam Ferguson, Hill of St. Andrews, and George +Campbell of Aberdeen. Not even the Paraphrases have escaped being +pressed into the field to witness to the literary and other gifts of +Oglivie, Cameron, Morrison, and Logan. But the merits of a class are +not best seen by the obtrusion of its more eminent members, but by the +average. We do not judge the provincial governors of Rome by such men +as the occasional Cicero and Rutilius, but by the too frequent +repetition of men like Verres and Piso. Nor even in these very upper +reaches will the Moderates bear a close inspection. No one now reads +Home's _Douglas_. Young Norval has gone the way, as the critic says, of +all waxworks, and curious is the fate of the great Blair: he lives not +for the works upon which immortality was fondly staked, but for having +given breakfasts to Burns in his Edinburgh days. 'I have read them,' +says Johnson of these sermons; 'they are _sermones aurei ac auro magis +aurei_. I had the honour of first finding and first praising his +excellencies. I did not stay to add my voice to that of the public. I +love Blair's sermons, though the dog is a Scotchman and a Presbyterian, +and everything he should not be.' This avalanche of laudation seems +strange to the modern reader, who will find in them the rhetoric of +Hervey's _Meditations on the Tombs_, united to a theology that could +pass muster in a deistical writer. Burns, though he lent himself to be +the squib-writer of the Ayrshire Moderates, was fully aware of the +merely negative tenets of the school, and in his _Holy Fair_ he asks + + 'What signifies his barren shine + Of moral powers and reason? + His English style, and gestures fine + Are a' clean out o' season. + + Like Socrates or Antonine, + Or some old pagan heathen, + The moral man he does define, + But ne'er a word of faith in, + That's right this day.' + +But the spirit of Moderatism was to be fully seen in the debate upon +Missions in 1796. It was moved in the General Assembly by Robert Heron, +the unfortunate friend of Burns, and deeply shocked was old Jupiter +Carlyle. It wounded the feelings for the proprieties of the old man. +For half a century, said he, had he sat as a member, and he was happy +to think that never till now had he heard such revolutionary principles +avowed on the floor of the house! Clergymen of lax life, and whose +neglect of parochial duties was notorious, were unanimous in declaring +that charity should begin at home. The spectre of Tom Paine rose before +them. Never, they maintained, while still there remained at home one +man under the influence of attack from the _Age of Reason_, should such +a visionary overture be entertained. But there was worse behind this. +The missionary societies were united with various corresponding +centres; accordingly, in the days of the Dundas dynasty, when Burns +during this very year was reminded that it was his place to act and not +to think, when the Alien and Traitorous Correspondence Act of 1793 and +the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1794 had revived the worst +of obsolete and feudal enactments, a wily use of this reign of terror +was made to defeat missions by an attack on their supposed insidious +and political designs. The lawyer who was afterwards to sit on the +bench as Lord President Boyle, rose and said: 'The people meet under +the pretext of spreading Christianity among the heathen. Observe, sir, +they are affiliated, they have a common object, they correspond with +each other, they look for assistance from foreign countries, in the +very language of many of the seditious societies. Already, it is to be +marked, they have a common fund. Where is the security that the money +of this fund will not, as the reverend Principal [Hill of St. Andrews] +said, be used for very different purposes? And as for those Missionary +Societies, I do aver that, since it is to be apprehended that their +funds may be in time, nay, certainly will be, turned against the +Constitution, so it is the bounden duty of this House to give the +overtures recommending them our most serious disapprobation, and our +immediate, most decisive opposition.' The legal mind is not often +remarkable for profundity, but the fine violation of reasoning in the +'nay, certainly will be,' is just on a par with Jonathan Tawse's 'clean +perversion of the constitutional law,' which we have seen before. The +detection of treason, too, lurking in the apparently harmless missions +fairly rivals Serjeant Buzfuz in _Pickwick_, with his exposure of the +danger underlying the 'chops and tomato sauce' of the defendant. Such +had been the unhappy legacy of Robertson. Such was the legal spirit +infused from the bar to the bench that was to act in decisions against +the true interests of the Church during the Ten Years' Conflict. + +But the tide was to turn. Years of dissatisfaction had at last produced +the inevitable reaction, and in 1834 the General Assembly had bowed to +the storm and passed the Veto Act. Then were discovered the evils of +co-ordinate jurisdictions, the mistake committed in 1690 and 1707 by +which no provision had been made for a line of clear demarcation +between the ecclesiastical and civil courts, and the blunder committed +in intrusting great questions affecting Scotland to the judgments of +aliens in political sympathies. The tone of many a decision of the +House of Lords was to make people think upon Seafield's brutal jest +about 'the end of an auld sang,' and Belhaven's trumpet-warning about +the risks to the 'National Church founded on a rock, secured by a claim +of right, descending into a plain upon a level with Jews and Papists.' +There were limits even to the loyalty of the most faithful, and for ten +weary years the conflict between the courts was to run its course. In +1842 the Church had instructed its Lord High Commissioner to lay before +Her Majesty a series of resolutions by which it was hoped that a +rupture could be averted. On the 18th of May 1843 the Commissioner for +the Crown was the Marquis of Bute, and after the levée in Holyrood +Palace, the retiring Moderator, Dr. Welsh, preached in St. Giles, and +in St. Andrew's Church the Assembly--the last Assembly of the real +Church of Scotland--met. The scene so often described had best be given +in Miller's own words, as at once affording a capital specimen of his +editorial style and as the work of an eye-witness. We abridge from his +leader of May 20:-- + + 'The morning levée had been marked by an incident of a somewhat + extraordinary nature, and which history, though in these days + little disposed to mark prodigies and omens, will scarce fail to + record. The crowd in the Chamber of Presence was very great, and + there was, we believe, a considerable degree of confusion and + pressure in consequence. Suddenly,--whether brushed by some passer + by, jostled rudely aside, or merely affected by the tremor of the + floor communicated to the partitioning, a large portrait of William + the Third, that had held its place in Holyrood for nearly a century + and a half, dropped heavily from the walls. "There," exclaimed a + voice[3] from the crowd,--"there goes the Revolution Settlement." + For hours before the meeting of Assembly, the galleries of St. + Andrew's Church, with the space behind, railed off for the + accommodation of office-bearers, not members, were crowded to + suffocation, and a vast assemblage still continued to besiege the + doors.... The Moderator rose and addressed the House in a few + impressive sentences. There had been infringement, he said, of the + constitution of the Church,--an infringement so great, that they + could not constitute the Assembly without a violation of the Union + between Church and State, as now authoritatively defined and + declared. He was, therefore, compelled, he added, to protest + against proceeding further, and, unfolding a document which he held + in his hand, he read, in a slow and emphatic manner, the protest of + the Church. For the first few seconds, the extreme anxiety to hear + defeated its object,--the universal "hush, hush," occasioned + considerably more noise than it allayed; but the momentary + confusion was succeeded by the most unbroken silence; and the + reader went on till the impressive close of the document, when he + flung it down on the table of the House and solemnly departed. He + was followed at a pace's distance by Dr. Chalmers; Dr. Gordon and + Dr. Patrick M'Farlan immediately succeeded, and then the numerous + sitters on the thickly occupied benches behind filed after them, in + a long unbroken line, which for several minutes together continued + to thread the passage to the eastern door, till at length only a + blank space remained. As the well-known faces and forms of some of + the ablest and most eminent men that ever adorned the Church of + Scotland glided along in the current, to disappear from the courts + of the State institution for ever, there rose a cheer from the + galleries. At length, when the last of the withdrawing party had + disappeared, there ran from bench to bench a hurried, broken + whispering,--"How many? how many?"--"_four hundred_": The scene + that followed we deemed one of the most striking of the day. The + empty vacated benches stretched away from the Moderator's seat in + the centre of the building, to the distant wall. There suddenly + glided into the front rows a small party of men whom no one + knew,--obscure, mediocre, blighted-looking men, that, contrasted + with the well-known forms of our Chalmers and Gordons, Candlishes + and Cunninghams, M'Farlans, Brewsters, and Dunlops, reminded one of + the thin and blasted corn ears of Pharaoh's vision, and like them, + too, seemed typical of a time of famine and destitution.' + + [3] The 'voice' of this now famous utterance was William + Howieson Crauford, Esq. of Craufurdland. + +'I am proud of my country, no other country in Europe could have done +it,' said Lord Jeffrey. The Church had simply, in 1843, reverted to the +precedents of 1560 and 1578, and had, in the simile of Goldsmith +happily used by Miller on the occasion, returned like the hare to the +spot from which it flew. Edinburgh, he maintained, had not seen such a +day since the unrolling by Johnston of Warriston of the parchment in +the Greyfriars'. There was a secession, not from the Church, but from +the law courts, and temporary majorities of the Assembly. But the evil +men do lives in brass after them, and the Act of 1712 had rent the +Church of Scotland. No other country had been so fortunately situated +for the exemplification of an unbroken and a National Church. It was +left to two Tory Governments to ruin it, but opportunities once lost +may not thereafter be recovered. Under the long reign of Moderatism it +looked as if the _Nec tamen consumebatur_ were indeed to be a mockery. +But the revival of national feeling at the beginning of the century, +and the expression of popular rights in the Reform Bill of 1832, were +waves that were destined to extend from the nation to the Church. The +great book of M'Crie in 1811 had truly been fruitful of results. For a +century Moderatism had reigned on a lost sense of nationality. But, as +for long the history of Rome had been written with a patrician bias and +an uneasy remembrance of that figure of Tiberius Gracchus, so through +the influence of M'Crie the figure of John Knox had again risen to +popular consciousness in Scotland. There they could see a greater than +the Boyles, the Hopes, the Kinnoulls, the Broughams, and the Aberdeens. +Yet, till its publication, the face of M'Crie had been almost unknown +upon the streets of Edinburgh. + +And the Succession? Did it abide with the Free Church or the residuary +Establishment? Lord Macaulay will show, in his speech in the House of +Commons on July 9, 1845, what the violation of the Treaty of Union had +effected in 1712, and that 'the church of Boston and Carstares was not +the church of Bryce and Muir, but the church of Chalmers and Brewster.' +No one knew that better than Hugh Miller, and no one had done more to +make the issues plain to the people of Scotland. To him it was 'the +good cause,' as Macaulay in his address to the Edinburgh electors had +styled his own. While a plank remained, or a flag flew, by that it was +his wish to be found. It was the cry which M'Crie had said, 'has not +ceased to be heard in Scotland for nearly three hundred years.' From +his first leader in _The Witness_, of January 15, 1840, to the close +of his life in 1856, he was to send forth no other sound. 'Your +handwriting did my heart good,' he writes in a letter before us, of 9th +October 1840, to his friend Patrick Duff in Elgin, 'and reminded me of +old times long before I became ill-natured or dreamed of hurting any +one. I am now "fighting in the throng"--giving and taking many a blow. +But I am taking all the care I can to strike only big wicked fellows, +who lift hands against the Kirk, or oppress the poor man.' + +Napoleon feared three papers more than ten thousand bayonets, and +certainly Miller was a tower of strength not to be found in the adverse +battalions. None of the merely 'able editors' of the Establishment +party, much less the pamphleteers of the quality of Dean of Faculty +Hope, could touch him or find a link in his armour. This was a tribute +to character. The men of the opposition had 'nothing to draw with, and +the well was deep'; and many names then blown far and wide by windy +rumour, such as Dr. Cook, Robertson of Ellon, Dr. Bryce, and Principal +Pirie of Aberdeen, survive like flies in amber only because it was +their misfortune to be associated with great men. He might have said +with Landor that he did not strive with these men, for certainly of +them all 'none was worth his strife'; yet, though individually +contemptible, they formed a solid phalanx of Moderatism and of dead +resistance to argument and conviction. It was a time of great men. If +Chalmers was the incarnation of the country and the movement, Murray +Dunlop its jurist, Cunningham and Candlish its debaters, it was yet to +the leaders in _The Witness_ that the great mass of his countrymen +looked for the opinions of Hugh Miller. His relative, Dr. Gustavus Aird +of Creich, the late Moderator of the Free Church, has informed us that +in his own parish he learned the paper was read out in the mill, and +that in many places the same thing took place. It is well to have the +ear of the country, and it was well at the critical hour that there was +a man found who was heard gladly of the common people. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +IN EDINBURGH--LAST YEARS + + 'In close fights a champion grim, + In camps a leader sage.' + + SCOTT. + + +'We have had,' says Dr. Guthrie in a letter dated 6th September 1839, +'a meeting about our newspaper. Miller, I may say, is engaged, and will +be here, I expect, in the course of two or three weeks. His salary is +to begin with £200, and mount with the profits of the paper. I think +this too little, but I have no doubt to see it double that sum in a +year or two--Johnstone to be the publisher, we advancing £1000, and he +will need other two. I am down with Brown, Candlish, and Cunningham for +£25 each. A few individuals only have as yet been applied to, and +already £600 of the £1000 has been subscribed.' His household he left +behind him in Cromarty for the time, and he lodged in St. Patrick +Square. Fortunate was it for the people that at the right time its ear +should have been caught by such a writer, one whose voice in the arena +was at once recognised by the individuality of its tone. The Edinburgh +press had long been held by the Moderate party, and the belief had been +that the conflict was a mere clerical striving for power. It remained +for Miller to educate the party, and to such effect was this done that, +while the non-intrusion petition to Parliament in 1839 from Edinburgh +had borne but five thousand signatures, the number, says Robert +Chambers, mounted in the first year of _The Witness_ to thirteen +thousand. It was clear to all Scotland that there was a new Richmond in +the field. It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the +clerical mind, which after Malebranche is too prone to see everything +in itself and its own surroundings, has never fully confessed the +services to the country of the layman. As Guthrie points out, a silence +is maintained all through Buchanan's _Ten Years' Conflict_ on Miller. +This he regrets, not only on the ground that it would be Hamlet without +the Prince of Denmark, but also for its missing the cardinal principle +that at such a time the press and public meetings form the most +influential of factors. This such a kindred spirit and public orator as +Guthrie is quick to see, nor does he go beyond the facts of the case, +or the judgment now of the country, in maintaining that 'Miller did +more than any dozen ecclesiastical leaders, and that, Chalmers +excepted, he was the greatest of all the men of the Ten Years' +Conflict.' + +He certainly was no half advocate or mere 'able editor' in the +Carlylean phrase. If Chalmers, Candlish, and Cunningham were the +leaders in the ecclesiastical courts, Murray Dunlop the jurist, Miller +was the pen-man of the party. 'His business,' says Guthrie, the orator +of the movement, 'was to fight. Fighting was Miller's delight. On the +eve of what was to prove a desperate conflict, I have seen him in a +high and happy state of eagerness and excitement. He was a scientific +as well as an ardent controversialist; not bringing forward, far less +throwing away, his whole force on the first assault, but keeping up the +interest of the controversy, and continuing to pound and crush his +opponents by fresh matter in every succeeding paper. When I used to +discuss questions with him, under the impression, perhaps, that he had +said all he had got to say very powerful and very pertinent to the +question, nothing was more common than his remarking, in nautical +phrase, "Oh, I have got some shot in the locker yet--ready for use, if +it is needed"!' + +And that it was needed, in his own and the Church's interest, the +pamphlets of abuse by which he was attacked, and which would form a +small library, would remain to show. Thus he was really, all the more +from his isolated position, as we shall see, indebted to what Professor +Masson, in an appreciation of him in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for 1865, +describes as the Goethean 'demonic element.' He had a better knowledge, +he shows, of the country and its ecclesiastical history than was +possessed by his clerical colleagues, and along with this went what he +calls 'a tremendous element of ferocity, more of the Scandinavian than +the Celt, leaving his enemy not only slain but battered, bruised and +beaten out of shape.' This, though in a sense exaggerated, is true to +the extent that he entered the lists not as a mere servant, but as a +convinced defender of the liberties of the people. To touch on anything +that infringed upon the Presbyterian history of the country--be it by +the Duke of Buccleuch, the Duke of Sutherland, or other site-refusing +landlords of the day, or by some flippant alien and Episcopalian +pamphleteer among the briefless of the Parliament House, was certainly +to court a bout from which the unwary disputant emerged in a highly +battered condition. Yet his pugnacity was really foreign to the nature +of the man. His surviving daughter informs the writer he was 'a very +mild and gentle father, and his whole attitude was one depressed with +humility.' It was, however, well for site-refusers and factors riding +on the top of their commission from absentee landlords to feel that +attacks upon their policy in _The Witness_ were not to be lightened by +any hopes of an apology or by appeals to fear. 'The watchman,' he +writes in a letter before us, dated 9th October 1840, 'is crying +half-past twelve o'clock, and I have more than half a mile to walk out +of town between two rows of trees on a solitary road. Fine opportunity +for cudgel-beating factors I carry, however, with me a five-shilling +stick, strong enough to break heads of the ordinary thickness, and like +quite as well to appeal to an antagonist's fears as to his mercy.' + +_The Witness_ started with a circulation of six hundred. Its position +among the Scottish papers was at once assured, and no greater proof of +the personality of the editor and the quality of 'the leaders' remains +than in the curious fact that, now after half a century, to the great +mass of the people his name has been not Miller, nor Mr. Miller, but +Hugh Miller. As in the similar case of John Bright the people seized on +the fact that here was a writer and speaker sprung from themselves, and +his christian name was as familiar as his surname. Yet, curiously +enough, from first to last he never believed in the profession of an +editor, and from the 'new-journalism' of the paragraph and the +leaderette he would have turned in disdain. Nothing but the fact that +he felt convinced of his mission would have induced him to leave +Cromarty for the post. 'I have been,' he could truly say, 'an honest +journalist. I have never once given expression to an opinion which I +did not conscientiously regard as sound, nor stated a fact which, at +the time at least, I did not believe to be true.' He never mastered, or +felt it necessary to master, the routine details of the business, for +the paper was read not for its Parliamentary reports, or the exposition +of party politics, but for the essays, sketches, or leaders which were +known to be by him. Accordingly the mere fluent production of 'copy,' +and the diurnal serving up of the editorial thunder by which the +members of the fourth estate fondly delude themselves that they lead +public opinion, never really came naturally to him. He prepared himself +carefully for his work; and perhaps the bi-weekly issue of the paper +and its peculiar nature lessened the strain upon the editor. His +successor in the editorial chair of the paper, Dr. Peter Bayne, in the +preface to Miller's _Essays_ (1862) says: + + 'He meditated his articles as an author meditates his books or a + poet his verses, conceiving them as wholes, working fully out their + trains of thought, enriching them with far brought treasures of + fact, and adorning them with finished and apposite illustration. In + the quality of _completeness_ those articles stand, so far as I + know, alone in the records of journalism. For rough and hurrying + vigour they might be matched, or more, from the columns of the + _Times_; in lightness of wit and smart lucidity of statement they + might be surpassed by the happiest performances of French + journalists--a Prévost-Paradol, or a St. Marc Girardin; and for + occasional brilliancies of imagination, and sudden gleams of + piercing thought neither they nor any other newspaper articles, + have, I think, been comparable with those of S. T. Coleridge. But + as complete journalistic essays, symmetrical in plan, finished in + execution, and of sustained and splendid ability, the articles of + Hugh Miller are unrivalled.' + +Certainly few modern editors could produce such a leader as he did on +Dugald Stewart (Aug. 26, 1854), or upon the _Encyclopoedia Britannica_ +(April 30, 1842), or could, finding themselves for a day in London, +'when time hung heavy on my hands,' buy a cheap reprint of Eugene Sue's +_Wandering Jew_ and convert its hurried perusal into a capital paper on +the conflict between Continental Ultramontanism and Liberalism. The +individuality of the writer and the tenacity with which he held to his +opinions gave the journal a tone naturally impossible to an ordinary +party paper. The great mass of the readers of _The Witness_ were of +course Liberals, yet he strenuously contended against making it an +organ of any political party. Part of the prospectus ran--'_The +Witness_ will not espouse the cause of any of the political parties +which now agitate and divide the country. Public measures, however, +will be weighed as they present themselves, in an impartial spirit, and +with care proportioned to their importance.' He had noticed, he said, +the Church of Scotland for a time converted by Conservatism into a mine +against the Whigs, and he was determined that no 'tool-making +politician' should again convert it to a party weapon. It was to remain +the organ of 'the Free Church people against Whig, Tory, Radical, and +Chartist.' So careful was he of the good name of the paper that he +'often retained communications beside him for weeks and months, until +some circumstance occurred that enabled him to determine regarding +their real value.' Chalmers read the paper to the last with approval, +and this was a source of joy and support to Miller. Nothing but such a +wise supervision could have piloted _The Witness_ through the abuse and +the inventions of the Tory organs. When the _Edinburgh Advertiser_, of +June 13, 1848, could try to improve on that rhetorical flight of +Barrère, characteristically fathered by its author on 'an ancient +author,' about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of +tyrants, by an assertion that _The Witness_ had 'menaced our nobles +with the horrors of the French Revolution, when the guillotine plied +its nightly task, and the bloody hearts of aristocrats dangled in +buttonholes on the streets of Paris!'--proof was naturally wanting. A +phantom of a 'grey discrowned head sounding hollow on the scaffold at +Whitehall' was also served up by that paper, in its devotion to the +house of Buccleuch, as a threat in which the irate scribe professed to +detect a subtle attack on the House of Hanover in the interests of the +Free Church. 'I am a Whig, in politics,' he said, 'never a Radical or +Conservative.' He had no cheap sympathy with the working men, for them +he had seen on their worst side. 'Three-fourths of the distress of the +country's mechanics (of course not reckoning that of the unhappy class +who have to compete with machinery) and nine-tenths of their +vagabondism will be found restricted to inferior workmen, who like +Hogarth's "Careless Apprentice," neglected the opportunity of their +second term of education. The sagacious painter had a truer insight +into this matter than most of our modern educationists.' He was no +believer in household, much less in universal, suffrage, and as an +admirer of Delolme's views on our constitution, the radical he regarded +as a 'political quack,' convinced as he was that 'those who think must +govern those that toil.' But he advocated, along with Guthrie, a system +of undenominational education of a kind pretty much what is now +established, a moderate extension of the franchise, abolition of +entail, and the game laws. The Maynooth grant and Macaulay he opposed. +He was an Oliverian for Ireland, and the cause of much trouble in the +most distressful country he viewed as associated with that subsidy, +which he would have preferred to see converted into a grant for +science. + +Indeed, like most of his countrymen he had a strong view of historical, +as distinguished from mere party, conservatism. The last has of course +been rendered simply impossible in Scotland by the history and the +ecclesiastical tenets of the country, but he ever carried about him +something like the conviction of Dr. Livingstone, that the common +people of Scotland had read history and were no levellers. Thus he +held, like Burke, to what Mr. Morley calls 'the same energetic feeling +about moral laws, the same frame of counsel and prudence, the same love +for the slowness of time, the same slight account held of mere +intellectual knowledge.' This historic conservatism of Burke would be +taken by most Scotchmen as a pretty good basis for reasoned Liberalism, +and the fixity of Miller's main positions only exposed him the more to +the wearisome Tory vocabulary of 'high-flyer, fire-raiser, fanatic,' +etc. Admirably in the _Letter to Brougham_ does he seize on the ground +of the political Liberalism of Scotland:-- + + 'I, my Lord, am an integral part of the Church of Scotland, and of + such integral parts, and of nothing else, is the body of this + Church composed; nor do we look to the high places of the earth + when we address ourselves to its adorable Head. The Earl of Kinnoul + is not the Church, nor any of the other patrons in Scotland. Why, + then, are these men suffered to exercise, and that so exclusively, + one of the Church's most sacred privileges? You tell us of + "existing institutions, vested rights, positive interests." Do we + not know that the slave-holders, who have so long and so stubbornly + withstood your Lordship's truly noble appeals in behalf of the + African bondsman, have been employing an exactly similar language + for the last fifty years; and that the onward progress of man to + the high place which God has willed him to occupy has been impeded + at every step by existing institutions, vested rights, positive + interests?' + +Bitter words, surely, all this for the ecclesiastical wirepullers of +1874, and inheritors of the policy of the Hopes and Muirs, when in +approaching the Government with a statement of the intolerable strain +of patronage, they tabled that same _Letter to Brougham_! + +To the last, Miller clung to 'the Established principle.' This need not +seem wonderful. The Free Church he regarded as the Church of Scotland +in all but the state tie, the more so that the coercion by the civil +courts had not failed to impress him with the conviction that the +Headship, as stipulated for the Scottish Establishment by the Treaty of +Union, though defeated by Bolingbroke and lost in the stagnation of the +eighteenth century, had passed as an integral part of her constitution +to the Free Church. The difficulty attaching to his position proved an +unfortunate source of tension between him and some of the leaders, and +to this was due that lamentable quarrel with Dr. Candlish which he +carried to his grave, and which perhaps broke his heart, for he was +what Lord Cockburn had called their mutual friend Murray Dunlop, 'the +purest of all enthusiasts' and though Miller triumphed absolutely, yet +it was not in human nature to forget that the attack was, however +sincere, an attack upon cherished convictions. + +There can be, therefore, no good now in minimising the fact that Dr. +Candlish, in his zeal to secure a political and tempting opportunity +against the Tory party, was led to enter on a quarrel with Miller. The +action really amounted to a motion of no confidence in his editorial +management. He proposed to centralise the Church press, and to secure +the intrusion of a sub-editor on the existing staff, and the conversion +of the paper into an explicit and active party organ. But by this time +Miller had become one of the proprietors, by undertaking to pay back +by instalments the thousand pounds advanced by Johnstone to the +subscribers, with the interest, year by year, of the unpaid portion +till the whole debt should be extinguished. The most objectionable +feature was the proposal to secure the services of some smart +Parliament House 'able editor.' _The Witness_ had been accused of +'preferring Protestantism to Macaulay, and damaging the elections.' In +this was shown the cloven foot, for it was an attempt to run the paper +for the Whigs, and to render it the organ of the legal lights of the +Parliament House in pursuit of official posts and spoil, of which +Miller justly thought they had enough. Besides, the fall of a +Government would mean the fall of that Government paper, and thus its +influence as the organ of Free Churchmen would be damaged. Already the +paper had parted with one of its best men who had been attracted to +_The Times_, and in the whole scheme Miller saw 'a censorship; and the +censor, assisted by the nice taste and tact of the Parliament House +editor, is to be Dr. Candlish.' But, he asks, 'who was to control Dr. +Candlish?' He could not see the paper jockeyed for a Government, and he +stood aloof from 'Exhalations blown aslant, over the faces of even the +Evangelical Churches, from the bogs and fens of a hollow Liberalism +that professes to respect all religions, and believes none.' He felt +that he had the people behind him, and 'possessing their confidence, I +do not now feel justified in retiring from my post: Dr. Candlish and +his Parliament House friends are not the ministers and people of the +Free Church of Scotland--"of wiles, more inexpert, I boast not,"--the +difference must either close entirely, or the people of Scotland must +be made fully acquainted with the grounds on which it rests.' The +unfortunate rupture closed by the very pointed question by Chalmers, +'Which of you could direct Hugh Miller?' + +Meanwhile, in the Highlands and Islands, things were for a time going +hard with the now disestablished Church. In some cases they had to +preach 'where the snow was falling so heavily upon the people, that +when it was over they could scarcely distinguish the congregation from +the ground, except by their faces.' Baird of Cockburnspath had passed +away in a room, 'a few inches above which were the slates of the roof, +without any covering, and as white with hoar frost within as they were +white with snow without. His very breath on the blankets was frozen as +hard as the ice outside.' At Canonbie, Guthrie had passed Johnny +Armstrong's Tower, and preached in wind and rain to a large +congregation, 'old men, apparently near the grave, all wet and benumbed +with the keen wind and cold rain.' In Cromarty, Miller's old friend +Stewart was now preaching in the factory close, and there, in the +summer of 1843, after a night of rain had swept the streets, his mind +reverts to the congregations over Scotland in the open air--'I do +begrudge the Moderates our snug, comfortable churches. I begrudge them +my father's pew. It bears date 1741, and has been held by the family, +through times of poverty and depression, a sort of memorial of better +days, when we could afford getting a pew in the front gallery. But +yonder it lies, empty within an empty church, a place for spiders to +spin undisturbed, while all who should be occupying it take their +places on stools and forms in the factory close.' The subtle mark of +Scottish _gentility_ in the allusion to the pew will not fail to +strike the reader. Let it not be said that it savours of +'gigmanity'--in that standing bugbear of Carlyle! + +In 1844 he set out on a geological ramble round the Hebrides in the +floating manse, '_The Betsey_,' by which the Church served the islands +in the west, owing to the refusal of sites by Lord Macdonald and +others. The yacht was but thirty feet by eleven, and there with his old +Cromarty friend Swanson, the 'outed' minister of the Small Isles, he +learned the hardships to which the miserable policy of the landlords +had exposed the poor Highlanders. But if 'the earth was the _lairds'_ +and the fulness thereof,' the water was not! The building in which +the congregation met was of turf--'the minister encased in his +ample-skirted storm-jacket of oiled canvas, and protected atop by a +genuine sou'wester, of which the broad posterior rim sloped half a yard +down his back; and I, closely wrapped up in my grey maud, which proved, +however, a rather indifferent protection, against the penetrating +powers of a Hebridean drizzle.' In none of his works does he exhibit a +happier descriptive view than in _The Cruise of the Betsey_, though in +popularity it has been surpassed by his _First Impressions of England_, +where he records the results of an eight weeks' tour, in 1845, from +Newcastle to London, passing York, Birmingham, and Stratford on the +way. In 1847 he published his _Footprints of the Creator_, in reply to +the _Vestiges_ by Robert Chambers, in which he seeks to controvert the +theory of development, at least in the form in which it was then +presented, by attempting to prove the fishes and the fossils of the Old +Red to be as advanced in character as those now existing. A racy sketch +on _The Geology of the Bass_ formed part of a contribution to a work +then issued, dealing with the history, botany, and zoology of the Bass +Rock. The copyright of this he reserved with a view to its subsequent +incorporation into a long-projected geological survey of Scotland. But +this cherished idea he never lived to accomplish, though such a work +from his hand would have been well-nigh final and perfect in its +descriptive graces. + +He was still in the enjoyment of his great physical power in spite of +the severe strain to which his editorial and literary labours exposed +him, added to as these were by his appearances in London and elsewhere +as a public lecturer. As an exponent of science he could attract an +audience in Exeter Hall of five thousand persons, whose attention he +held to the close in spite of his northern accent; though perhaps this, +like the Fifeshire speech of Chalmers and the Annandale tongue of +Carlyle, may have given an extra charm to the individuality of the +lecturer. The quarrel with Candlish had thinned the ranks of some of +his friends, nor did he ever draw to the circle of Edinburgh as he had +done to those in Cromarty. He was not to be easily got at by the +eminent men who sought his acquaintance, yet it is with pleasure we +catch occasional glimpses of him in the society of the best that either +Edinburgh or London could produce. Stewart in Cromarty had passed away, +in 1847, during the prosecution to him of a call to St. George's to +succeed Candlish, who had been translated to the college chair left +vacant by Chalmers. None of his friends were nearer to him than +Mackgill-Crichton of Rankeillour in Fife, and there we find him one +Christmas along with Sir David Brewster and Guthrie. Both Miller and +his host were men of great physical powers, and--as Professor Masson +notes--the geologist had a habit of estimating men by their physique. +Crichton had narrated how he had started by the side of the mail coach +as it passed his gates, and after a run of twenty miles he had been the +first at the ferry. 'A horse could do more than either of you,' was the +amused rejoinder of Brewster. + +The issue of his _Schools and Schoolmasters_ (1854), republished from +the columns of his paper, brought him warm encomiums from Carlyle, +Robert Chambers, and others. Miller in politics and other points +differed strongly from Chambers, and of course at this time the secret +of the authorship of the _Vestiges_ had not been divulged. Yet +beautifully does Chambers, to whom Scottish publishing and periodical +literature owes so much, refer to the early days in Cromarty in +comparison with his own struggles in Peebles. Readers who may have not +quite forgiven some passages in Chambers's _History of the Rebellion of +1745_ will doubtless soften their asperity after reading Chambers's +account of his struggling through a whole set of the _Encyclopædia +Britannica_ which he had in a lumber garret,--setting out at sixteen, +'as a bookseller with only my own small collection of books as a +stock--not worth more than two pounds, I believe, quickly independent +of all aid--not all a gain, for I am now sensible that my spirit of +self-reliance too often manifested itself in an unsocial, unamiable +light, while my recollections of "honest poverty" may have made me too +eager to attain and secure worldly prosperity. Had I possessed uncles +such as yours, I might have been much the better of it through life.' + +The close was cheered by the thought that he had fairly earned the +admiration and confidence of his country. Yet nothing that could in any +way fetter his editorial independence or freedom of action could he +permit. When the money invested in _The Witness_ was offered to him by +Chalmers it was firmly declined, and the proposal to requite his +services to the country by providing him with a residence he would +not allow. 'I know,' he said, 'that as the defender of Free Church +principles my intentions have been pure and loyal, but I am not quite +sure I have been successful in doing the right thing, nor have I done +anything that is worthy of such consideration from my friends. I +believe my way is to make yet.' The same was his answer to a proposal +to allow his name to stand for election as Lord Rector of Marischal +College in Aberdeen; he met it pretty much in the vein of Carlyle at +Edinburgh, when he felt that here was a generation in young Scotland +rising up who seemed to say that he had not altogether, after a +hard-spent day, been an unprofitable 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 Galt's _Provost_. He repeated the passage, halting at +the speech of the convener of the trades, but was evidently vexed at +the temporary breakdown. He got a copy from the front shop, and turned +up the passage. Then they learned that, though it was fifteen years +since last he had seen the book, he had repeated page after page +_verbatim_. + +The year 1856 was one remarkable for garotte robberies. This awakened +in the overtaxed brain of Miller a fear for his museum of geological +specimens which he had housed for himself at Shrub Mount, Portobello. +The last four years of his life he had spent there, and often he would +leave the house and return late in the evening after hours of +investigation of the coast line and geological features of Leith +and the surrounding country. He knew his Edinburgh thoroughly; some +of his happiest papers are to be read in his _Edinburgh and its +Neighbourhood_; and it was after one of these excursions that Sir +Archibald Geikie had seen him, as he describes in the reminiscence to +be found in the last pages of this work. The fear of burglars had taken +hold firmly of his imagination, and he resumed the habit of bearing +fire-arms which he had begun at Cromarty when carrying the money of the +bank between that town and Tain. The inflammation of the lungs in his +early days as a mason had again at intervals returned, and his sleep +was broken by dreams of such a harassing nature that he would wake in +the morning to examine his clothes, in the belief that he was now the +victim of evil spirits. In such a condition it was not unnatural that +his mind should take a colour from other days, where the reader may +remember his own account of seeing the figure at the door after his +father's death. Professor Masson, we see, notes this point, and he +believes that Miller felt a strange fascination 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 was found on which had been written these lines to +his wife:-- + + 'DEAREST LYDIA,--My brain burns, I _must_ have _walked_; and a + fearful dream rises upon me. I cannot bear the horrible thought. + God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me. + Dearest Lydia, dear children, farewell. My brain burns as the + recollection grows. My dear, dear wife, farewell. + + HUGH MILLER.' + +It fell to Dr. Guthrie, in whose church of Free St. John's the deceased +had been an office member, to apprise the widow of the real nature of +the case; and in order to secure her sanction for a _post-mortem_ +examination the above letter had to be produced, showing that his +purpose had been executed almost before the ink was dry. On the 26th +the verdict was issued:--'From the diseased appearances found in the +brain, taken in connection with the history of the case, we have no +doubt that the act was suicidal, under the impulse of insanity.' His +funeral was the largest Edinburgh had seen since that of Chalmers, and +by his side in the Grange Cemetery he was laid. To the mass of his +countrymen abroad he was the greatest of living Scotchmen. His works +had given him a European reputation in science, while to those at home +the work he had accomplished as a tribune of the people had given him a +position second only to that of Guthrie. + +A generation has arisen since which hears but by vague report the +principles for which the men of 1843 contended. It takes many a man to +fall in the ditch before glorious revolutions can successfully march +over in their pumps and silk stockings, giving their victorious +three-times-three. It has been sought to minimise these issues, to +explain them away after the manner of 'able editors' and complacent +philosophers cheerfully 'at ease in Zion,' and to maintain, with the +hardy gravity of ignorance, that the combatants really knew not what +they fought for--the Headship of Christ, Anti-Patronage, or resistance +to the civil courts. Similar futilities we have seen ventilated over +the American Civil War. The North, say the philosophic thinkers, or +tinkers, did not know whether it fought for the preservation of the +Union or against slavery. Such speculations are too thin to carry much +weight. In both cases many went to their grave for what they believed +to be principle, and all such men may be safely trusted to have reached +some conclusions and clear issues. These issues obviously all met; +after Auchterarder on the one hand, and South Carolina on the other, +had led the way, no such easy subterfuge was possible for either party. + +The lesson then learned at such a cost might never have been necessary, +with a better adjustment of the political balance, which has been again +found wanting and craves a final and a rational settlement. What +Fairfoul in 1662 told Middleton had been simply again repeated in 1843 +by Muir and Hope, who held the ear of Sir James Graham, to whom Peel +had resigned the whole management of Scottish affairs. For all that +Graham knew of them, Peel might as well have left them to a foreigner. +It took the death of thousands of Irishmen in the potato famine of 1847 +to convince the overfed John Bull of even the barest existence of an +Irish Question, and many a man went to his grave before Lord Aberdeen, +Peel, Graham, and other official people could learn for themselves the +true condition of Scotland. Then it was too late, and their regrets +were vain. The bill of Bolingbroke brought in, as Burnet said, to +weaken the Scottish Church, had produced its logical effects in +widening the gulf between the people and the nobility of Scotland; +education at Eton, Harrow, and the English Universities had done the +rest. Carlyle is known to have regarded the action of the Church in +1843 as the greatest thing in his time; the sole survivor of the Peel +ministry, Mr. Gladstone, has expressed the same opinion; while the +critical, wiry, and alert little Jeffrey was 'proud of his country.' It +bears to-day the mark very strongly of Hugh Miller. Nor need the +workman be ashamed of his work--from which, therefore, let him not be +separated. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +IN SCIENCE + + 'In league with the stones of the field.'--JOB v. 23. + + +The geologist writes in sand literally and historically, and in the +science of the Testimony of the Rocks super-session is the law. 'Such,' +says Miller himself in the preface to the first edition of the +_Old Red Sandstone_, 'is the state of progression in geological science +that the geologist who stands still but for a very little must be +content to find himself left behind.' The advancing tide of knowledge +leaves the names of the early pioneers little more than a list of +extinct volcanoes. Hooke and Burnet, Ray and Woodward, Moro and Michel, +are to the ordinary mass of readers about as obsolete as the saurian +and the mastodon. Only the very few can live in a tide so strong, which +bears away not only the older landmarks but even such names as Werner +and Hutton, Hall and Fleming. + +From about 1830 to 1850 the old metaphysical reign seems to have +ceased; and Jeffrey, in the palmy days of the _Edinburgh Review_, +could declare that the interest in psychology had well-nigh passed +away with Dugald Stewart. Natural Science seemed to be taking its +place, and the British Association movement lent impetus to the new +_régime_. Sedgwick, Buckland, Murchison, Owen, and others, followed by +Huxley and Tyndall, appeared to herald the advent of an age when the +most difficult problems could be read off the book of Nature, and the +public turned eagerly from the Babel of the philosophers to the men of +the new school in a sort of expectation of a royal road to learning, +without missing their way in theological jungle or 'skirting the +howling wastes' of metaphysics. Needless to say, the hopes were no +more realised than were the expectations of a golden age of material +prosperity in the wake of the Reform Bill. The problem of man and his +destiny remains as rooted as ever, and the metaphysician has not been +dislodged. The old battle of the evidences had been fought in the +domain of mental science, and when transferred to the natural sciences +the fight was not productive of the expected results. The times, as +Richter said, were indeed 'a criticising critical time, hovering +between the wish and the ability to believe, a chaos of conflicting +times: but even a chaotic world must have its centre, and revolve +round that centre: there _is_ no pure entire confusion, but all such +presupposes its opposite, before it can begin.' In Scotland and in +England the great ecclesiastical currents of the Disruption and the +Oxford Movement had left the nation for a time weary of theology, and +the school of natural science was in possession of the field. Now the +tide has turned, and the geologist is threatened with eclipse. Of +the _doyen_ of the new school, Richard Owen, Professor Huxley +says:--'Hardly any of those speculations and determinations have stood +the test of investigation. I am not sure that any one but the +historian of anatomical science is ever likely to recur to them. +Obvious as are the merits of Owen's anatomical and palæontological +work to every expert, it is necessary to be an expert to discuss them; +and countless pages of analysis of his memoirs would not have made the +general reader any wiser than he was at first.' Even Buckland is +regarded by Boyd Dawkins as belonging to a type of extinct men. Thus +is the deposition effected of the scientific Pope of the day. If such +rapid supersession be the law, who can expect in departing to leave +footprints in the annals of so shifting a science? Who can be a fixed +star? + +There is some comfort in the reflection that, as in Political Economy, +so in Geology, it is the inspiration that lives and not the mere amount +of positive contribution to knowledge. Bacon has effected nothing for +science; in everything that he attempted it may be shown that he was +wrong and that his methods have led to nothing. His name is associated +with no new discovery, no new law, not even with a new or inductive +method. But his niche is secure through the spirit in which he +approached the question; if he did not see the Promised Land, at +least he was a firm believer in its existence, and that spirit has +outlived his unhappy detraction of greater men than himself in mental +philosophy. His mind was swift to perceive analogies, and such a type +of mind, if it adds little to actual knowledge, is at least valuable +as a stimulus. Carlyle in his political pamphlets has certainly not +advanced the lines of the 'dismal science'; he even contemptuously +doubted its existence, and he has done harm to it through the +ready-reckoner school of _à priori_ economists who refer everything +with confidence to their own internal consciousness. Yet Carlyle at his +worst has his value. He has the merit of showing that the problem is in +its very nature an everlasting one, and that the plummet line of the +mere profit-and-loss moralist will never sound the depths of man and +his destiny. Such thinkers are, however, rare; but in natural science +they are the salt. Such are Oken, Cuvier, Darwin; their position is +independent of the truth of their theories, and they have the gift of a +fused and informing imagination, by which their theories are landmarks. +Much of their work has already been recast, and some of their once +supposed safest generalisations have been abandoned. But the progress +of science revolves round them as central suns. Hardly one of Niebuhr's +interpretations of Roman history has stood the test of subsequent +investigations, any more than those of Ewald in the field of Biblical +criticism. Yet in historical science no two men have a more assured +rank. + +It is this informing power that keeps alive the geologist. Hume owes +his position in metaphysics to this power, and to his great gifts as a +stylist. Few men of science have had graces of style. In Darwin it is +lacking, and he has himself set on record that literature and art had +ceased for him to exert any influence, and that a mere novel had become +the highest form of intellectual amusement. Hutton needed a Playfair to +make him intelligible, as Dugald Stewart was needed for the exposition +of Reid. But it is this power that will keep Miller alive. His views +upon the Old Red Sandstone, on the Noachian Deluge, on the Mosaic +Cosmogony, may be right or wrong. But they have the sure merit of +abiding literature, and men highly endowed with this gift have a +lasting and assured fame. Mr. Lowell has declared Clough to be the true +poet of the restlessness of the later half of the century, and Tennyson +to be but its pale reflex. But the answer is ready and invincible: +Tennyson is read, and Clough is already on the shelf. As a piece of +imaginative writing, _The Old Red Sandstone_ is not likely to be soon +surpassed in its own line. 'I would give,' we find Buckland declaring, +'my left hand to possess such powers of description as this man has.' +'There is,' says Carlyle, 'right genial fire, everywhere nobly tempered +down with peaceful radical heat, which is very beautiful to see. +Luminous, memorable; all wholesome, strong, fresh, and breezy, like the +"Old Red Sandstone" mountains in a sunny summer day.' We doubt if a +single page of Sedgwick, or of Buckland even in his _Bridgewater +Treatise_, be read--at least as literature. But a man, whose book upon +the 'Old Red' has seen its twentieth edition, whose _Testimony of the +Rocks_ is in its forty-second thousand, and whose _Footprints_ has seen +a seventeenth edition, has only attained this popularity by his solid +merits as a writer and thinker. Mere popularisation cannot explain it. +When a man has fully mastered his subject, and his subject has mastered +him, there is sure to emerge a certain demonic force in literature or +in science, all the more if the writer be a man with a style. + +It need hardly be said that geology, from its very first appearance, +had been associated with distinct views in Biblical criticism. The old +chronology of Archbishop Ussher in the margin of the Authorised +Version, by which B.C. 4004 was gravely assigned as the date of the +Creation of the world, and B.C. 2348 for the Deluge, was in conflict +with a science which required ages for its operations and not the +limited confines of six thousand years, which form but a mere +geological yesterday to the scientist like Lyell, who postulates some +eighty millions of years for the formation of the coal-beds of Nova +Scotia. The six 'days' of the Biblical Creation were thought unworthy, +as a mere huddling of events into a point of time, of the Divine +Wisdom, and impossible in conception. Mistakes in positive statement, +no less than of implication, were also alleged against the Mosaic +record, which was said to be admirable as literature if not immaculate +in science. For long geology was regarded as a hostile intruder, and it +required much time to assuage the fears on the one hand and lessen the +rather vague pretensions on the other, before the lines of demarcation +could be firmly drawn, if indeed, in a certain class of both +theological and scientific minds, they can be said to be even yet +settled. There is still the Voltairian type of thinker which is not yet +exploded; and which, even in the case of Professor Huxley, has imagined +that a mere shaking of the letter of a text or two is tantamount to an +annihilation of the Christian faith. 'That the sacred books,' as +Carlyle says, 'could be all else than a Bank of Faith Bill, for such +and such quantities of enjoyment, payable at sight in the other world, +value received; which Bill becomes a waste paper, the stamp being +questioned; that the Christian Religion could have any deeper +foundations than books, nothing of this seems to have even in the +faintest matter occurred to Voltaire. Yet herein, as we believe the +whole world has now begun to discover, lies the real essence of the +question.' Science, in fact, after a long _régime_ of even more than +Macaulayesque cocksureness, is now abating its tone. It now no longer +threatens like a second flood to cover the earth, and it is possible +for mental and historical science to reappear like the earth out of the +waters, and a clear line to be drawn between the limits of mind and +matter. Happily, accordingly, it is no longer possible for a Voltaire +to meet the theologian with a belief that the shells found on high +hills were dropped by pilgrims and palmers from the Holy Land, any +more than it would be possible to assert, with Dugald Stewart, that +the words in Sanskrit akin to Greek were dropped by the troops of +Alexander the Great. It is now as impossible to maintain, with the +mythologists of legend, that the Ross-shire hills were formed by the +_Cailliach-more_, or great woman, who dropped stones through the +bottom of the panniers on her back, as it would be for any reactionary +Chauteaubriand to assert that God made the world, at the beginning, +precisely as we see it with all its completeness and antiquity, since +he believed an infancy of the world would be a world without +romance!--denying creation in periods, and asserting it in +instantaneous processes, by which the fossils were even created just +as we see them. Such a conception is not to exalt the Divine Power; +or, if it appears to do so, it yet effectively annihilates a belief in +the Divine Wisdom that could create pretty toys and useless fossils--a +creation of mummies and skeletons that were never from the very +beginning intended to be anything but skeletons, without any relation +to living beings. + +Miller accordingly makes it perfectly plain in what spirit he +approaches the sacred record. The Bible, he says repeatedly, is neither +a scientific text-book nor even a primer. Why, he asks, should it be +regarded as necessary to promulgate the truths of geology when those of +astronomy have been withheld? 'Man has everywhere believed in a book +which should be inspired and should teach him what God is and what God +demands of him, and this expectation is fully met in the Bible. But +nowhere has man looked for the divine revelation of scientific truth, +for it is in accordance with the economy of Providence, that Providence +which is exhibited in gradual developments, that no such expectation +has been or need be realised, the _Principia_ of Newton and the +discoveries of James Watt being both the result of the natural and +unaided faculties of man.' Nay, more; there never could have been such +a revelation given, for never yet has a single scientific truth been +revealed. But, on the other hand, when he contrasts this clear +perception of the demarcation of religion and science in the Bible, and +the all too copious neglect of it in the other sacred books of the +world, he is constrained to regard this very ability of distinction +between two classes of truth as a strong argument for its inspiration. + +On Man and his destiny he is no less clear, and he has many fertile +suggestions to offer. His main thesis in this connection we have +already seen as determining in his own life its central point. Man he +regards as literally the fellow-worker with God. Up till his appearance +upon the earth, nature had been remarkable only for what it was, but +not for what it became. The advent of man marks the improver of +creation--God made manifest in the flesh. Between his intellect and +that of his Creator there is a relation, since we find creature and +Creator working by the same methods. Precisely as we see China arriving +at the invention of printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's compass +without any connection with the West, so we see the works of the +Creator in the palæozoic period repeated by the tiny creature-worker, +without any idea that he had been anticipated. Thus Creation is not +merely a scheme adapted to the nature of man, but one specially adapted +to the pattern nature of God. Man made in the image of God is a real +and fitting preparation for God's subsequent assumption of the form of +man. 'Stock and graft had the necessary affinity,' and were finally +united in the one person. History is, therefore, no mere finite record +dating from a human act in Eden, but is the real result of a decree, +'in which that act was written as a portion of the general programme.' + +The problem of the origin of evil is of course a difficulty viewed in +relation to the decrees of God, in whom no evil can exist. In the +present state of things he regards evil as due to man himself. The +deputed head of creation has voluntarily and of his own free will +_not_ chosen to be a fellow-worker with God, who, while binding +him fast in the chain of events, has yet left his will free. To ordain +sin would be a self-contradiction of the idea of God; He but creates +the being that in turn creates sin. 'Fore-knowledge,' as Milton says, +'had no influence on their fault, which had no less proved certain +unforeseen.' Perhaps this is as near as we are ever likely to get. But +the Fall in its theological aspect, while it must be fully apprehended +by faith, has nothing to fear from science, which teaches, if it can be +said emphatically to teach one thing, that the sins of the fathers are +visited upon the children. With Coleridge, therefore, he regards the +Fall as a necessary stage in the history of thought and of man. The +creation of the non-absolute gives a pivot without which all subsequent +events would be inexplicable. It gives the true means of colligating +the phenomena: Man, if at the Fall he lost Eden, gained a conscience +and a moral sense. + +More remarkable is his attempted reconciliation of science and the +Mosaic cosmogony. Chalmers had regarded the Biblical account as +relating only to existing creations, and believed in the existence of a +chaotic period of death and darkness between this present world and the +prior geological ages. Pye Smith, on the other hand, had regarded chaos +as both temporary and limited in extent, and believed that outside this +area there had existed lands and seas basking in light and occupied by +animals. But subsequent geological knowledge had shown that this theory +of cataclysms and breaks was without evidence--many of the present +plants and animals co-existing with those of the former periods; nor +could Smith's theory of light existing round the coasts of the earth be +brought to square with the distinct statement of the primal creation of +light in Genesis. On the other hand, Miller notices that geology, as +dealing not with the nature of things, but only with their actual +manifestations, has to do with but three of the six days or periods. +The scale of all geologists is divided into three great classes. Lesser +divisions of systems, deposits, beds, and strata may exist; but the +master divisions, as he calls them, are simply those three which even +the unpractised eye can detect--the Palæozoic, the Secondary, and the +Tertiary. The first is the period of extraordinary fauna and flora--the +period emphatically of forests and huge pines, 'the herb yielding seed +after its kind, and tree bearing fruit.' The second is the age of +monsters, reptiles, pterodactyls and ichthyosaurs, 'the fowl that +flieth above the earth, the great sea-monsters and winged fowl after +its kind.' The Tertiary period is that of 'the beasts of the earth and +the cattle after their kind.' In each age, it is true, there is a +twilight period, a period of morning-dawn and evening-decline; but in +the middle of each period it is that we find the great outstanding +features above. Thus there would be no contradictions in the record. +This, it must be allowed, summarises truly enough the process of +creation; but it leaves out of sight the invertebrata and early fishes +of the first period, and regards the succeeding carboniferous era as +the leading features, while perhaps in some subordinate details it +inverts the order of other appearances. + +To the wider objection to the Biblical record, with its light before +the creation of the sun upon the fourth day, the vegetation on the +third independent of the sun's warming rays, and to other real or +supposed contradictions, Miller has a highly ingenious reply. We do not +think it fully meets the necessities of the case, but it has +unquestionably the merit of imaginative power, and is in full harmony +with the nature of man's mind, and is therefore preferable to any +theory which would assert the exact science of the Mosaic record by its +anticipation of the theory of Laplace and Herschel, by which the earth +existed before the sun was given as a luminary, and was independent of +the sun for light. Perhaps the theory of progressive revelation will +commend itself to most as the truest and the simplest explanation, +though it should be noted that the extraordinary approximation of the +Biblical version to the latest science does really set it far above the +merely human speculation of some old Hebrew Newton or Descartes. + +While regarding the 'days' as ages, Miller views the record as the +result of an _optical vision_ presented to the writer. He truly +enough remarks that any exact revelation would have defeated its own +object through an elaborate statement to man at an early stage. Man +would not have believed it, as it would have contradicted his own +experience. He would no more have believed that the earth revolved on +its own axis than that molluscs had preceded him on the earth. The +record, therefore, he regards as according to appearance rather than to +physical realities: 'The sun, moon, and stars may have been created +long before, though it was not until the fourth day of creation that +they became visible from the earth's surface.' The six days or periods +he takes to correspond with the six divisions in a successive series of +the Azoic, Silurian, Carboniferous, Permian, Oolitic, and Tertiary +ages. To the human eye of the seer, the second day would afford nothing +to divert it from the atmospheric phenomena; on the fourth the +celestial phenomena would alone be so prominent as to call for specific +mention. But, familiar to most readers as the famous passage is, we +here present it as the best example of his descriptive and imaginative +powers. If there are to be reconciliations at all, as either necessary +or desirable, it would be hard to beat this fine piece of fused +strength and imagination.[4] + + [4] _Testimony of the Rocks_, pp. 186-191, ed. 1857. + + 'Such a description of the creative vision of Moses as the one + given by Milton of that vision of the future which he represents as + conjured up before Adam by the archangel, would be a task rather + for the scientific poet than for the mere practical geologist or + sober theologian. Let us suppose that it took place far from man, + in an untrodden recess of the Midian desert, ere yet the vision of + the burning bush had been vouchsafed; and that, as in the vision of + St. John in Patmos, voices were mingled with scenes, and the ear as + certainly addressed as the eye. A "great darkness" first falls upon + the prophet, like that which in an earlier age fell upon Abraham, + but without the "horror"; and as the Divine Spirit moves on the + face of the wildly troubled waters, as a visible aurora enveloped + by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine is orally enunciated, that + "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." + Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision to a few brief moments, + pass away; the creative word is again heard, "Let there be light," + and straightway a grey diffused light springs up in the east, and, + casting its sickly gleam over a cloud-limited expanse of steaming, + vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards the west. One + heavy sunless day is made the representative of myriads; the faint + light waxes fainter--it sinks beneath the dim undefined horizon; + the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits a + while on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what + seems to be a calm and starless night. + + 'The light again brightens--it is day; and over an expanse of + ocean, without visible bound, the horizon has become wider and + sharper of outline than before. There is life in that great + sea--invertebrate, mayhap also ichthyic, life; but, from the + comparative distance of the point of view occupied by the prophet, + only the slow roll of its waves can be discerned, as they rise and + fall in long undulations before a gentle gale; and what most + strongly impresses the eye is the change which has taken place in + the atmospheric scenery. That lower stratum of the heavens occupied + in the previous vision by seething steam, or grey, smoke-like fog, + is clear and transparent; and only in an upper region, where the + previously invisible vapour of the tepid sea has thickened in the + cold, do the clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the + atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold--an upper sea of great + waves, separated from those beneath by the transparent firmament, + and, like them too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A + mighty advance has taken place in creation; but its most + conspicuous optical sign is the existence of a transparent + atmosphere--of a firmament stretched out over the earth, that + separates the water above from the waters below. But darkness + descends for the third time upon the seer, for the evening and the + morning have completed the second day. + + 'Yet again the light rises under a canopy of cloud, but the scene + has changed, and there is no longer an unbroken expanse of sea. The + white surf breaks, at the distant horizon, on an insulated reef, + formed mayhap by the Silurian or Old Red coral zoophytes ages + before, during the bygone yesterday; and beats in long lines of + foam, nearer at hand, against the low, winding shore, the seaward + barrier of a widely-spread country. For at the Divine command the + land has arisen from the deep--not inconspicuously and in scattered + islets, as at an earlier time, but in extensive though flat and + marshy continents, little raised over the sea-level; and a yet + further fiat has covered them with the great carboniferous flora. + The scene is one of mighty forests of cone-bearing trees--of palms + and tree-ferns, and gigantic club-mosses, on the opener slopes, and + of great reeds clustering by the sides of quiet lakes and dark + rolling rivers. There is a deep gloom in the recesses of the + thicker woods, and low, thick mists creep along the dank marsh or + sluggish streams. But there is a general lightening of the sky + overhead; as the day declines, a redder flash than had hitherto + lighted up the prospect falls athwart fern-covered bank and long + withdrawing glade. And while the fourth evening has fallen on the + prophet, he becomes sensible, as it wears on, and the fourth day + approaches, that yet another change has taken place. + + 'The Creator has spoken, and the stars look out from openings of + deep unclouded blue; and as day rises, and the planet of morning + pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from bronze + into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the + glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course + rejoicing. It is a brilliant day; the waves, of a deeper and softer + blue than before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with + little else to attract the gaze, has assumed a garb of richer + green; and as the sun declines amid ever richer glories than those + which had encircled his rising, the moon appears full-orbed in the + east,--to the human eye the second great luminary of the + heavens,--and climbs slowly to the zenith as night advances, + shedding its mild radiance on land and sea. + + 'Again the day breaks; the prospect consists, as before, of land + and ocean. There are great pine woods, reed-covered swamps, wide + plains, winding rivers, and broad lakes; and a bright sun shines + over all. But the landscape derives its interest and novelty from a + feature unmarked before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or + wade far into the water in quest of their ichthyic food; while + birds of lesser size float upon the lakes, or scream discordant in + hovering flocks, thick as insects in the calm of a summer evening, + over the narrower seas, or brighten with the sunlit gleam of their + wings the thick woods. + + 'And ocean has its monsters: great _tanninim_ tempest the deep, + as they heave their huge bulk over the surface to inhale the + life-sustaining air; and out of their nostrils goeth smoke, as out + of "a seething pot or caldron." Monstrous creatures, armed in + massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour the flat rank meadows; + earth, air, and water are charged with animal life; and the sun + sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct pursues + unremittingly its few simple ends--the support and preservation of + the individual, the propagation of the species, and the protection + and maintenance of the young. + + 'Again the night descends, for the fifth day has closed; and + morning breaks on the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and + beasts of the field graze on the plains; the thick-skinned + rhinoceros wallows in the marshes; the squat hippopotamus rustles + among the reeds, or plunges sullenly into the river; great herds of + elephants seek their food amid the young herbage of the woods; + while animals of fiercer nature--the lion, the leopard, and the + bear--harbour in deep caves till the evening, or lie in wait for + their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some broken bank. At + length, as the day wanes and the shadows lengthen, man, the + responsible lord of creation, formed in God's own image, is + introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation ceases for ever + upon the earth. + + 'The night falls once more upon the prospect, and there dawns yet + another morrow--the morrow of God's rest--that divine Sabbath in + which there is no more creative labour, and which, "blessed and + sanctified" beyond all the days that had gone before, has as its + special object the moral elevation and final redemption of man. And + over _it_ no evening is represented in the record as falling, for + its special work is not yet complete. Such seems to have been the + sublime panorama of creation exhibited in vision of old to + + "The Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed, + In the beginning how the heavens and earth + Rose out of chaos"; + + and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that + militates against even the minutest or least prominent of its + details.' + +The _Origin of Species_ in 1859 was issued after Miller's death, but +the leading doctrines of Darwin were not unknown before that time to +the public through the appearance of Robert Chambers's _Vestiges of the +Natural History of Creation_ in 1844, and a subsequent volume of +'Explanations' in 1846. This book caused almost as considerable a stir +as that of Darwin himself, and the greatest care was taken by Chambers +to conceal the authorship. The proof-sheets sent to Mr. Ireland in +Manchester, were returned to the writer, who reforwarded them to +Ireland, who in his turn despatched them to London. The guesses at the +author ranged from Sir Charles Lyell up to the Prince Consort; and so +strong were the feelings aroused that they defeated a proposal to bring +in Chambers as Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1848, and the secret was +not formally divulged till the issue by Ireland in 1884 of a twelfth +edition. The book is written in a 'powerful and brilliant style,' as +Darwin says; and, though long out of print, its re-issue by Routledge +and Son in their Universal Library has again drawn attention to its +views, which in Scotland caused something of the stir produced by the +appearance in England of _Essays and Reviews_. Chambers, indeed, +regarded his book as 'the first attempt to connect the natural sciences +into a history of creation. As such, it must necessarily be crude and +unsatisfactory, yet I have thought the time was come for attempting to +weave a great generalisation out of established natural truths.' Much +of the popular ideas or misconceptions about the geological record is +due to the _Vestiges_. It is not very strong in logic nor exact in +individual branches of science, yet its influence fully merited the +detailed reply by Miller, in 1847, in the _Footprints of the Creator_, +which he appropriately dedicated to Sir Philip Egerton, the highest +authority on fossil fishes. + +Chambers and his school had largely subscribed to the doctrines of +Oken, by which no organism had been created of larger size than an +infusorial point, and no organism created which was not microscopic; +whatever exists larger, man himself included, having been developed and +not created. To this Miller replies that this at least is not the +testimony of the rocks. If it were true, it would follow that the +oldest fossils would be small, and low in organisation. But, so far is +this from being the case that the oldest organisms, whether that be the +_asterolepis_ or the _cephalaspidæ_ or the _acanthidæ_, are large and +high. One asterolepis found at Thurso measures over twelve feet, and a +Russian specimen described by Professor Asmus of Dorpat seems to have +reached the astonishing length of twenty-three feet. Thus, the earliest +organisms 'instead of taking their place, agreeably to the demands of +the development hypothesis, among the sprats, sticklebacks, and minnows +of their class, took their place among its huge and basking sharks, +gigantic sturgeons, and bulky sword-fishes. They were giants, not +dwarfs.' + +The prevalence of the brachiopods in the Silurian period over the +_cephalaspidæ_ proves little. What the naturalist has to deal with +is not quantity but quality, 'not the number of the low, but the +standing of the high. A country may be distinctly a country of flocks +and herds, or a country of carnivorous mammalia, or like New South +Wales or the Galapagos, a country of marsupial animals or of reptiles. +Its human inhabitants may be merely a few hunters or shepherds, too +inconsiderable in numbers to give it any peculiar standing as a home of +men. But in estimating the highest point in the scale to which the +animal kingdom has attained, it is of the few men, not of its many +beasts, that we must take note.' Thus he maintains that the existence +of a single cephalopod or one cuttlefish among a wilderness of +brachiopods is sufficient to indicate the mark already attained in the +scale of being, just as the existence of the human family, when +restricted to a pair, indicated as clearly the scale as when its +existence can be counted by millions. Under the clearing-system in the +Western Highlands, Miller had, during 'the cruise of the Betsey,' +noticed in the island of Rum a single shepherd and eight thousand +sheep. Yet the human unit, to the naturalist, would outweigh all the +lower organisms. Moreover, the brachiopods of the palæozoic age he +would regard as larger than those existing now which have sunk by +'degradation' into inferior importance. + +The proof of the development theory in the realm of fossil flora he +would regard as still more questionable. It had been asserted that in +the carboniferous age no exogenous plant had appeared; that before the +Lias nature had not succeeded in producing a tree, and that the +vegetation of the coal-measures had been 'magnificent immaturities' of +the vegetable kingdom. But the quarry of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, +alone would refute it, not to speak of the coal-fields of Dalkeith and +Falkirk with their araucarians and pines. While Brongniart had denied +to the Lower 'Old Red' anything higher than a lichen or a moss, 'the +ship carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand, to explore the +woods for some such stately pine as the one described by Milton: + + "Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast + Of some great ammiral."' + +It might be thought, however, that to the geological argument from +development some consolation might be left from the general fact of the +lower producing the higher. Yet even here the Lamarckian theory fails. +Fishes were earlier than the beasts of the field and man. But we are +still a long way from any proof that 'the peopling of the earth was one +of a natural kind, requiring time'; or that the predecessors of man +were his progenitors. So far as geology is concerned, superposition is +not parental relation, so that there is no necessity for the lower +producing the higher. Nor has transmutation of marine into terrestrial +vegetation been proved. This had been the mainstay of the Lamarckian +hypothesis, and had been adopted from the brilliant but fancifully +written _Telliamed_ (an anagram, by the way, of the author's name) of +De Maillet by both Oken and Chambers, who had found in the _Delphinidæ_ +the marine progenitors of the _Simiadæ_, and through them of man--a +curious approximation to some recent crude ideas of Professor Drummond +in his _Ascent of Man_. They had pointed to the general or supposed +agreement in fauna and flora between the Galapagos and South America, +between the Cape de Verde Islands and Africa; yet in such a period of +conversion plants of an intermediate character would be found, and +thousands of years have failed to produce such a specimen. Thus +geology, botany, and zoology would seem to afford slight support to the +Darwinian theory, at least in the state of the argument as presented in +the _Vestiges_, unless a very large draft upon the mere imagination is +made. + +And such a demand is made by Darwin. 'If,' says he, 'my theory be true, +it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was +deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer +than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and +that, during these vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, the world +teemed with living creatures.' This, however, we may say with the +Regent Morton, is only 'a devout imagination'; and it might be more +scientific to take the geological record as we find it, for, says +Miller, 'it is difficult to imagine that that uniform cessation of +organised life at one point, which seems to have conducted Sir Roderick +Murchison and Professor Sedgwick to their conclusion, should thus have +been a mere effect of accident. Accident has its laws, but uniformity +is not one of them; and should the experience be invariable, as it +already seems extensive, that immediately beneath the fucoidal beds +organic remains cease, I do not see how the conclusion is to be +avoided, that they represent the period in which, at least, _existences +capable of preservation_ were first introduced.' Indeed the hypothesis +of Darwin would fall under the remark of Herodotus, that the old +theorisers and speculators at the last resort betook themselves to a +belief in an imaginary ocean-river or to something in the interior of +the earth where observation was of necessity excluded. For, as +Professor Bain says, the assertion of a fact wholly beyond the reach of +evidence for or against, is to be held as untrue: we are not obliged to +show that a thing is not,--the burden lies on them who maintain that +the thing is. + +We have said that those who ultimately live in each branch of science +are few. It is only by the combination in perfection of imagination and +observation that success is ensured. Miller had noticed in the writer +of the _Vestiges_ the absence of original observation and abstract +thinking, or the power of seeing and reasoning for himself. In truth, +there is something in geological speculation akin to what Professor +Jebb has noticed in the field of classical emendation and of textual +criticism, especially in Germany, where scholarship is a crowded +profession, and eminence is often temporarily won by boldness of +handling the texts. But even Ritschl, with all his heavy apparatus of +learning, singularly fails in comparison with the sagacity of Bentley +or the instinct of Porson. What habits of classical verse-composition +had done for these scholars is brought to the geologist by observation. +This, in unison with creative mental power, will alone preserve the +name of the natural scientist. The first has kept White of Selborne a +literary evergreen: the second has maintained his place for Cuvier. +Miller's own friend, Dr. Longmuir, rightly singles out this +Champollion-like trait of _sagacity_ as his most characteristic +feature, by which 'he seemed by intuition to perceive what cost other +minds no small amount of careful investigation.' He was very cautious +in statement, and laborious in the acquisition of his data. In his +works the reader will find no second-hand statements, no airy +generalisation; even in fields where special research in minute +departments had been by circumstances denied to him, his gift of +constructive imagination often enables him to supply such defects as +later investigators may have detected and added. 'The more,' says +Professor Huxley, I study the fishes of the Old Red, the more I am +struck by the patience and sagacity manifested in his researches, and +by the natural insight which, in his case, seems to have supplied the +want of special anatomical knowledge.' + +And what is true in science is also no less true in his purely literary +performances. The reader of his articles, political or social, cannot +fail to be struck with the pertinence of his quotations and +illustrations. What he knew was instantly at the call of a powerful +memory and a vigorous imagination. As an editor, he had not to go to +memory for his metaphors, and to his imagination for his facts. Both +came easily and naturally; and his writing, even in its most sustained +flights, shows no signs of effort. Some critics have detected in his +style an element of exuberance; and this may be allowed in his +narrative and descriptive passages. There would appear to have been, as +it were, a Celtic lobe of imagination in his mind for the feeling of +discursive description and external nature. Thus, in his slightest +landscapes his imagination or eye is not satisfied with the few bold +touches such as Carlyle would, after his manner, throw upon the canvas. +It expands, like the method of Ruskin, over the surface. But in each +case the defect is the result of original endowment. The eye, he says, +had been in his case exclusively trained as a mason, and this habit of +seeing the projected line complete from the beginning was at the bottom +of his often spoiling the effect of his narrative with flamboyant +additions, through his possession of the geological eye for its +conformation in detail. Johnson said of Thomson that he had a true +poetical genius--the power of seeing even a pair of candles in a +poetical light. The landscape became to Miller at once anatomised into +its geological aspects. + +But in his strictly scientific passages this is not so. There the style +is simple in expression and close in reasoning. When we consider the +great amount of solid literary performance, and of minute observation, +recorded in his _Cruise of the Betsey_ and his _Rambles of a +Geologist_, extending over the West Coast and the Orkneys--when we +know that much of his work consisted of papers in _The Witness_, +republished, like _The Old Red Sandstone_, in book form with the +necessary additions, we shall wonder at the fertility and the quickness +of the mind that could, in the midst of distracting journalistic +demands on his time and attention, produce such a mass of varied and +finished work in science and literature. And of the work in _The +Witness_ as a political writer, we need only say that the present +ecclesiastical condition of Scotland bears largely his impress. Till he +came and gave expression to the feeling of the country in the columns +of his paper, the people had to a considerable extent believed the +question at issue to be one that concerned mainly the clergy. This had +been the standpoint of the Moderate organs, in a wary attempt to win +over the laity. But by the _Letter to Brougham_ he won the ear of the +people, and to the end he never lost it. By 1841 the political +candidates in Scotland at the general election had proclaimed +themselves, with a single exception, in favour of some distinct +alteration of the law of patronage. Whether Church papers are or are +not a blessing--in England they have become a menace to political +action and a medium for the most offensive clericalism and reactionary +measures--may safely be left out of account in settling the question in +his own case, for, as we have seen, he had never consented to make his +paper a merely ecclesiastical organ. But of the work which he +accomplished as a leader-writer and as an exponent of popular rights we +have the unhesitating estimate of Guthrie: 'The battle of Christ's +rights as Head of the Church, and of the people's rights as members of +the body of which He is the Head, was fought and won in every town and +a large number of the parishes of Scotland, mainly by Hugh Miller, +through the columns of _The Witness_ newspaper.' Of it he himself, in +the closing sentences of the _Schools and Schoolmasters_, could say +with modesty that it took its place among our first-class Scottish +newspapers, and that it numbered among its subscribers a larger +percentage of readers with a university education than any other. Nor +would he, perhaps, have considered it as among the least of his +journalistic successes that his name and connection could win for the +elder Bethune, at the close of his wintry day, the proposed editorship +of the _Dumfries Standard_, which would have done much to have +brightened the life of his old fellow-contributor to Wilson's _Border +Tales_ had not the poet been removed before him by death. + +In science there are stars and stars, to borrow the adage of Thackeray +upon men. There are stars that are fixed. In his own line of geology, +as an inspirationist, we think his name will not soon pass away. There +may be defects of knowledge, but there is no defect of spirit; and here +we cannot do better than set down the opinion of his friend, Sir +Archibald Geikie, who has a connection both with Miller and with +Murchison through his occupancy of the Murchisonian Chair of Geology in +the University of Edinburgh. Both Miller and Murchison came out of the +Black Isle. In a communication to us of the date 22nd December 1895, he +thus writes:-- + + 'Hugh Miller will always occupy a peculiar place in the history of + geology, and in the ranks of geological literature. He was not in + any sense a trained geologist. He lacked the habit of patient and + detailed investigation in departments of the science that did not + specially interest him, but which were essential as a basis of + accurate induction and successful speculation. In all that relates + to the stratigraphical sequence of the formations, for example, he + accepted what had been done by others without any critical + examination of it. Thus, in his own region--the north of + Scotland--he believed that a girdle of Old Red Sandstone nearly + encircles the older crystalline rocks of Ross and Sutherland--a + view then generally adopted. Yet he had actually walked over ground + where, with even an elementary knowledge of structural geology, he + could have corrected the prevalent error. It is, of course, no + reproach to him that he left matters as he found them in that + respect; his genius did not find in such questions the appropriate + field of its exertion. + + 'Nor though he occupied himself all through his life with fossils, + can he be called a palæontologist. He had no education in + comparative anatomy, and was thus incompetent to deal adequately as + a naturalist with the organisms which he discovered. He was himself + perfectly conscious of the limitations of his powers in this + department, and thus wisely refrained from burdening the literature + of science with descriptions and names which would have been + revised, and perhaps entirely recast, by some subsequent more + competent biologist. + + 'Hugh Miller's unique position is that of a poetic student of the + geological side of Nature, who possessed an unrivalled gift of + vividly communicating to others the impressions made on his own + mind by the observation of geological fact and by the inferences + which such observation seemed to warrant. His lively imagination + led him to seize more especially on those aspects of the past + history of the earth which could be most vividly realised. He loved + to collect the plants and animals of which the remains have been + entombed among the rocks, and to re-people with them the scenes in + which they lived long ages ago. Each scattered fact was marshalled + by his eager fancy into its due place in the mental picture which + he drew of such long-vanished lands, lakes, rivers, and seas. His + enthusiasm supplied details where facts were wanting, and enabled + him to kindle in his readers not a little of the burning interest + which he felt himself. + + 'Long study of the best English literature had given Miller a rare + mastery of his mother tongue. For elegance of narrative combined + with clearness and vividness of description, I know no writing in + the whole of scientific literature superior, or, indeed, perhaps + equal to his. There can be no doubt that this literary gift, + appealing as it did to so wide a circle of readers, formed a chief + source of the influence which he exerted among his contemporaries. + It was this that enabled him to spread so widely a curiosity to + know something of geological science, and an interest in the + progress of geological discovery. I do not think that the debt + which geology owes to him for these services, in deepening the + popular estimation of the science, and in increasing the number of + its devotees, has ever been sufficiently acknowledged. During his + lifetime, and for some years afterwards, Hugh Miller was looked + upon by the general body of his countrymen as the leading geologist + of his day. And this exaggerated but very natural estimate spread + perhaps even more extensively in the United States. His books were + to be found in the remotest log-hut of the Far West, and on both + sides of the Atlantic ideas of the nature and scope of geology were + largely drawn from them. + + 'Of the extent and value of Miller's original contributions to + geology I am, perhaps, hardly fitted to speak. He was one of my + earliest and kindest scientific friends. He used to relate to me + the results of his summer rambles before he had time to set them + down in writing. He admitted me into the intimacy of his inner + thoughts on geological questions and controversies. He brought me + completely under the spell of his personal charm, and filled me + with an enthusiastic love for the man as well as a passionate + admiration for the geologist. Nor has the glamour of that early + friendship passed away. I would rather leave to others the + invidious task of coldly dissecting Hugh Miller's work and seeing + how much of it has been a permanent addition to science, and how + much has passed away with the crudities of advancing knowledge. I + will only say that there cannot be any doubt that his contributions + to the stock of geological fact were much less important than the + influence which his writings ever had in furthering the spread of + an appreciation of geological science throughout the + English-speaking world. + + 'There were two departments in which his best original work was + done. One of these was the Old Red Sandstone, where he laid the + foundations of his fame as an observer and describer of Nature. His + unwearied devotion to the task of collecting the fishes of the Old + Red Sandstone, and his patient industry in piecing their broken + fragments together, opened up a new chapter in the history of Life + on our globe. The other department was that which embraces the + story of the Ice Age. Miller was one of the pioneers in the study + of the Boulder-Clay. The last years of his life were more + especially devoted to that interesting formation in which he found + fossil shells in many parts of Scotland where they had never been + found before. I well remember my last interview with him, only a + few evenings before his death. He had spent a short holiday in the + low ground about Bucklyvie between the Forth and Clyde, and had + collected a number of marine shells, which led him to draw a + graphic picture of what must have been the condition of central + Scotland during a part of the glacial period. On the same occasion + he questioned me as usual about my own geological doings. I had + been surveying in detail the geological structure of Arthur's Seat + at Edinburgh, and showed him my maps. He went over them with lively + comments, and, when he had done, turned round to his eldest + daughter, then a girl at school, and gave her in his own pictorial + way a sketch of the history of the volcano that had piled up the + picturesque hill on the eastern outskirts of the city. + + 'I count it as one of the privileges of my life to have known Hugh + Miller, and as one of its chief losses that he was so suddenly + removed when I had hardly realised the full value of his friendship + and of his genial enthusiasm. His writings formed my earliest + geological text-books, and I shall never cease to look back upon + their influence with gratitude. They ought to be far more widely + read than they seem now to be. Assuredly no young geologist will + find more stimulating chapters than those penned by the author of + the _Old Red Sandstone_.' + +The statue erected to him by his countrymen presents to the eye of the +traveller one of the most striking features of the landscape as he +approaches the little town of Cromarty. No more fitting scene could be +found than that which commands the magnificent sweep of water over +which Miller's eye had ranged when a boy. Of the Scott Monument in +Edinburgh he had said that no monument could be in keeping and in +character that was not Gothic; and no one to himself could be true that +forgot the interpreter of the Old Red Sandstone. As late as 1836, +Buckland in his _Bridgewater Treatise_ had briefly dismissed it, and +it was a new revelation in geology to make known its scientific +importance. In dedicating the book to Sir Roderick Murchison, who had +been born at Taradale on the Beauly Firth in 1792, he could say that +Smith, the father of English geology, had been born upon the Oolite: +they, he added, had been born upon the Old Red. Rarely could nature +afford a more striking example of the true and the picturesque, than in +these two widely differing memorials, the one in the Princes Street of +his 'own romantic town,' the other looking over the expanse of the +Cromarty Firth. In life these men had never met, and in type they were +totally distinct. Yet in the great features of integrity and force of +character no two men could more strikingly agree. Both wrote with their +eyes on the object, and both were loyal to fact. Of Miller we may say +what Carlyle had said of Sir Walter, that no sounder piece of British +manhood had been put together in this century of time, and that, when +he departed, he took a man's life along with him. + +A man of the people, he was understood by the people; and he wished it +to be so. When we passed through the Sutors of Cromarty some years ago, +about six in the morning of a fine summer day, there was a sailor at +the wheel on the bridge. Under the belief that we were strangers to the +locality, he pointed out the statue in the distance and gave an +account, correct in the main, of what Miller had been and what he had +done. In dwelling upon the life the narrator seemed to borrow respect +for the dignity of all labour and of his own calling. Goldsmith thought +of Burke that in giving up to party what was meant for mankind he had +narrowed his mental powers and lessened his influence and force. It may +be that there are some who think that, in doing the ecclesiastical work +which he accomplished, he had given up to the Church of Scotland in all +her branches what was meant for science. Such a judgment would be +incorrect; it would certainly be one which would but feebly reflect the +convictions of all Scotchmen. It is a true remark of the elder Disraeli +that few men of science have either by their work or in their life +influenced the staple of the thinking of humanity. To influence a whole +people is certainly given but rarely to any one man. But to mould the +opinions of his countrymen in a lasting sense,--and no higher object +would he have desired--was no less certainly given to Hugh Miller. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +1829. Poems written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Mason. +_Inverness._ + +1829. Letters on the Herring Fishery. _Inverness_ (reprint from +_Inverness Courier_). + +1835. Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland; or, The Traditional +History of Cromarty. _Edinburgh._ + +1839. Letter from one of the Scottish People to the Right Hon. Lord +Brougham and Vaux, on the opinions expressed by his lordship on the +Auchterarder case. _Edinburgh._ + +1839. The Whiggism of the Old School as exemplified by the Past History +and Present Position of the Church of Scotland. _Edinburgh._ + +1841. The Old Red Sandstone; or, New Walks in an Old Field. +_Edinburgh_ (republished from _Witness_). + +1847. First Impressions of England and its People. _Edinburgh._ + +1847. Footprints of the Creator; or, the Asterolepis of Stromness. +_London_, 1849. + +1848. The Sites Bill and the Toleration Laws; being an Examination of +the Resolutions of the Rev. Dr. Alexander of Argyle Square Chapel +Congregation. _Edinburgh._ + +1848. Geology of the Bass Rock (section contributed to M'Crie's +_History of the Bass Rock_). _Edinburgh._ + +1850. Thoughts on Education. _Edinburgh_ (republished from _Witness_.) + +1852. My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, the Story of My Education +(_Edinburgh_, 1854). _Popular_ edition by W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell, +_Edinburgh_, 1893. + +1854. The Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland. _Edinburgh_ (address +to Royal Physical Society, 22 Nov. 1854). + +1855. Geology versus Astronomy; or, the Conditions and the Periods; +being a view of the Modifying Effects of Geological Discovery on the +Old Astronomic Inferences respecting the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds. +_Glasgow._ + +1857. The Testimony of the Rocks; or, Geology in its bearing on the +Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed. _Edinburgh_ (Twelve lectures +before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, British Association, 1855, +etc.). + +1858. The Cruise of the Betsey; or, A Summer Ramble among the +Fossiliferous Deposits of the Highlands; with Rambles of a Geologist, +or Ten Thousand Miles over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland. +Edited by W. S. Symonds. _Edinburgh._ + +1859. Sketch Book of Popular Geology. Edited by Mrs. Miller. (Lectures +delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh.) +_Edinburgh._ + +1862. Essays. Edited by Dr. P. Bayne (republished from _Witness_). + +1863. Tales and Sketches. Edited by Mrs. Miller (contributions to +Wilson's _Border Tales_, etc.). + +1864. Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood. Edited by Mrs. Miller. +_Edinburgh_, 1891. W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell. + +1889. The Headship of Christ and the Rights of the Christian People. +With preface by Dr. P. Bayne. _Edinburgh_, new edition, Nimmo, Hay +& Mitchell. + +1890. Leading Articles. Edited by his Son-in-law, the Rev. John +Davidson. New edition, _Edinburgh_, W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell. + + +The following list of a uniform edition of Hugh Miller's Works is +taken from Messrs. W. P. Nimmo, Hay & Mitchell's 1896 Catalogue:-- + +My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, The Story of my Education. + +The Testimony of the Rocks; or, Geology in its Bearings on the Two +Theologies, Natural and Revealed. _Profusely Illustrated._ + +First Impressions of England and its People. + +Sketch-Book of Popular Geology. + +Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland; or, The Traditional +History of Cromarty. + +The Old Red Sandstone; or, New Walks in an Old Field. _Profusely +Illustrated._ + +The Cruise of the Betsey; or, A Summer Ramble among the Fossiliferous +Deposits of the Hebrides. With Rambles of a Geologist; or, Ten Thousand +Miles over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland. + +Footprints of the Creator; or, The Asterolepis of Stromness. With +Preface and Notes by Mrs. Miller, and a Biographical Sketch by +Professor Agassiz. _Profusely Illustrated._ + +Tales and Sketches. Edited, with a Preface, by Mrs. Miller. + +Edinburgh and its Neighbourhood, Geological and Historical. With the +Geology of the Bass Rock. + +Essays: Historical and Biographical, Political and Social, Literary and +Scientific. + +Leading Articles on Various Subjects. Edited by his Son-in-law, the +Rev. John Davidson. With a Characteristic Portrait of the Author, +facsimile from a Photograph, by D. O. Hill, R.S.A. + +The Headship of Christ and the Rights of the Christian People. With +Preface by Peter Bayne, A.M. + + + + +_FAMOUS SCOTS_ + + +THOMAS CARLYLE + +BY HECTOR C. MACPHERSON + + +'One of the very best little books on Carlyle yet written, far +outweighing in value some more pretentious works with which we are +familiar.'--_Literary World._ + +'We heartily congratulate author and publishers on the happy +commencement of this admirable enterprise.'--_British Weekly._ + +'As an estimate of the Carlylean philosophy and of Carlyle's place +in literature and his influence in the domains of morals, politics, +and social ethics, the volume reveals not only care and fairness, +but insight and a large capacity for original thought and +judgment.'--_Scotsman._ + +'Lets us get a correct glimpse into the complex workings of a +master-mind, and is lighted up by many airy touches of fact and +fancy.'--_Weekly Free Press._ + +'A fascinating story of a wonderful writer.'--_Leeds Mercury._ + +'An eminently readable book.'--_Evening Dispatch._ + +'Is distinctly creditable to the publishers, and worthy of a national +series such as they have projected.'--_Glasgow Daily Record._ + +'The book is written in an able, masterly, and painstaking +manner.'--_Educational News._ + + + +ALLAN RAMSAY + +BY OLIPHANT SMEATON + + +'Graphic and winning.'--_Dundee Advertiser._ + +'Gives many quaint and pleasant glimpses of Scottish life in the last +century.'--_Newcastle Chronicle._ + +'A most interesting monograph.'--_Arbroath Herald._ + +'Discussing Ramsay as a pastoral poet and elegist, the biographer gives +an able analysis of his chief writings. The whole book is, indeed, +marked by authority and ability.'--_Banffshire Journal._ + +'A new and most important addition to our national biography.'--_Scottish +Notes and Queries._ + +'Eminently readable.'--_Border Advertiser._ + +'The story throughout is told with vigour.'--_Glasgow Citizen._ + +'Presents a very interesting sketch of the life of the poet, as well as +a well-balanced estimate and review of his works.'--_Peoples Friend._ + +'The author has shown scholarship and much enthusiasm in his +task.'--_Edinburgh Dispatch._ + +'The kindly, vain, and pompous little wig-maker lives for us in Mr. +Smeaton's pages.'--_Daily Record._ + +'A careful and intelligent study.'--_Glasgow Herald._ + +'A very capable piece of literary craftsmanship by a competent +hand.'--_Edinburgh Evening News._ + +'It is not a patchwork picture, but one in which the worker, taking +genuine interest in his subject and bestowing conscientious pains on +his task, has his materials well in hand, and has used them to produce +a portrait that is both lifelike and well-balanced.'--_Scotsman._ + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hugh Miller, by William Keith Leask + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44530 *** |