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could not even read it himself, and was frequently obliged to call his
wife and daughters to his aid. Many of his discourses, when intended for
the press, were copied by them. His manuscript, when fresh from his
hand, looked as though a fly had fallen into the ink-stand, and then
crawled over the page. When his letters were received at his paternal
home, the language of the father was, 'A letter from Tummus, eh; weel,
when he comes hame, he maun read it himsel.' There was something
Homeric in Chalmers' mind; and Hugh Miller always considered him the
bard of the Free Church, as well as its great theologian and still
greater benefactor; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that he
never wrote a line of verse in his life. The simplest truths, when
announced by him, took a poetic shape, and moved along with all the
majesty of his towering genius. Speaking of Hugh Miller brings him
before us at the time that he was writing for the _Caledonia Mercury_.
He was then editor of _The Witness_, but gave to the former paper such
moments as he could abstract from his more serious duties. His
department in the _Mercury_ was the reviewing new publications. Besides
his engagement with these two journals, he was pursuing those studies
which made him the prince of British geologists. Geology was his
passion. Indeed, while writing leaders for the _Witness_, or turning
over the leaves of hot-pressed volumes, his mind was wandering among
such scenes as the 'Lake of Stromness,' and the 'Old Red Sandstone' of
his native Cromarty. His geological sketches in the _Witness_ were a new
feature in journalism, and formed the basis of that work which so
admirably refuted the 'Vestiges of Creation.' I met Miller daily for
several years. He was tall, and of a well-built and massive frame, and
evidently capable of great endurance, both of mind and body. Considered
as one of the distinguished instances of self-made men, Hugh Miller
finds his only parallel in Horace Greeley, although the path to
greatness was in the first instance even more laborious than in the
latter. Let any one read Miller's experiences and adventures, as
described in 'My Schools and my Schoolmasters,' and he will find a
renewed suggestion of the thought which Johnson so pathetically breathes
in his 'London:'--

'The mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.'

Miller's appearance, when in trim attire, was that of the Scottish
'Dominie,'