MILLER,
the name of a family possessing a baronetcy of Great Britain,
conferred in 1788 on Sir Thomas Miller of Barskimming in
Ayrshire, and Glenlee in Galloway, a distinguished lawyer and
judge, second son of Mr. William Miller, writer to the signet.
He was born 3d November 1717, and admitted advocate at the
Scottish bar, 21st February 1742. In 1748 he was nominated
sheriff of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and the same year was
elected joint principal clerk of the city of Glasgow. These
offices he resigned in 1755 on being appointed solicitor to the
excise in Scotland. On 17th March 1759 he became
solicitor-general, and on 30th April 1760, he was constituted
lord-advocate. The following year he was chosen M.P. for
Dumfries. In November 1762 he was elected rector of the
university of Glasgow, and on 14th June 1766, on the death of
Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, appointed lord-justice-clerk. On
15th January 1788, he succeeded Robert Dundas of Arniston as
president of the court of session, and on February 19 of the
same year was created a baronet. He died at his seat of
Barskimming September 27, 1789. He was twice married, and by his
first wife, a daughter of John Murdoch, Esq. of Rosebank, lord
provost of Glasgow, he had a son and a daughter. Burns, in his
‘Vision,’ alludes to Sir Thomas Miller as “An aged judge
dispensing good.”
The son, Sir William Miller, second
baronet, also an eminent judge, was admitted advocate, 9th
August 1777. At the keenly contested election in 1780, he was
returned M.P. for the city of Edinburgh, in opposition to Sir
Lawrence Dundas, and took his seat in parliament; but was
unseated upon a petition, and his opponent declared duly
elected. On 23d May, 1795, he was appointed a lord of session,
when he took the title of Lord Glenlee. He resigned his seat in
1840, having been a judge for above forty-five years. Besides
being an accomplished scholar, he was esteemed one of the best
lawyers of his time on the Scottish bench. He died in 1816. He
was the senior vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,
and was frequently vice-president of the Society of Scottish
Antiquaries, of which he was the first admitted fellow (of date
1781), and oldest member. He married Grizel, daughter of George
Chalmers, Esq., by whom he had 6 sons and 3 daughters.
His eldest son, Thomas Miller, Esq.,
predeceased his father in 1827. by his wife, the youngest
daughter of Sir Alexander Penrose-Gordon-Cumming, baronet, he
had five sons. The eldest son, Sir William Miller, third
baronet, born in Edinburgh in 1815, married in 1839 the eldest
daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas M’Mahon, baronet,
K.C.B., issue, 2 sons and 2 daughters. He was educated at Eton,
and was for some years an officer in the 12th Lancers; appointed
a magistrate for Ayrshire in 1838, succeeded his grandfather as
3d baronet, May 9, 1846, made a knight commander of the order of
the Temple in January the same year.
The second son of the second
baronet, Lieutenant-colonel William Miller, 1st Foot guards, was
mortally wounded at Quatre Bras, June 16, 1815, and died at
Brussels the following day. “In his last mortal scene,” says a
letter dated Brussels, June 23, 1815, published at the time, “he
displayed the soul and the spirit of a hero. On finding himself
wounded, he sent for Colonel Thomas (who was killed two days
afterwards, at Waterloo) – “’Thomas,’ said he, ‘I feel I am
mortally wounded; I am pleased to think that it is my fate
rather than yours, whose life is involved in that of your young
wife.’ After a pause, he said faintly, ‘I should like to see the
colours of the regiment once more before I quit them for ever.’
They were brought to him, and waved round his wounded body. His
countenance brightened, he smiled; and declaring himself
satisfied, he was carried from the field. In all this you will
see the falling of a hero – a delicacy of sentiment, a
self-devotion, and a resignation, which have never been
surpassed.” His remains were interred at Brussels, in a cemetery
where lie many of the more distinguished of the heroes who fell
at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. On a monumental stone erected to
his memory, with a suitable inscription, it is stated that he
was thirty-one years old at the time of his death.
MILLER, HUGH, the first of Scottish geologists, was born
in Cromarty, in the north of Scotland, October 10th, 1802. His
father, the owner and commander of a sloop in the coasting
trade, who had served in the British navy, perished in a storm
in November 1807, when Hugh was just five years of age. He was
descended from a long line of seafaring men, and he mentions two
uncles of his father, sailors, one of whom had sailed round the
world with Anson, and the other, like himself, perished at sea.
The paternal grandfather of Hugh, when entering the firth of
Cromarty, was struck overboard during a sudden gust, by the boom
of his vessel, and never rose again. His great-grandfather,
whose name was John Feddes, was one of the last of the
buccaneers.
Previous to his father’s death, Hugh
had been sent to a dame’s school, where he remained a year, and
was taught to pronounce his letters in the old Scottish mode, a
peculiarity which he could never get quit of. He was
subsequently transferred to the parish grammar school, where he
made some progress in the rudiments of the Latin language. He
was a great reader, and as he read every book that came in his
way, he thus came to acquire, in course of time, a vast fund of
information.
Even at this early period his turn
for geological enquiries began to develop itself. “The shores of
Cromarty,” he says, in his ‘Schools and Schoolmasters,’ “are
strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks,
derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder
clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering
over the various pebble-beds when shaken up by recent storms,
and in learning to distinguish their numerous components.” From
his uncle Sandy, whom he used frequently to accompany in his
evening walks along the seashore, he derived some insight into
natural history, and especially conchology. He subsequently
extended his researches to the Hill of Cromarty and the caves in
the Cromarty Sutors, and began to make collections. Even in his
school days he set about writing poetry, so that he soon came to
be looked upon as a sort of village prodigy. He was afterwards
sent to a subscription school which had been opened in his
native place, where he only remained a few months. On quitting
it, which he did abruptly, in consequence of a severe drubbing
which he had received from the schoolmaster, he revenged himself
by writing a satirical poem, which he styled ‘The Pedagogue.’
At the age of 17 he was bound
apprentice to an uncle-in-law, a stone mason, to serve for the
space of three years. He was set to work in the quarries of
Cromarty. “The quarry,” he says, “in which I commenced my life
of labour was a sandstone one, and exhibited in the section of
the furze-covered bank which it presented, a bar of deep red
stone beneath, and a bar of pale red clay above. Both deposits
belonged to formations equally unknown at the time to the
geologist. Save for the wholesome restraint that confined me for
day after day to this spot, I should perhaps have paid little
attention to either. It was the necessity which made me a
quarrier that taught me to be a geologist.” Though both a
skilful and vigorous workman, he never seems to have taken
kindly to his trade; nor did he either associate or sympathize
with his fellow-masons. He was seldom with his fell-w-masons,
except when at work, and he spent the hours, which they devoted
to jollity and drinking, in a close and enthusiastic reading of
poetry and science.
After working for some years as a
country mason, storing his mind all the time, by reading and
observations, with a knowledge of the facts and processes of
nature, Mr. Miller, on reaching the age of twenty-one, resolved
upon going to Edinburgh, and making his way as a mechanic among
the stone-cutters of the Scottish capital, perhaps, as he says,
the most skilful in their profession in the world. He soon got
employment from a master-builder, and was engaged to work at a
manor house near the village of Niddry Mill, a few miles to the
south of Edinburgh, at twenty-four shillings a-week wages. On a
reduction of the wages of the men to fifteen shillings, a strike
took place, in which, however, he took no part.
In 1824 occurred the memorable fires
in the parliament close and High Street of Edinburgh, and a
building mania having thereafter set in, which ended
disastrously in a year or two, mason-work was for a time
exceedingly plentiful in that city. Mr. Miller, however, finding
his lungs affected, from the dust of the stone which he had been
hewing for the previous two years lodging in them, instead of
taking employment in Edinburgh, returned to Cromarty to recruit
his health. “I was,” he says, “too palpably sinking in flesh and
strength to render it safe for me to encounter the consequences
of another season of hard work as a stone-cutter. From the stage
of the malady at which I had already arrived, poor workmen,
unable to do what I did, throw themselves loose from their
employment, and sink in six or eight months into the grave –
some at an earlier, some at a later period of life; but so
general is the affection, that few of our Edinburgh
stone-cutters pass their fortieth year unscathed, and not one
out of every fifty of their number ever reaches his forty-fifth
year.”
On
recovering from a long and depressing illness, he resolved upon
following a higher branch of the art than ordinary
stone-cutting. This was the hewing of ornate dial stones,
sculptured tablets and tombstone inscriptions. It was an
advantage to him that his new branch of employment brought him
sometimes for a few days into country districts, and among
solitary churchyards, which presented new fields of observation,
and opened up new tracts of inquiry. But of this sort of work
there was not a superabundance, at least in that locality, and
about the end of June 1828, Mr. Miller found that he had nothing
to do, and acting on the advice of a friend, who believed that
his style of cutting inscriptions could not fail to secure for
him a good many little jobs in the churchyards of Inverness, he
visited that place, and inserted a brief advertisement in one of
the newspapers, soliciting employment. While waiting for it, he
was accosted one day in the street by the recruiting sergeant of
a Highland regiment, who asked him if he did not belong to the
Aird. “No, not to the Aird, to Cromarty,” he replied. “Ah! To
Cromarty – very fine place! But would you not better bid adieu
to Cromarty, and come along with me? We have a capital grenadier
company; and in our regiment a stout steady man is always sure
to get on.” Mr. Miller thanked him, but of course declined the
invitation.
While at Inverness he first “rushed
into print.” Selecting some of his best pieces in verse, he got
them printed in a volume in the office of the Inverness Courier,
the editor of that paper, Mr. Robert Carruthers, inserting from
time to time some of them in his “poet’s corner.” The volume was
published without his name. On the title-page it was simply
intimated that the poems had been “written in the leisure hours
of a journeyman mason,” and, thus modestly announced, the book,
for a first effort, was very favourably received. On his return
to Cromarty he began to contribute a series of letters, on the
herring fishery, to the newspaper above mentioned. These letters
attracted attention, and were republished, on his behalf, by the
proprietors of the paper, “in consequence of the interest they
had excited in the northern counties.” His Verses and his
Letters soon enlarged the circle of his friends, and amongst
others, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, baronet, author of the ‘Wolf of
Badenoch,’ and other works, Miss Dunbar of Boath, and Principal
Baird of Edinburgh, showed him much kindness. The latter urged
him to quit the north and proceed to Edinburgh, as the proper
field for a literary man in Scotland, but as he did not think
that he could enj9y equal opportunities of acquainting himself
with the occult and the new in natural science, as when plying
his labours in the provinces as a mechanic, he determined to
continue for some years more in the country. At the principal’s
desire, however, he wrote for him an autobiographic sketch of
his life, to his return from Edinburgh to Cromarty in 1825.
Mr. Miller next set himself to
record, in his leisure hours, the traditions of his native place
and the surrounding district, and a bulky manuscript volume soon
grew up under his hands. All this time he lost no opportunity of
continuing his geological researches, and, gradually advancing
in discoveries, in course of time he came to have a thorough
knowledge of the extinct organisms of the primitive world. Many
of his friends wished to fix him down to literature as his
proper walk, but he himself thought that his special vocation
was science, and he accordingly devoted his mind to it with an
ardour that soon enabled him to attain to surpassing excellence
even as a literary man. After the passing of the Reform Bill, he
was elected a member of the town council of Cromarty, but he
never attended but one meeting of the council.
It was in his working attire that he
first met the lady who was destined to become his wife. He had
been hewing, he tells us, in the upper part of his uncle’s
garden, and had just closed his work for the evening, when three
ladies made their appearance to see a curious old dial stone
which he had dug out of the earth long before. With the youngest
of the three he afterwards had many opportunities of meeting,
and at length they came to a mutual understanding. It was agreed
between them that if in the course of three years no suitable
field of exertion should open for him at home, they should marry
and emigrate to the United States. Two years of the time agreed
upon had passed, and he was still an operative mason, when in
1834 a branch of the Commercial Bank of Scotland being
established in Cromarty, the office of accountant was offered to
him by Mr. Ross the agent. He was at this time thirty-two years
of age, and although afraid that he would make but an
indifferent account, never having had any experience in figures,
he was yet induced to accept the appointment. He was accordingly
sent to the parent bank at Edinburgh, to acquire the necessary
instructions to fit him for his new situation.
On his arrival, he was ordered to
the Commercial Bank branch at Linlithgow, to be initiated into
the proper system of book-keeping, Being, as he says himself,
“altogether deficient in the cleverness that can promptly master
isolated details, when in ignorance of their bearing on the
general scheme to which they belong,” he was at first rather at
a loss, and was looked upon by the local agent as particularly
stupid. But as soon as he came to comprehend the central
principle by which the system was governed, he at once showed
his competence to manage the business of the bank. In the arena
of science this law ruled his genius with a necessity not less
inexorable than in the commercial field. From the centre of any
science, when once he was able to master it, he could proceed
with the utmost ease, but he invariably found that when he
attempted to approach as if from the outside, the details
baffled and repulsed him.
After two months’ probation in the
branch bank at Linlithgow, he returned to Cromarty, and
straightway commenced his new course as an accountant, at a
salary of £80 a-year. When fairly seated at the desk he felt, he
says, as if his latter days were destined to differ from his
earlier ones, well nigh as much as those of Peter of old, who,
when he was “young, girded himself, and walked whither he would,
but who, when old, was girded by others, and carried whither he
would not.” A sedentary life had at first a depressing effect on
his intellectual pursuits, and for a time he intermitted them
almost entirely, but as he became inured to it, his mind
recovered its spring, and, as before, he began to occupy his
leisure hours in literary and scientific exertions. The
publication, in 1835, of his ‘Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland,’ made his name known in literary circles. With a few
exceptions, the book was highly commended by the critics. He
relates, with a very natural feeling of satisfaction, that
“Leith Hunt gave it a king and genial notice in his Journal; it
was characterized by Robert chambers not less favourably in his;
and Dr. Hetherington, the future historian of the Church of
Scotland and of the Westminster Assembly of Divines – at that
time a licentiate of the church – made it the subject of an
elaborate and very friendly critique in the ‘Presbyterian
Review.’ Nor was I less gratified,” he continues, “by the terms
in which it was spoken of by the late Baron Hume, the nephew and
residuary legatee of the historian – himself very much a critic
of the old school – in a note to a north country friend. He
described it as a work ‘written in an English style which’ he
‘had begun to regard as one of the lost arts.’” The work,
however, from the local nature of the subjects, attained to no
great popularity, but as the author’s reputation increased, its
later editions have sold better than the first.
After a courtship of five years, he
married the young lady formerly mentioned, Lydia Fraser, who was
then residing with her mother in Cromarty, engaged in teaching.
After their marriage, his wife continued to take a few pupils,
and at this time, he tells us, the united earnings of the
household did not much exceed a hundred pounds a-year. He,
therefore, began to add to his income by writing for the
periodicals. To Wilson’s ‘Border Tales,’ commenced in 1835, he
contributed, after the death of Mr. John Mackay Wilson of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, their originator, several stories, for which
he got £25 in all, being at the rate of three guineas a-piece,
the stipulated wages for filling a weekly number. For supplying
the same space with a tale weekly, which he did for three of
four weeks, the writer of this got five pounds each story from
the proprietors of the new ‘Tales of the Borders,’ published in
Glasgow in 1848.
Finding that some of his stories
were rejected by the editor, Mr. Miller ceased to write for the
‘Border Tales.’ He then made an offer of his services to Mr.
Robert Chambers, by whom they were accepted, and for the two
following years he occasionally contributed papers to Chambers’
Journal, with his name attached to his several articles.
He still continued his researches
among the rocks in the neighbourhood of Cromarty, in determining
the true relations of their various beds and the character of
their organisms. To enable him to examine the best sections of
the Sutors and the adjacent hills, with their associated
deposits, which cannot be reached without a boat, he purchased a
light little yawl, furnished with mast and sail, and that rowed
four oars, to enable him to carry out his explorations. At this
time a letter of his on a local subject, inserted in one of the
district papers, procured him the offer of a newspaper
editorship, which, not deeming himself qualified for it, he at
once declined.
Amongst his other occupations at
this busy period of his life was writing the memoir of a
deceased townsman, Mr. William Forsyth of Cromarty, at the
request of his relative and son-in-law, Mr. Isaac Forsyth,
bookseller, Elgin. This little work was not intended for
publication, being printed for private circulation among Mr.
Forsyth’s friends. His career hitherto had been prosperous for a
person in his condition in life. From the humble and obscure
position of a journeyman stone-mason, he had attained to that of
an accountant in a bank. He was known as an author and respected
as an explorer in geological science. In private he had made
“troops of friends,” and altogether he had “got on” in the world
better than in his early days he could have had any reason to
expect. He was now to be removed to a higher sphere, and to be
placed in circumstances more favourable for the full development
of his genius, and the complete display of his extraordinary
attainments, than any that even his wildest ambition could have
hoped for a few years before.
He had taken very little interest in
the Voluntary controversy, but when the Non-intrusion question
came to be agitated, he deemed it time to buckle on his armour,
in other words, to take up his pen manfully in behalf of the
rights of the church when assailed by the civil courts. The
famous Auchterarder case was the occasion of his first
appearance as a writer in the field of ecclesiastical
controversy, in which he was destined to take such a prominent
and influential part. The campaign was a prolonged one, and
ended, as every body knows, in the disruption of the Established
Church of Scotland. At no time of his life did he exhibit
greater energy of intellect than as the champion of the
non-intrusion and Free church party in the church, although it
must be confessed that, sometimes led away alike by prejudice
and zeal, he proved himself less the judicious and
discriminating advocate than the bitter and uncompromising
ecclesiastical partisan.
The struggle began in 1834, with the
passing of the celebrated “Veto Act,” founded on the early
principle of the church, that ministers should not be intruded
on parishes contrary to the consent of the parishioners. As the
church thus considered the acceptability of a presentee a
necessary qualification, the object of the act was to instruct
all presbyteries to reject presentees to whom a majority of male
heads of families, communicants, objected. In the case of the
Auchterarder presentation, when this was acted upon, the
presentee brought an action in the court of session, to declare
it an undue interference with his civil rights. The church, in
reply, contended that the matter was purely ecclesiastical, and
altogether beyond the jurisdiction of the civil courts. The
court of session thought otherwise, and, in March 1838, decided
that as patronage had been constituted property by act of
parliament, the obnoxious presentee, Mr. Young, was entitled to
be “intruded upon” the reclaiming parish, as the rights of the
patron must be maintained. The church appealed to the House of
Lords, who, in May 1839, confirmed the judgment of the court of
session. The General Assembly declined to implement the decision
of the civil tribunals, holding itself irresponsible to any
civil court for its obedience to the laws of Christ.
On reading Lord Brougham’s speech,
and the decision of the House of Lords, in the Auchterarder
case, Mr. Miller felt deeply the peril of the church. That
night, he tells us, he slept none, and in the morning,
determined upon taking the popular view of the question, he
commenced his famous ‘Letter from one of the Scottish People to
the Right Hon. Lord Brougham and Vaux, on the opinions expressed
by his Lordship in the Auchterarder case.’ That letter had an
important and decisive effect of his after life. On finishing
it, he dispatched the manuscript to the manager of the
Commercial Bank at Edinburgh, Mr. Robert Paul, from whom he had
already experienced some kindness, and who, in the great
ecclesiastical struggle, took a decided part with the church.
That gentleman, after reading it, hastened with it to his
minister, the Rev. Mr. afterwards Dr. Candlish of St. George’s,
who, recognizing the ability it displayed and its popular
character, urged its immediate publication. It was accordingly
put into the hands of Mr. John Johnstone, the then well-known
Church bookseller. The evangelical party in the church had been
for some time anxious to establish an ecclesiastical newspaper
in Edinburgh for the support of their principles, and a meeting
of ministers and elders had been held in that city, shortly
before, to take measures for the purpose. A properly qualified
editor was wanted, and on reading the manuscript of Mr. Miller’s
‘Letter to Lord Brougham,’ Dr. Candlish instantly fixed upon its
writer as the very person they had been looking for to fill that
office.
Meanwhile the ‘Letter’ was published in the form of a pamphlet,
and was at once successful. It ran rapidly through four editions
of a thousand copies each, and was read pretty extensively by
men who were not Non-intrusionists. “Among these,” says its
author, “there were several members of the ministry of the time,
including Lord Melbourne, who at first regarded it, as I have
been informed, as the composition, under a popular form and a
nom-de-guerre, of some of the Non-intrusionist leaders in
Edinburgh; and by Mr. Daniel O’Connell, who had no such
suspicions, and who, though he lacked sympathy, as he said, with
the ecclesiastical views which it advocated, enjoyed what he
termed its ‘racy English,’ and the position in which it placed
the noble lord to whom it was addressed.” Mr. W. E. Gladstone,
too, in his elaborate work on ‘church Principles Considered in
their Results,’ noticed it very favourably. His words are: “Over
and above the judicial arguments in the reports of the
Auchterarder and Lethendy cases, the church question has been
discussed in a great variety of pamphlets, some of them very
long and very able, others of them very long without being
particularly able, and one of them particularly able without
being long; I mean the elegant and masculine production of Hugh
Miller, entitled ‘A Letter to Lord Brougham.’”
Almost immediately after its
publication, Mr. Miller received a letter from Edinburgh,
requesting him to meet there with the leading non-intrusionists.
He accordingly proceeded to the capital, and agreed to undertake
the editorship of their projected newspaper, the Witness. He
then returned to Cromarty to make arrangements for finally
quitting that place. He closed his connexion with the bank, and
devoted a few weeks very sedulously to geology, and was
fortunate enough to find specimens on which Agassiz founded two
of his fossil species. On leaving his native town he was
presented with an elegant breakfast service of plate from a
numerous circle of friends, of all shades of politics and both
sides of the church, and was entertained at a public dinner.
After being fifteen years a journeyman stone-mason, and five
years a bank accountant, he was now at last placed in his true
position, and was enabled to give those wonderful works to the
press which have procured for him a world-wide reputation.
The Witness commenced at the
beginning of 1840. During the first twelvemonth, he wrote for
its columns a series of geological chapters, which attracted the
notice of the geologists of the British Association, assembled
that year at Glasgow. In the collected form they were afterwards
published, under the title of ‘The Old Red Sandstone; or New
Walks in an Old field.’ Of this work the Westminster Review
said: “The geological formation known as the Old red Sandstone
was long supposed to be peculiarly barren of fossils. The
researches of geologists, especially those of Mr. Miller, have,
however, shown that formation to be as rich in organic remains
as any that has been explored. Mr. Miller’s exceedingly
interesting book on this formation is just the sort of work to
render any subject popular. It is written in a remarkably
pleasing style, and contains a wonderful amount of information.”
The Witness, in the meantime, under his editorship rose rapidly
in circulation. That paper, indeed, owed its success to his able
articles, literary, ecclesiastical, and geological, and during
the course of the first three years his employers raised his
salary to £400. He had published another pamphlet on the church
question, entitled ‘The Whiggism of the Old School, as
exemplified by the past history and present condition of the
Church of Scotland,’ which soon reached a second edition.
As the crisis of the church’s fate
approached, Mr. Miller’s consummately able articles in the
Witness greatly aided in enlightening the public mind on those
principles on which the Free church was formed, and he may be
said to have exercised an influence among the supporters of the
spiritual independence of the church as great as that even of
Dr. Chalmers himself. His mastery of the English language was
complete, and to this he added a singular felicity of reasoning
and a wonderful vividness of imagination not usually combined.
In originality and appropriateness of illustration, and graphic
force and telling significancy of diction, no contemporary could
compete with him. In the early years of the Witness, a
twice-a-week paper, his was indeed a life of strife and toil. In
the circumstances of the time, when polemical feeling was
carried beyond due bounds on both sides, as the editor of the
principal, and for a while the only, non-intrusion paper in the
kingdom, it was impossible but that his combative spirit would
be exerted to the utmost. He had to contend with many fierce and
unscrupulous enemies, as almost the entire newspaper press was
against him and the principles for which he so ably and
fearlessly contended. “For full twenty years,” he says, “I had
never been engaged in a quarrel on my own account: all my
quarrels, either directly or indirectly, were ecclesiastical
ones; -- I had fought for my minister, or for my brother
parishioners; and fain now would I have lived at peace with all
men; but the editorship of a non-intrusion paper involved, as a
portion of its duties, war with all the world.” This truth he
experienced to its fullest extent, but he was a match for all
opponents, and at length few indeed were the antagonists willing
to cope with him. From Dr. Chalmers, himself “the greatest
living Scotsman” of his day, he obtained that proud title, and
while in public this self-educated and self-reliant working-man
showed no mercy to those who entered the lists against him, or
assailed the principles of the Free church, in private he was a
singularly manly, modest, and sensitive being, whose demeanour,
in itself invariably respectful, was at all times calculated to
win the respect of those who came personally in contact with
him. With his retiring and unassuming manners, his life was, for
his position, as editor of such a paper as the Witness, a
remarkably secluded one. Besides furnishing those splendid
articles to its columns which were the admiration of all who
read them, and most of which have been republished in some one
or other of his works, he continued to devote himself, with
characteristic ardour, to the prosecution of scientific
inquiries, and made frequent pedestrian excursions, for
geological purposes, to different parts of the country. Being
now in circumstances to follow the natural bent of his genius
and inclination, and develop that power of observation and
research which he had cultivated from his early boyhood,
whenever opportunity enabled him to put it in practice, he
became known over the empire as a discoverer in sciences, and as
one of the best and most effective writers of his time.
His celebrated work on the ‘Old Red
Sandstone’ was published in 1841. While it placed him in the
very front rank of geologists, it charmed non-scientific readers
by its marvelous powers of description and the fascinating
graces of its style. A succeeding work, ‘First Impressions of
England and its People,’ was written after a visit to England,
which he made in 1847. The principal characteristic of this
small book was earnest and vigorous thought. In 1849 he produced
another geological work of even a more profound character than
his former publications, entitled ‘Footprints of the Creator, or
the Asterolepis of Stromness,’ which Dr. Buckland, who said that
he “would give his left hand to possess such powers of
description as this man had,” made one of the textbooks for his
geological lectures at Oxford. Other teachers of geology in our
universities followed his example. It was written chiefly with
the view of exposing the flimsy sophistries and atheistical
tendency of a work published anonymously shortly before, with
the specious title of ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation,’ and was well described as a contribution to natural
theology of inestimable importance.
In 1845, on the retirement of Mr.
Johnstone from the joint proprietorship of the Witness, Mr.
Miller purchased his share of that prosperous and influential
journal. Subsequently he and his co-partner, Mr. Fairley, were
enabled to pay up the sum of one thousand pounds which had been
advanced at its starting, by a committee of Non-intrusion
ministers and elders, and which gave them a certain control over
its management. This being at last satisfactorily got quit of,
thenceforward, in the eyes of the public, who were ignorant of
what took place behind the scenes, the paper assumed a more
independent and commanding tone than formerly.
Mr. Miller’s habits of composition
were peculiar. His mind, with all its weight and force, and in
spite of the rich intellectual stores which he possessed, wanted
elasticity, and he was in general a slow and cautious writer.
Before putting pen to paper on any subject, he spent a long time
in deep thought, arranging, as it were, all its details within
himself, meanwhile balancing the poker or the tongs in his
hands, or gazing musingly into the fire. The author of this work
was associated with him for some time as sub-editor of the
Witness, and had many opportunities of observing his
characteristics. He was fond of athletic exercises, and took
delight in such acts as leaping upon the table, poising a chair
by one of its hind legs in his right hand, and doing other feats
of strength, in which no one present could compete with him. He
also took a pride in snuffing a candle by the mere wave of his
arm, when no other arm, though half-a-yard nearer, could do it.
In 1855, he published an
autobiographical work, entitled ‘My Schools and Schoolmasters,’
giving an account of his own self-education and the means by
which he overcame the difficulties of his position. Although
necessarily somewhat egotistical, it furnishes a very
interesting as well as most instructive history of his youth and
early manhood, and describes, in his own characteristically
attractive style, the progress of his unassisted intellectual
training.
Recognised as the most eloquent living expositor of the
profoundest truths of geology, in the latter years of his life
he was induced to give a series of lectures on his favourite
science. As a lecturer, however, he did not make the same
distinguished appearance as a writer. His accent was against
him, being that of the Cromarty Scottish, which, with his
natural bashfulness and not very graceful address, rendered his
delivery bad as a lecturer. His lectures were, therefore, not
unfrequently read for him by others. Nevertheless, his high
reputation as a geologist and the .peculiar prestige of his
name, rendered them highly popular. Whenever he made his
appearance as a lecturer, the lecture-room was crowded. He
began, we think, in Portobello, where, at a place called shrub
Mount, he latterly resided. He subsequently lectured in the
Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, and of the eminent men whom
that association has engaged to deliver lectures, no one
commanded such audiences as assembled in their hall to listen to
his prelections. His lectures were also most acceptably and even
enthusiastically received by crowded audiences when he appeared
before the Christian Institutes of London and Glasgow. But, as
we have said, from the uncouthness of his pronunciation, and his
want of fluency, his carefully written and elaborately prepared
lectures were, in these cities, read by others, he himself
sitting by. His services were always cheerfully and readily
given, as far as time and strength would allow, often, indeed,
beyond his strength, solely from the desire to do good. With
characteristic generosity his lectures were given gratuitously,
as he invariably refused payment for them, being only anxious to
be serviceable to the cause of popular education.
His latest work, ‘The Testimony of
the Rocks,’ embodies his lectures, twelve in number, on
geological science. A prefatory note informs the reader that
four of them were delivered before the members of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institution, one in Exeter Hall, London, and two
in Glasgow; while two others were read before the Geological
Section of the British Association in 1855. Of the five others,
written mainly to complete, and impart a character of unity to
the volume into which they have been introduced, three were
addressed, viva voce, to popular audiences. The third was
published both in this country and in America, and translated
into some of the continental languages. The rest appeared in the
volume for the first time.
This, the greatest effort of his
genius, proved fatal to him. In the preparation of it for the
press, his intellect exhausted itself. So great was the
intensity with which he wrote upon it that his brain gave way,
and he fell a victim to mental overwork. The circumstances of
his death are mournful in the extreme. The statement published
by his friends in the Witness, when that event took place,
relates them so minutely, and describes the state of his mind
for some time previously so fully, that it cannot fail to be
adopted, in its main points, by every one who narrates the story
of his life. For months his overtasked intellect had given
evidence of disorder. He became the prey of false or exaggerated
alarms, and fancied that, occasionally, for brief intervals, his
faculties quite failed him. He laboured too closely on his
treatise on the ‘Testimony of the Rocks,’ devoting to it all the
day, and often half the night. This overtoiling of the brain
told so fearfully on his mental powers that there can be no
doubt that, latterly, his understanding was completely
shattered. To guard against the apprehended attacks of robbers
he was accustomed, when out of doors after nightfall, to carry a
loaded pistol with him. He also followed the same practice when
traveling, or when on his pedestrian excursions. It was
mentioned in one of the local newspapers that, once being
touched on the shoulder by one of his oldest friends from the
country in a well-frequented street in Edinburgh, that gentleman
was amazed by his suddenly turning round and presenting a pistol
at him. This dangerous habit of carrying loaded fire-arms he is
supposed to have acquired when he was accountant in the Cromarty
branch of the Commercial bank, and employed occasionally to
convey specie to the other branches.
In July, 1855, when residing at
Portobello, about three miles from Edinburgh, he had furnished
himself with a revolver. An impression took possession of his
mind that his house would some night be broken into, and robbed.
His museum, situated in a separate outer building, was
especially, he thought, exposed to the depredations of burglars.
Connected with this morbid fear of thieves was the strange
fascination which descriptions of house robberies in the
newspapers had for him, and he was haunted with the idea that
robbers and other desperate characters were continually prowling
about his premises. To guard against their assaults, he nightly
placed his revolver within his reach on going to bed, beside it
lay a broad-bladed dagger, whilst behind him, at his bedhead,
stood a ready claymore.
A week or two before his death, the
most alarming indication of his mental malady presented itself,
in sudden and singular sensations in his head. It was only,
however, in lengthened intervals that they came, and mostly at
night, but during the short time that they lasted, they were
extremely violent. Up to Monday, the 22d December, 1856, two
days before his death, he had spoken of them to no one, but
about ten o’clock of that day he called on Dr. Balfour in
Portobello, to consult him in regard to them. That gentleman, in
a communication which he afterwards drew up, thus describes what
took place: -- :On my asking him what was the matter with him,
he replied, ‘My brain is giving way. I cannot put two thoughts
together to-day; I have had a dreadful night of it. I cannot
face another such. I was impressed with the idea that my museum
was attacked by robbers, and that I had got up, put on my
clothes, and gone out with a loaded pistol to shoot them.
Immediately after that I became unconscious. How long that
continu3d I cannot say; but when I awoke in the morning I was
trembling all over, and quite confused in my brain. On rising, I
felt as if a stiletto was suddenly, and as quickly as an
electric shock, passed through my brain from front to back, and
left a burning sensation on the top of the brain, just below the
bone. So thoroughly convinced was I that I must have been out
through the night, that I examined my trousers to see if they
were wet or covered with mud, but could find none.’ He further
said, ‘I may state that I was somewhat similarly affected
through the night twice last week, and I examined my trousers in
the morning, to see if I had been out. Still the terrible
sensations were not nearly so bad as they were last night; and I
may further inform you that, towards the end of last week, while
passing through the Exchange in Edinburgh, I was seized with
such a giddiness that I staggered, and would, I think have
fallen, had I not got into an entry, where I leaned against the
wall, and became quite unconscious for some seconds.’” Dr.
Balfour told him that he was overworking his brain, and agreed
to call on him on the following day, to make a fuller
examination. Mrs. Miller, that same forenoon, went to Edinburgh
to consult Professor Miller, one of the most eminent surgeons of
that city, as to her husband’s health. What follows may be given
almost in the words of the narrative of his melancholy fate
which appeared in the Witness newspaper: -- “I arranged,” says
that gentleman, “to meet Dr. Balfour at shrub Mount, (Mr. Hugh
Miller’s house,) on the afternoon of next day. We met
accordingly at half-past three on Tuesday. He was a little
annoyed at Mrs. Miller’s having given me the trouble, as he
called it, but received me quite in his ordinary kind, friendly
manner. We examined his chest, and found that unusually well;
but soon we discovered that it was head symptoms that made him
uneasy. He acknowledged having been night after night up till
very late in the morning, working hard and continuously at his
new book, ‘which,’ with much satisfaction, he said, ‘I have
finished this day.’ He was sensible that his head had suffered
in consequence, as evidenced in two ways; first, occasionally,
he felt as if a very fine poignard had been suddenly passed
through and through his brain. The pain was intense, and
momentarily followed by confusion and giddiness, and the sense
of being ‘very drunk’ – unable to stand or walk. He thought that
a period of unconsciousness must have followed this – a kind of
swoon, but he had never fallen. Second, what annoyed him most,
however, was a king of nightmare, which for some nights past had
rendered sleep most miserable. It was no dream, he said; he saw
no distinct vision, and could remember nothing of what had
passed accurately. It was a sense of vague and yet intense
horror, with a conviction of being abroad in the night wind, and
dragged through places as if by some invisible power. ‘Last
night,’ he said, ‘I felt as if I had been ridden by a witch for
fifty miles, and rose far more wearied in mind and body than
when I lay down.’ So strong was his conviction of having been
out, that he had difficulty in persuading himself to the
contrary, by carefully examining his clothes in the morning, to
see if they were not wet or dirty; and he looked inquiringly and
anxiously to his wife, asking if she was sure he had not been
out last night, and walking in this disturbed trance or dream.
His pulse was quiet, but tongue foul. The head was not hot, but
he could not say it was free from pain. But I need not enter
into professional details. Suffice it to say, that we came to
the conclusion that he was suffering from an overworked mind
disordering his digestive organs, enervating his whole frame,
and threatening serious head affection. We told him this, and
enjoined absolute discontinuance of work – bed at eleven, light
supper (he had all his life made that a principal meal),
thinning the hair of the head, a warm sponging-bath at bed-time,
&c. To all our commands he readily promised obedience, not
forgetting the discontinuance of neck-rubbing, to which he had
unfortunately been prevailed to submit some days before. For
fully an hour we talked together on these and other subjects,
and I left him with no apprehension of impending evil, and
little doubting but that a short time of rest and regimen would
restore him to his wonted vigour.”
After the professor’s departure, as
it was near the dinner hour, the servant entered the room to lay
the cloth. She found Mr. Miller in the room alone. Another of
the paroxysms was on him. His face was such a picture of horror,
that she shrunk in terror from the sight. He flung himself off
the sofa, and buried his head, as if in agony, upon the cushion.
Again, however, the vision flitted by, and left him in perfect
health. The evening was spent quietly with his family. During
tea he employed himself in reading aloud Cowper’s ‘Castaway,’
the ‘Sonnet on Mary Unwin,’ and one of his more playful pieces,
for the special pleasure of his children. Having corrected some
proofs of the forthcoming volume, he went up stairs to his
study. At the appointed hour he had taken the bath, but
unfortunately, his natural and peculiar repugnance to physic had
induced him to leave untaken the medicine that had been
prescribed. He had retired into a sleeping-room – a small
apartment opening out of his study, and which for some time
past, in consideration of the delicate state of his wife’s
health, and the irregularity of his own hours of study, he
occupied at night alone – and lain sometime upon the bed. The
horrible trance, more horrible than ever, must have returned.
All that can now be known of what followed is to be gathered
from the facts, that next morning his body, half-dressed, was
found lying lifeless on the floor – the feet upon the study rug,
the chest pierced with the ball of the revolver pistol, which
was found lying in the bath that stood close by. The deadly
bullet had perforated the left lung, grazed the heart, cut
through the pulmonary artery at its root, and lodged in the rib
in the right side. Death must have been instantaneous.
On looking round the room in which the body had been discovered,
a folio sheet of paper was seen lying on the table. On the
centre of the page the following lines were written – the last
which that pen was ever to trace: --
“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.”
A post-mortem examination of the body was made by Professor
Miller, and Drs. A. H. Balfour, W. T. Gairdner, and A. M.
Edwards. The following is the conclusion to which they came: --
“Edinburgh, December 26, 1856.
“We hereby certify on soul and conscience, that we have this day
examined the body of Mr. Hugh Miller, at Shrub Mount,
Portobello.
“The cause of death we found to be a pistol-shot through the
left side of the chest; and this, we are satisfied, was
inflicted by his own hand.
“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.”
It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the gloom which
pervaded Edinburgh on the particulars of Hugh Miller’s
lamentable death being known. And this gloom was deepened by the
occurrence of another sad tragedy in connexion with the fatal
revolver with which he had terminated his life. After the
medical inquiry into the cause of his death had been completed,
Professor Miller took the revolver to the gunsmith in Edinburgh
from whom it had been purchased by Mr. Miller, to ascertain how
many shots had been fired, and how many still remained in the
chamber. In the master’s absence, the foreman, Thomas Leslie,
received the weapon from the professor, and looked into the
muzzle, holding the hammer with his fingers, while he turned the
chamber round to count the charges. The hammer slipped from his
fingers, struck the cap, and the charge in the barrel exploded.
The charge entered his right eye and penetrated the brain, and
he fell dead on the floor. – Subjoined is Mr. Miller’s portrait:
[portrait of Hugh Miller]
Mr. Miller was buried in the Grange
cemetery, on the south side of Edinburgh, his grave being on the
same line, and a few paces distant, from that of Dr. Chalmers.
The attendance of mourners at the funeral was very great, and
the concourse of spectators equally so. At one part of the route
the procession was joined by the kirk session of Free St. John’s
church, of which Mr. Miller was a deacon, by the members of the
Royal Physical Society, by the compositors in the Witness
office, and by several hundreds of gentlemen. Along all the
streets through which the procession passed, the shops were shut
at the request of the magistrates.
In person Mr. Miller was large and
muscular. He had a stalwart form, and a broad and massy
forehead, with a singular conformation of head. No one could see
him without being convinced that there was something remarkable
about him, and the individuality of his appearance was rendered
the more striking by the homely dress, including the plaid
thrown across the shoulder, in which he was accustomed to attire
himself. It was emphatically said of him by the duke of Argyle,
that “Hugh Miller was not a learned man. He knew no language but
his own. He could read nothing but English; and yet, by careful
and industrious habits, by spending his spare hours on the
writings of the greatest authors to whom he could get access, he
was enabled to write books which have attained a classical rank
in the literature of the English language.”
His townsmen have erected a statue
of him at Cromarty. His much-cherished geological collection
was, in 1858, purchased by government for £500, to be preserved
in the Museum of the university of Edinburgh. An additional sum
of £600, subscribed by various persons, with a view to its
private purchase, was paid over to his widow, making in all
£1,100, which the family received for this memento of her
husband’s scientific labours.
The ‘Testimony of the Rocks’ was
published soon after his death, and from the peculiar
circumstances in which it appeared, as well as from its own
extraordinary merits, it attracted an unusual share of public
attention. Its object is to demonstrate the bearing which
geology has on both natural and revealed religion, and whatever
may be the opinions entertained of the author’s peculiar and
thoroughly original views as to the creation and deluge, the
work must certainly be considered one of the most remarkable
contributions to science of the present century. He had long
projected a great work on ‘The Geology of Scotland,’ as the
completion of his scientific labours, and one on which his
reputation was permanently to rest, but his strong intellect had
run its course, and it never shone clearer, as appears
conspicuous on every page of his final volume, than just before
it suddenly sunk in darkness, to be resumed no more in this
world.
Mr.
Miller left a family of two sons and a daughter. The eldest son
was fourteen years old at the time of his father’s death. He
himself was 54 years of age when that event took place.
The works of Hugh Miller are:
Poems written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Mason.
Inverness, 1829. 12mo.
On the Herring Fishery. A pamphlet.
Inverness, 1829. Contributed originally in a series of letters
to the Inverness courier.
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. Fourth edition, 1857.
The Whiggism of the Old School, as
exemplified by the past history and present condition of the
Church of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1839, 8vo. Second edition.
Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland. Edinburgh, 1835. Fifth edition, crown 8vo. 1857.
The Old Red Sandstone; or New Walks
in an Old Field. Edinburgh, 1841, crown 8vo, with plates. 7th
edition, 1857.
The Fossiliferous Deposits of
Scotland; being an address to the royal Physical Society,
delivered 22d November 1854. Edinburgh, 12mo, 1854.
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,
12mo.
First
Impressions of England and its People. Edinburgh, 1847. fourth
edition, 1857, crown 8vo.
Footprints of the Creator; or, The
Asterolepis of Stromness. London, 1849, 16mo. Sixth edition,
foolscap 8vo, 1857, with numerous woodcut illustrations.
The Two Parties in the Church of
Scotland Exhibited as Missionary and Anti-Missionary. Their
contendings in these opposite characters in the Past and their
Statistics now. Edinburgh, 1842, 8vo. Second edition.
Words of Warning to the People of
Scotland on Sir Robert Peel’s Scottish Currency Bill. Edinburgh,
1844, 8vo.
My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, The Story of my Education.
Edinburgh, 1854. 8th edition, crown 8vo, 1857.
The Testimony of the Rocks; or,
Geology in its bearing on the Two Theologies – Natural and
Revealed. Posthumous. Edinburgh, 1857, post 8vo, 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, Edinburgh, 1858, 8vo.
Posthumous.
He also contributed an account of
the geology of the Bass Rock to a work, published in 1850,
having for its object a full description of that once celebrated
state prison.
A Sketch Book of Popular Geology.
Posthumous. Edited by his widow. Being Lectures delivered before
the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. With an Introductory
Preface. By Mrs. Miller. Edinburgh, 1859, 8vo.
On Mr. Miller’s widow government settled a pension of £70, and
on his aged mother at Cromarty, one of £30.
