and variety, the rich profed his reputation, and, at the

one-save his own countryman, Pascal, we know of no onewho possessed in a higher measure that manifold gift which can touch with mastery the lighter felicities of Literature, and at the same time sound with freedom the utmost depths of Christian Thought.

A genuine simplicity gave their enduring charm to all his qualities. The most polished intelligence, combined with the most perfect moral purity, is the picture which we meet in every page of his writings. A uniform elevation of sentiment-a frank sensibility, which rejoiced in, while it did not invite sympathy-a profound humility-a fearless candour-is the picture which, associated with the name of Vinet, lives in the hearts of all who rejoiced in his friendship. And in bidding farewell to him, we feel that while there are no doubt greater names which the "Church of the Future" will delight to honour, there are yet few, if any, which will suggest a finer union of Christian graces and gifts a character at once more noble and beautiful.

pieces are precious as containing the most intimate expression of the writer's secret feelings. "It was his only way," said one very near to him, "of communicating to me what passed in the depths of his soul." Generally, according to M. Scherer, they fail in preserving the character of the hymn. The reflective habit of the philosopher overmasters the inspired mood of the poet. Some of them, however, are very beautiful and touching, and especially one on the death of his daughter in 1838. "If we compare it," says M. Scherer, "with the elegy which a similarly mournful event drew from the pen of Lamartine, we cannot fail to be struck by the real superiority which a living faith has given to the Christian poet in the expression of his grief, and the revelation of its true meaning and end." This piece is found in a separate collection, by Mme. Olivier, entitled Poésie Chrétienne, Lausanne, 1839.

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ART. II.-My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, The Story of my Education. By HUGH MILLER, author of "The Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," &c. &c. Edinburgh, Johnstone and Hunter, 1854.

FOR Some ten or twelve years at least, the name of Hugh Miller has been known all over Scotland, and also in not a few circles out of it, as that of one of our most remarkable men. It was in 1840 that he came from his native district of Cromarty to settle in Edinburgh as the editor of a newspaper, then established to advocate, with a moderate amount of whiggism in general politics, the cause of the non-intrusion. party in the Scottish Church. The fame that preceded him to Edinburgh on this occasion was that of a man who, having worked the greater part of his life as a common stone-mason in the north of Scotland, had in that capacity exhibited very unusual powers of mind, and, in particular, such unusual abilities as an English prose-writer, as to have attracted the notice not only of local critics, but also of men of eminent public station. Of his last and best known production-a pamphlet on the nonintrusion question—no less a person than Mr. Gladstone had said, that it showed a mastery of pure, elegant, and masculine English, such as even a trained Oxford scholar might have envied. Apart from Mr. Gladstone's opinion, Scottish readers of the pamphlet were able to see that its author had beaten college-bred clergymen and lawyers in his own country, as a popular writer and reasoner on the national question of the day. It was, therefore, with a ready-made reputation as a selfeducated prodigy from Cromarty, that Mr. Miller settled in Edinburgh as editor of the Witness. He was then thirty-seven years of age. During the fourteen years which have elapsed since then he has largely increased his reputation, and, at the same time, considerably modified its character. As a Scottish journalist his place has been one of the highest, and his method almost unique. Without that sharp immediate decisiveness which enables some of the best of his brother-editors to write currently and well on topics as they momentarily occur, he has exercised a weighty influence, by sending forth a series of leading articles remarkable for their deliberate thought, their elevated moral tone, their strong Presbyterian feeling, and their high literary finish. These essays, as they may be called, have been of very various kinds, some of them little disquisitions on points of passing interest; others sketches of contemporary men and events; others humorous and satirical; and others in a highly poetical and

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imaginative vein. All of them, however, bearing the stamp of a massive individuality, and received with an amount of attention not usually accorded to newspaper articles, have contributed powerfully to the formation of Scottish public opinion during the period over which they extend; while, on some questions— as, for example, on Scottish banking, and on national education -Mr. Miller has stood forward manfully, and with all the energy of a leader, on ground of his own. All this, in spite of the necessary disadvantage attending a position where conflict both with individuals and with parties has been unavoidable, has rendered Mr. Miller a far more influential man than when he first came from Cromarty. But this is not all. During the fourteen years of his editorship, Mr. Miller has made various appearances in other walks than that of the journalist. Before his editorship, and while yet a comparatively unknown man, he had published one or two volumes, both of prose and verse, showing imaginative powers of no common order,-particularly his Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland; and these, either reproduced by himself, or sought out by his admirers since he became better known, have helped to give a more full impression of the character of his mind. He has also found time to write one or two new works of a literary nature, exhibiting, on a tolerably large scale, his genius for description and narration, his fine reflective tendency, his cultivated acquaintance with the lives and works of the best English authors, and his shrewd relish for social humours. One of these works-an account of a vacation tour, entitled First Impressions of England and its People-has been of a kind to find numerous readers out of Scotland. That, however, which has done most to add to his eminence in Scotland, and to make his name known over a wider circle since he began to be conspicuous as a journalist, is the independent reputation which he has since then acquired by his services in one most important department of natural science,—that of practical and speculative Geology. At the very time, it seems, when his first local admirers about the Moray Firth were hailing in the Cromarty stone-mason a man likely to take a place in literature, and especially in the literature of Scottish legend, as high as that won in the south country by the Ettrick Shepherd, the same man was in possession of another, and, in some respects, more substantial title to public regard, of a kind to which Hogg never had any pretensions. Led partly by circumstances, partly by inclination, he had, from his boyhood, been an industrious student in a science the principles of which he learnt almost before he knew its name. On the beach and among the rocks of his native district, he had picked up fossils and other objects of natural history; and afterwards, in his various journeys as an opera

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tive in different parts of Scotland, he had so extended his observations, and so digested their results, with scanty help from reading, as to have become, while yet hardly aware of it, not only a self-taught geologist, but also a geologist capable of teaching others. He had broken in upon at least one geological field in which no one had preceded him, and had there made discoveries which only required to be known to ensure him distinction in the scientific world. When he came to Edinburgh, therefore, it was with a collection of belemnites, fossil fishes, &c., and a collection of thoughts and speculations about them, which formed, in his own eyes, a more valuable capital than his merely literary antecedents. Nor was he mistaken. In the very first year of his editorship, bringing his literary powers to the aid of his geology, he published those papers, since known collectively under the title of The Old Red Sandstone, in which, while treating the general public to a series of lectures in the science more charming than any to be found elsewhere, he detailed the story of his own researches. The effect was immediate. Geologists like Murchison, Buckland, and Mantell in England, and Agassiz and Silliman in America, at once recognised Mr. Miller's discoveries as forming an important addition to the geology of the day, and hailed himself as a fellow-labourer in the literature of the science, from whose powers as a writer great things were to be expected. At the meeting of the British Association in 1840, Mr. Miller and his discoveries were the chief theme;-on that occasion honest Scotch fossils, modestly picked up by him several years before in his native district, were promoted to their due Latin rank as the Pterichthys Milleri, and so qualified for the British Museum; and Murchison and Buckland spoke of his expositions as casting plain geologists like themselves into the shade, and making them ashamed of their meagre style. Since that time, accordingly, the editor of the Witness has held a place among the first living geologists, as well as among the best Scotch writers. In his scientific capacity he has not been idle. Among the many replies on the orthodox side called forth by the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," Mr. Miller's Footprints of the Creator has been esteemed one of the most solid and effective; and it is no secret that, in the intervals of his other labours, he is, piece by piece, achieving what he in tends to be the great work of his life-a complete survey, practical and speculative, of the geology of Scotland.

From this retrospect of Mr. Miller's history during the last fourteen years, it is obvious that, if his admirers still persist, with a kind of fondness, in thinking of him as the Cromarty stone-mason, and if he himself continues to accept that designation, it is from a deeper reason than any cringing appeal ad