Chapter I: THE LOWLANDS OF BRITAIN. If a line be drawn across England from (6)

For one who was to take a foremost place among the naturalists of all time--that is, in the true old sense of the word naturalist, men with sympathies and insight for every department of Nature, and not mere specialists working laboriously in their own limited field of research--there could hardly have been chosen a more instructive and stimulating journey than that which was provided for Darwin by the voyage of the _Beagle_. The route lay by the Cape de Verd Islands across the Atlantic to the coast of Brazil, southward to the Strait of Magellan, and up the western side of the South American continent as far as Callao. It then struck westward across the Pacific Ocean by the Galapagos archipelago, Taheiti, New Zealand, Sydney and Tasmania, turning round into the Indian Ocean by way of Keeling Islands and the Mauritius to the Cape of Good Hope, and then by St. Helena and Ascension Island to the coast of Brazil, where the chronometrical measurement of the world, which was the ostensible object of the _Beagle's_ circumnavigation, was to be completed, and so once more across the Atlantic homewards. Almost every aspect of Nature was encountered in such a journey. The luxuriant forests of the tropics, the glaciers and snowfields of Tierra del Fuego, the arid wastes of Patagonia, the green and fertile Pampas, the volcanic and coral islets of mid-ocean, the lofty Cordillera of a great continent, arose one by one before the eager gaze of the young observer. Each scene widened his experience of the outer aspects of the world, quickened his powers of observation, deepened his sympathy with Nature as a whole, and likewise supplied him with abundant materials for future study in the life-work which he had now definitely set before himself. We must think of him during those five momentous years as patiently accumulating the facts and shaping in his mind the problems which were to furnish the occupation of all his after life.

During the voyage he had written long letters to his friends descriptive of what he had seen and done. He likewise forwarded considerable collections of specimens gathered by him at various places. His scientific activity was therefore well known at home to his acquaintances, and even to a wider circle, for some of his letters to Henslow were privately printed and circulated among the members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. It would have been difficult for any even of his most intimate friends to offer a plausible conjecture as to the line of inquiry in natural science that he would ultimately select as the one along which he more particularly desired to advance. An onlooker might have naturally believed that the ardent young observer would choose geology, and end by becoming one of the foremost leaders in that department of science. In his _Journal of Researches_, and in the letters from the _Beagle_ now published, it is remarkable how much he shows the fascination that geology exercised upon him. He had thoroughly thrown off the incubus of Wernerianism. From Lyell's book and Sedgwick's personal influence he had discovered how absorbingly interesting is the history of the earth. Writing to his friend, W. D. Fox, from Lima, in the summer of 1835, he expresses his pleasure in hearing that his correspondent had some intention of studying geology; which, he says, offers 'so much larger a field of thought than the other branches of natural history'; and, moreover, 'is a capital science to begin, as it requires nothing but a little reading, thinking and hammering.' While the whole of his _Journal_ shows on every page how keen were his powers of observation, and how constantly he was on the watch for new facts in many fields of natural knowledge, it is to the geological problems that he returns most frequently and fully. And never before in the history of science had these problems been attacked by an actual observer over so vast a space of the earth's surface, with more acuteness and patience, or discussed with such breadth of view. There is something almost ludicrous in the contrast between his method of treatment of volcanic phenomena and that of his professor at Edinburgh only six short years before. But though geological questions, being the most obvious and approachable, took up so large a share of his time and attention, he was already pondering on some of the great biological mysteries the unveiling of which in later years was to be his main occupation, and to form the basis on which his renown as an investigator was chiefly to rest.

On his return to England, in October 1836, Darwin at once took his place among the acknowledged men of science of his country. For a time his health continued to be such as to allow him to get through a large amount of work. The next two years, which in his own opinion were the most active of his life, were spent, partly at Cambridge and partly in London, in the preparation of his _Journal of Researches_, of the zoological and geological results of the voyage, and of various papers for the Geological and Zoological Societies. So keen was his geological zeal that, almost against his better judgment, he was prevailed upon to undertake the duties of honorary secretary of the Geological Society, an office which he continued to hold for three years. And at each period of enforced holiday, for his health had already begun to give way, he occupied himself with geological work in the field. In the Midlands he watched the operations of earth-worms, and began those inquiries which formed the subject of his last research, and of the volume on _Vegetable Mould_ which he published not long before his death. In the Highlands he studied the famous Parallel Roads of Glen Roy; and his work there, though in after years he acknowledged it to be 'a great failure,' he felt at the time to have been 'one of the most difficult and instructive tasks' he had ever undertaken.

In the beginning of 1839 Darwin married his cousin, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, and grand-daughter of the founder of the Etruria Works, and took a house in London. But the entries of ill-health in his diary grow more frequent. For a time he and his wife went into society, and took their share of the scientific life and work of the metropolis. But he was compelled gradually to withdraw from this kind of existence which suited neither of them, and eventually they determined to live in the country. Accordingly, he purchased a house and grounds at Down in a sequestered part of Kent, some twenty miles from London, and moved thither in the autumn of 1842. In that quiet home he passed the remaining forty years of his life. It was there that his children were born and grew up around him, that he carried on the researches and worked out the generalisations that have changed the whole realm of science, that he received his friends and the strangers who came from every country to see him; and it was there that, after a long and laborious life, full of ardour and work to the last, he died at the age of seventy-three, on the 19th of April, 1882.

The story of his life at Down is almost wholly coincident with the history of the development of his views on evolution, and the growth and appearance of the successive volumes which he gave to the world. For the first four years his geological tastes continued in the ascendant. During that interval there appeared three remarkable works, his volume on _Coral Islands_, that on _Volcanic Islands_, and his _Geological Observations on South America_. Of these treatises that on coral reefs excited the wonder and admiration of geologists for the simplicity and grandeur of its theoretical explanations. Before it was written, the prevalent view of the origin of these insular masses of coral was that which regarded each of them as built on the summit of a volcano, the circular shape of an atoll or ring of coral being held to mark the outline of the submerged crater on which it rested. But Darwin, in showing the untenableness of this explanation, pointed out how easily the rings of coral might have arisen from the upward growth of the reef-building corals round an island slowly sinking into the sea. He was thus led to look upon the vast regions of ocean dotted with coral islands as areas of gradual subsidence, and he could adduce every stage in the process of growth, from the shore-reef just beginning, as it were, to form round the island, to the completed atoll, where the last vestige of the encircled land had disappeared under the central lagoon. More recent researches by other observers have, in the opinion of some writers, proved that the widespread submergence demanded by Darwin's theory is not required to account for the present form and distribution of coral islands. But his work will ever remain a classic in the history of geology.

After working up the geological results of the long voyage in the _Beagle_, he set himself with great determination to more purely zoological details. While visiting the coast of Chili, he had found a curious new cirripede, to understand the structure of which he had to examine and dissect many of the common forms. The memoir, which was originally designed to describe only his new type, gradually expanded into an elaborate monograph on the Cirrepedes (barnacles) as a Whole group. For eight years he continued this self-imposed task, getting at last so weary of it as to feel at times as if the labour had been in some sense wasted which he had spent over it, and this suspicion seems to have remained with him in maturer years. But when at last the two bulky volumes, of more than one thousand pages of text, with forty detailed plates, made their appearance, they were hailed as an admirable contribution to the knowledge of a comparatively little known department of the animal kingdom. In the interests of science, perhaps, their chief value is to be recognised not so much in their own high merit as in the practical training which their preparation gave the author in anatomical detail and classification. He spoke of it himself afterwards as a valuable discipline, and Professor Huxley truly affirms that the influence of this discipline was visible in everything which he afterwards wrote.

It was after Darwin had got rid of his herculean labours over the 'Cirripede book' that he began to settle down seriously to the great work of his life--the investigation of the origin of the species of plants and animals. One of the three volumes of the Biography is entirely devoted to tracing the growth of his views on this subject, and the preparation and reception of the great work on the _Origin of Species_. In no part of his task has the editor shown greater tact and skill than in this. From the earliest jottings, which show that the idea had taken hold of Darwin's mind, we are led onwards through successive journals, letters, and published works, marking as we go how steadily the idea was pursued, and how it shaped itself more and more definitely in his mind. It is impossible to condense this story within the limits of a Review article, and the condensation, even if possible, would spoil the story, which must be left as told in the author's own words. Briefly, it may be stated here that he seems to have been first led to ponder over the question of the transmutation of species by facts that had come under his notice during the South American part of the voyage in the _Beagle_--such as the discovery of the fossil remains of huge animals akin to, but yet very distinct from, the living armadillos of the same regions; the manner in which closely allied animals were found to replace one another, as he followed them over the continent; and the remarkable character of the flora and fauna of the Galapagos archipelago. 'It was evident,' he says, 'that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me.' His first note-book for the accumulation of facts bearing on the question was opened in July 1837, and from that date he continued to gather them 'on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading.' He soon perceived that selection was the secret of success in the artificial production of the useful varieties of plants and animals. But how this principle, so fertile in results when employed by man, could be applied in explanation of Nature's operations, remained a mystery to him until in October 1838, when, happening to read for amusement Malthus' book _On the Principle of Population_, he found at last a theory with which to work. With this guiding principle he instituted a laborious investigation on the breeding of pigeons, and experiments on the flotation of eggs, the vitality of seeds, and other questions, the solution of which seemed desirable as his researches advanced. He says himself that, to avoid prejudice in favour of his own views, he refrained for some time from writing even the briefest sketch of the theory he had formed, and that it was not until June, 1842, that he allowed himself the satisfaction of writing a very brief pencil abstract in thirty-five pages, which two years afterwards he enlarged to 230 pages, and had fairly copied out. This precious manuscript was the germ of the _Origin of Species_.

With characteristic caution, however, he kept his essay in his desk, and with equally characteristic ardour, industry and patience went on with the laborious task of accumulating evidence. His friends were of course well aware of the nature of his research, and of the remarkable views to which he had been led regarding the history of species. And as these views could hardly fail in the end to become generally known, it was desirable that the first publication of them should be made by himself. This having been urged upon him by Lyell, he began early in the year 1856 to write out his views in detail on a scale three or four times as large as that on which the _Origin of Species_ afterwards appeared. This work he continued steadily for two years, when it was interrupted (June 1858) by the arrival of a remarkable manuscript essay by Mr. A. R. Wallace, who, working in the Malay archipelago, had arrived at conclusions identical with those of Darwin himself. Darwin's generous impulse was to send this essay for publication irrespective of any claim of his own to priority: but his friends, Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker, persuaded him to allow extracts from his early sketch of 1844, and part of a letter written to Professor Asa Gray in 1857, to be read, together with Mr. Wallace's contribution, before the Linnean Society, and to be printed in the Society's _Journal_. He now set to work upon that epitome of his observations and deductions which appeared in November 1859, as the immortal _Origin of Species_.

Those who are old enough to remember the publication of this work, cannot but marvel at the change which, since that day, not yet thirty years ago, has come alike upon the non-scientific and the scientific part of the community in their estimation of it. Professor Huxley has furnished to the Biography a graphic chapter on the reception of the book, and in his vigorous and witty style recalls the furious and fatuous objections that were urged against it. A much longer chapter will be required to describe the change which the advent of the _Origin of Species_ has wrought in every department of science, and not of science only, but of philosophy. The principle of evolution, so early broached and so long discredited, has now at last been proclaimed and accepted as the guiding idea in the investigation of Nature.

One of the most marvellous aspects of Darwin's work was the way in which he seemed always to throw a new light upon every department of inquiry into which the course of his researches led him to look. The specialists who, in their own narrow domains, had been toiling for years, patiently gathering facts and timidly drawing inferences from them, were astonished to find that one who, to their eyes, was a kind of outsider, could point out to them the plain meaning of things which, though entirely familiar to them, they had never adequately understood. The central idea of the _Origin of Species_ is an example of this in the biological sciences. The chapter on the imperfection of the geological record is another in the domain of geology.

After the publication of the _Origin_, Darwin gave to the world during a succession of years a series of volumes, in which some of his observations and conclusions were worked out in fuller detail. His books on the fertilisation of orchids, on the movements and habits of climbing plants, on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, on the effects of cross and self-fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom, on the different forms of flowers in plants of the same species, were mainly based on his own quiet work in the greenhouse and garden at Down. His volumes on the descent of man, and on the expression of the emotions in man and animals, completed his contributions to the biological argument. His last volume, published the year before his death, treated of the formation of vegetable mould, and the habits of earth-worms, and the preparation of it enabled him to renew some of the observations which had interested him in his younger days, and to revive some of the geological enthusiasm which so marked the earlier years of his life.

Such, in briefest outline, was the work accomplished by Charles Darwin. The admirable biography prepared by his son enables us to follow its progress from the beginning to the close. But higher even than the intellect which achieved the work was the moral character which shone through it all. As far as it is possible for words to convey what Darwin was to those who did not personally know him, this has been done in the _Life_. His son has written a touching chapter, entitled, 'Reminiscences of my Father's Everyday Life,' in which the man as he lived and worked is vividly pictured. From that sketch, and from Darwin's own letters, the reader may conceive how noble was the character of the great naturalist. His industry and patience, in spite of the daily physical suffering that marked the last forty years of his life; his utter unselfishness and tender consideration for others; his lifelong modesty that led him to see the worst of his own work and the best of that of other men; his scrupulous honour and unbending veracity; his intense desire to be accurate even in the smallest particulars, and the trouble he took to secure such accuracy; his sympathy with the struggles of younger men, and his readiness to help them; his eagerness for the establishment of truth by whomsoever discovered; his interest up to the very last in the advancement of science; his playful humour; his unfailing courtesy and gratitude for even the smallest acts of kindness--these elements of a lofty moral nature stand out conspicuously in the Biography. No one can rise from the perusal of these volumes without the conviction that, by making known to the world at large what Darwin was as a man, as well as a great original investigator, they place him on a still loftier pinnacle of greatness than that to which the voice of his contemporaries had already raised him.

FOOTNOTE:

[98] _Contemporary Review_, Dec., 1887.

VIII

Hugh Miller: His Work and Influence[99]

Among the picturesque figures that walked the streets of Edinburgh in the middle of last century, one that often caught the notice of the passer-by was that of a man of good height and broad shoulders, clad in a suit of rough tweed, with a shepherd's plaid across his chest and a stout stick in his hand. His shock of sandy-coloured hair escaped from under a soft felt-hat; his blue eyes, either fixed on the ground or gazing dreamily ahead, seemed to take no heed of their surroundings. His rugged features wore an expression of earnest gravity, softening sometimes into a smile and often suffused with a look of wistful sadness, while the firmly compressed lips betokened strength and determination of character. The springy elastic step with which he moved swiftly along the crowded pavement was that of the mountaineer rather than of the native of a populous city. A stranger would pause to look after him and to wonder what manner of man this could be. If such a visitor ventured to question one of the passing townsmen, he would be told promptly and with no little pride 'That is Hugh Miller.' No further description or explanation would be deemed necessary, for the name had not only grown to be a household word in Edinburgh and over the whole of Scotland, but had now become familiar wherever the English language was spoken, even to the furthest western wilds of Canada and the United States.

A hundred years have passed since this notable man was born, and nearly half that interval has elapsed since he was laid in the grave. The hand of time, that resistlessly winnows the wheat from the chaff of human achievement, has been quietly shaping what will remain as the permanent sum of his work and influence. The temporary and transitory events in his career have already, in large measure, receded into the background. The minor contests in which, from his official position, he was so often forced to engage are mostly forgotten; the greater battles that he fought and won are remembered rather for their broad and brilliant results than for the crowded incidents that gave them such vivid interest at the time. His contemporaries who still survive him--every year a sadly diminishing number--can look back across the half century and mark how the active and strenuous nature whose memory they so fondly cherish, now

'Orbs into the perfect star
We saw not when we moved therein.'

A juster estimate can doubtless be formed to-day of what we owe to him than was possible in his life-time. That the debt is great admits of no dispute, and that it is acknowledged to be due could hardly be more fittingly shown than by the wide-spread desire which has brought us here to-day from so many distant places in order to raise in the town of his birth, which he has made a place of pilgrimage to many a lover of English literature, a visible memorial of him in an institution of which he would himself have heartily approved.

In order adequately to realise the nature and extent of the work achieved by Hugh Miller during his too brief career, we should clearly picture to ourselves the peculiar conditions in which he grew up. Happily he has himself, in one of the most charming pieces of autobiography in the language, told the story of his youth and early manhood. Descended from both a Highland and a Lowland ancestry, he combined in his nature the vivid imagination and poetic impulse of the Celt with the more staid and logical temperament of the Teuton. He was born amidst an English-speaking community, but at a distance of only a few miles from the fringe of the mountainous region within which men use the Gaelic tongue. He knew some survivors of Culloden, and had heard his own grandfather tell how, when a stripling, he watched, from the hills above Cromarty, the smoke wreaths of the battle as they drifted along the ridge on the further side of the Moray Firth. From infancy he was personally familiar with the people of the hills and their traditions, as well as with the ways of the hardy fisher-folk and farmers of the plains. The hereditary predispositions of his mind were in this way fostered by contact with the two races from which they sprang.

Happy in the possession of this racial blending, he was still more fortunate in the place of his birth. He used to remark with satisfaction that both Sir Roderick Murchison and he had been born on the Old Red Sandstone of the Black Isle; but while the career of the author of the _Silurian System_ owed practically nothing to his birth-place, which he left while still an infant, Miller's life from beginning to end bore the impress of the surroundings amid which he was born and educated. It would hardly be possible to choose in this country a place of which the varied features are more admirably fitted to stimulate the observing faculties, to foster a love of nature, and to appeal to the poetic imagination than the winding shores, the scarped cliffs, the tangled woods, the wild boulder-strewn moors and distant sweep of blue mountains around Cromarty. And how often and lovingly are these scenes portrayed by him under every varying phase of weather and season! They had stamped themselves into his very soul and had become an integral part of his being.

'The sounding cataract
Haunted him like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms were then to him
An appetite, a feeling, and a love.'

But while Nature was his first and best teacher, he has told us in grateful words how much he owed to two uncles--hard-working, sagacious, and observant men, by whom his young eyes were trained to discriminate flower and tree, bird and insect, together with the teeming organisms of the shore, and whose high moral worth he, even as a boy, could appreciate. Having learnt to read while still of tender years, he developed an insatiable thirst for books. What he acquired in this way for himself seems to have been at least as useful as the training gained during the rather desultory years spent by him at the town grammar-school. He was an intelligent but wayward boy, as much ahead of his schoolmates in general information as in all madcap adventures among the crags and woods. When the time arrived at which he had to choose his calling in life, he selected an occupation that would still enable him to spend his days in the open air and gratify his overmastering propensity for natural history pursuits. Much to the chagrin of his family he determined to be a stone-mason, and at the age of 17 was apprenticed to that trade. For some fifteen years he continued to work in quarries and in the erection of buildings in various districts of the north country, and even extended his experience for a short time into Midlothian. Deeply interesting and instructive is the record he has left of these years of mechanical toil. But amidst all the hardships and temptations of the life, the purity and strength of his character bore him nobly through. His keen love of nature and his intense enjoyment of books were a never-failing solace. He continued to gain access to, and even by degrees to possess, a considerable body of the best literature in our language, reading some of his favourite authors over twice in a year. He thus laid up a store of information and allusion which his retentive memory enabled him eventually to turn to excellent advantage.

While still at school he had gained some notice for the verses which he wrote. In the intervals of his subsequent labours with mallet and chisel, he continued to amuse himself in giving metrical expression to his feelings and reflections, grave or gay. Conscious of his power, though hardly yet aware in what direction it could best be used, he resolved to collect and publish his verses. At the age of seven-and-twenty he accordingly gave to the world a little volume with the title _Poems written in the leisure hours of a Journeyman Mason_. Not without some misgiving, however, did he make this first literary venture. Even before the voices of the 'chorus of indolent reviewers' could travel up from the south country, with their sententious judgments of the merits and defects of this new peasant-poet, he set himself to prepare some contributions in prose which might perchance afford a better measure of his quality. Some years before that time he had been out all night with the herring fleet, and he now sent to the _Inverness Courier_ some letters descriptive of what he had then seen. These made so favourable an impression that they were soon afterwards reprinted separately. They marked the advent of a writer gifted with no ordinary powers of narration and with the command of a pure, nervous, and masculine style. The reception which these letters met with from men in whose judgment and taste he had confidence formed a turning point in his career. He now realised that his true strength lay not in the writing of verses, but in descriptive prose. Some years, however, still passed before he found the class of subjects on which his pen could most effectively be exercised. In the meantime he began to record the legends and traditions of his native district. Most of these had been familiar to him from childhood, when he heard them from the lips of old grey-headed men and women, but they were dying out of remembrance as the older generations passed away. Part of his leisure for several years was given to this pleasant task, until there grew up under his hand a bulky volume of manuscript. This time he was in no hurry to publish; the book did not make its appearance until 1835, as his charming _Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland_. In this work some of the most striking passages were to be found, not so much in the tales themselves which were narrated, as in the local colouring and graphic setting that were given to them. The writer displayed a singularly vivid power in the delineation of scenery, and his allusions to the geology of the district, then almost wholly unknown, attracted attention, since they showed that besides his keen eye for the picturesque above ground, he knew something of the marvels that lay beneath. He was feeling his way to what ultimately became his most cherished and most useful task. He had realised that his main object should be to know what was not generally known, 'to stand as an interpreter between nature and the public,' and to perform the service of narrating as pleasingly as he could, the facts which he culled in walks not previously trodden, and of describing, as graphically as might be, the inferences which he drew from them.

Ever after his first day's experience as an apprenticed mason in a stone-quarry, of which he has left more than one impressive account, he was led to interest himself in the diversified characters of the rocks of the district. Even as a boy he had been familiar with the more obvious varieties of stone to be met with in a tract of country wherein the sedimentary formations of the Lowlands and the crystalline masses of the Highlands have been thrown side by side. But he had been attracted to them rather on account of their singular shapes or brilliant colours, than from any regard to what might have been their different modes of origin. Now, however, he had discovered that these rocks are really monuments, wherein are recorded portions of the past history of the earth, and he was full of hope that by patient study he might yet be able to decipher them. The supply of elementary treatises and text-books of science, in the present day so abundant, had hardly at that time begun to come into existence. Geology, indeed, had but recently attained a recognised position as a distinct branch of science. And even had the young stone-mason been able to possess himself of the whole of the scanty geological literature of the time, it included no book that would have solved for him the problems that daily confronted him as he pursued his labours in the quarry, or rambled in leisure hours along the shore. The best treatise which could have fallen into his hands and which would have been full of enlightenment and suggestion for him--Playfair's immortal _Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory_--had appeared seventeen years before; but we have no evidence that it came in his way. He had laboriously to work out his problems for himself.

Innumerable as are the subjects for geological enquiry offered by the district of Cromarty, it was fortunate for Hugh Miller, and not less so for the cause of science, that chance placed him face to face in the most practical way with the Old Red Sandstone, and that he was, as it were, compelled to attempt to understand its history. While the lessons taught by the strata of the quarry had greatly impressed him, the abundant and well-preserved fossils among the Lias shales of the Eathie shore, which at spare moments he visited, had deepened that impression. It was while endeavouring to find these shales nearer home, on the western side of the Southern Sutor, that he stumbled upon the clays which contain the fish-bearing nodules of the Old Red Sandstone. This happy discovery, which was made in the autumn of 1830, the year after the publication of his _Poems_, marks an eventful epoch in his life, as well as an important date in the history of geological investigation.

At that time comparatively little was known of the Old Red Sandstone. Its very existence as a distinct geological system was disputed on the Continent, where no equivalent for it had been recognised. It was alleged to be a mere local and accidental accumulation, which could hardly be considered as of much historical importance, seeing that no representative of it had been found beyond the British Islands. Yet within the limits of these islands it was certainly known to bulk in no inconsiderable dimensions, covering many hundreds of square miles, and attaining a thickness of more than 10,000 feet. It had been clearly shown by William Smith, the Father of English Geology, to occupy a definite position beneath the Mountain Limestone, and above the ancient 'greywacke' which lay at the base of all the sedimentary series, and he had indicated its range over England and Wales on his map published as far back as 1815. In Scotland, too, its existence and importance as a mere mass of rock in the general framework of the country had long been recognised. Ami Boué had published in 1820 an excellent account of its igneous rocks, but without any allusion to the organic wonders for which it was yet to become famous. The extraordinary abundance of its fossil fishes, where it spreads over Caithness, had been made known to the world by Murchison in 1826, and in more detail the following year when Sedgwick and he read their conjoint paper on the conglomerates and other formations of the north of Scotland. But it may be doubted if any of these publications had found their way to Cromarty when Miller was gathering his first harvest of ichthyolites in the little bay within half-a-mile of the town. He had passed over that beach many hundreds of times in his boyhood without a suspicion of the treasures wrapped up in the grey concretions that lay tossing in the tideway. On breaking these stones, hoping to meet with a repetition of the Liassic organisms with which he had grown familiar at Eathie, he found a group of forms wholly different. At each interval of leisure he would repair to the spot, and, digging out the nodules from their matrix of clay, would patiently split them open and arrange them along the higher part of the beach, according to what seemed to be the natural affinities of the fossils enclosed within them. Scouring the parish for fresh exposures of the nodule-bearing clay, he was soon rewarded by the discovery of some six or eight additional deposits charged with the same remains. There was a strange fascination in this pursuit. He had, as it were, discovered a new world. No human eye had ever before beheld these strange types of creation. Though he was well acquainted with the marine life of the adjacent sea, he had never seen any creature that in the least resembled them, or served to throw light on their structure.

With no chart or landmark to guide him into this new domain of nature, he continued for years quietly to collect and compare. The first imperfect knowledge which he was able to acquire regarding the few modern representatives of the creatures disinterred by him at Cromarty was derived in 1836 from a perusal of the well-known memoir by Hibbert on the limestone of Burdiehouse. Next year, however, he made the acquaintance of Dr. Malcolmson, who eventually carried some of his specimens to London and the Continent, and was the means of bringing him into correspondence with Murchison and Agassiz. Hugh Miller was thus at last placed in direct communication with the world of science and into relation with the men who were most thoroughly versed in the subjects that had so long engrossed his thoughts, and most capable of helping him to clear away the difficulties that beset his progress.

Meanwhile an important change had taken place in his condition of life. During the year 1834, after having worked for fifteen years in his calling of stone-mason, he was offered the accountantship of the Commercial Bank agency to be opened at Cromarty. This offer, which came to him unasked and unexpected, was a gratifying mark of the esteem and confidence with which his character was regarded. He accepted it, not without some diffidence as to his competence for the duties required. It would, however, retain him in his native town, enable him to marry the accomplished girl to whom he had for years been attached, and afford him opportunity to prosecute the researches in the Old Red Sandstone of which he had now come to realise the importance. It likewise provided him with leisure to prepare contributions to different periodicals, which, though of no great consequence to his reputation, were of service in adding to an income narrow enough for the support of a wife and family. These writings had this further advantage, that they gave him a readier command of the pen, and accustomed him to deal with lighter as well as graver subjects of discussion, thus furnishing a useful training for what was ultimately to be the main business of his later life.

At this time ecclesiastical questions occupied public attention in Scotland to the exclusion of almost everything else. The Church was entering on that stormy period which culminated in the great Disruption of 1843. Hugh Miller, who was at once an earnest Christian and a devoted son of the Church, watched the march of events with the deepest sympathy. As a thoroughly 'Establishment man' he had taken but slender interest in the previous Voluntary controversy, but the larger and more vital conflict now in progress filled him with concern. It was his firm conviction that the country contained 'no other institution half so valuable as the Church, or in which the people had so large a stake.' The anxiety with which the situation impressed him affected his sleep, and he would ask himself, 'Can I do nothing for my Church in her hour of peril?' The answer which he found was to write his famous _Letter from one of the Scotch people to Lord Brougham_. This pamphlet was soon after followed by another entitled, _The Whiggism of the Old School, as exemplified in the past history and present position of the Church of Scotland_. These writings, so cogent in argument and so vigorous in style, had a wide circulation, and undoubtedly exercised much influence on the progress of the ecclesiastical controversy throughout the country. The leaders of the non-intrusion party, with whose cause he showed such keen and helpful sympathy, soon after the appearance of the first pamphlet invited Miller to confer with them in Edinburgh, and offered him the editorship of their projected newspaper, the _Witness_. With some misgiving as to his competence to meet all the various demands of a journal that was to appear twice a week, he accepted the proposal. Thus, after his five years' experience as a bank-accountant, he became at the beginning of 1840, when he was thirty-seven years of age, the editor of an important newspaper, and he retained that position until his death.

Up to this time the name of Hugh Miller was but little known beyond his native district. His political pamphlets first gave it a wide reputation, and thenceforth his conduct of a journal that represented the interests of one of the great parties into which his country was divided kept him constantly before the eyes of the public. The _Witness_ rapidly attained a large circulation. It appealed not merely to the churchmen whose views it advocated, but to a wide class of readers, who, apart from ecclesiastical polemics, could appreciate its high tone, its sturdy independence, its honesty and candour, and the unusual literary excellence of its leading articles. It not only upheld but raised the standard of journalism in Scotland. As a great moral force it exercised a healthy influence on the community. There cannot be any doubt that the powerful advocacy of the _Witness_ was one of the main agencies in sustaining the energies of the non-intrusion party and in consolidating the position of the young Free Church. It is my own deep conviction that the debt which that Church owes to Hugh Miller has never yet been adequately acknowledged.

Before he had been many months in the editorial chair he began to publish in the columns of his paper the first of that brilliant succession of geological articles which attracted the attention of men of science, as well as of the general public, and which continued to be a characteristic feature of the _Witness_ up to the end of his life. The first articles, describing his discoveries in the Old Red Sandstone of Cromarty, created not a little sensation among the geologists who had gathered in the year 1840 at the memorable meeting of the British Association in Glasgow. It was there that Agassiz, who had come fresh from the study of Swiss glaciers to the Scottish Highlands, announced that he had found clear evidence that the mountains of this country had once also nourished their glaciers and snow-fields. It was then, too, that the same illustrious naturalist gave the first account of the fossils found by Hugh Miller at Cromarty, one of which he named after its discoverer. In that gathering of eminent men, Murchison declared that the articles which had been appearing in the _Witness_ were 'written in a style so beautiful and poetical as to throw plain geologists like himself into the shade.' Buckland, famous for his own eloquent pages in the Bridgewater Treatise, expressed his unbounded astonishment and admiration, affirming that 'he would give his left hand to possess such powers of description.' The articles were next year collected and expanded into his _Old Red Sandstone, or New Walks in an Old Field_--the first and, in some respects, the freshest and most delightful of all his scientific volumes.

In subsequent years there appeared in the same columns his _Cruise of the Betsy_--a series of papers written among the Western Isles, and full of the poetry and geological charm of that marvellous region; his _Rambles of a Geologist_, in which he included the results of his wanderings over Scotland between 1840 and 1848, and other essays, the more important of which were collected with pious care by his widow, and published in a succession of volumes after his death. His _First Impressions of England and its People_ appeared in 1846, and greatly increased the reputation of its writer as an observant traveller, an able critic, and an accomplished writer, possessing a wide and sympathetic acquaintance with English literature. The _Footprints of the Creator_, which followed in 1847, was of a less popular character. Its detailed account of the structure of some of the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone is, however, of lasting value, though its controversy with the _Vestiges of Creation_ has now little more than an historical interest. The _Schools and Schoolmasters_, after running as usual through the pages of the newspaper, was issued as a separate volume in 1852, and was everywhere hailed as one of the most delightful and instructive of all his works. The _Testimony of the Rocks_, with the final proofs of which he was engaged on the last day of his life, was issued a few months after he had been laid to rest beside his friend Chalmers. Altogether of his collected writings, including those that appeared in his lifetime, a series of twelve volumes has been published, but many hundreds of articles of less permanent interest, yet each marked by the distinctive charm of its writer, remain buried in the files of the _Witness_.

If, from his writings alone, we judge of the extent and value of the work achieved by Hugh Miller, we can have little hesitation in believing that it is mainly his contributions to the literature of science that will hand his name down to future generations. Like so many other men who have attained distinction in the same field, he from the beginning to the end made geology his recreation, in the midst of other paramount pre-occupations. It furnished him with solace from the toils of the quarry and the building yard, it supplied him with a healthful relief from the labours of the bank, and when in later years he escaped each autumn for a few weeks of much needed leisure from the cares and responsibilities of the Editor's desk, it led him to ramble at will all over his native country, and brought him into acquaintance with every type of its rocks and its landscapes.

Unquestionably the most original part of his scientific work, that wherein he added most to the sum of acquired knowledge, is to be found in his reconstruction of the extinct types of fishes which he discovered in the Old Red Sandstone. The merit of these labours can hardly be properly appreciated unless it be borne in mind that he came to the study of the subject with no preliminary biological training, save what he could pick up for himself from an examination of such denizens of the waters of the neighbouring firths as he could meet with. But after prolonged search he could find in these northern seas no living creatures, the structure of which afforded him any clue to that of the fossil fishes of Cromarty. Some men had concluded that the organisms were ancient turtles, others that they were crustaceans, or even aquatic beetles. He had the sagacity, however, to surmise that they were probably all fishes, and he enjoyed the satisfaction afterwards of learning that Agassiz pronounced even the most bizarre amongst them to belong to that great division of the animal kingdom. He was guided by his own intuitive conception of what must have been the plan on which these long vanished types of organic structure had been fashioned. Huxley, who twenty years afterwards had occasion to subject the Old Red Sandstone fishes to critical study, and who brought to the inquiry all the resources of modern biology, has left on record the impression made on his mind by a minute revision of Hugh Miller's work. 'The more I study the fishes of the "Old Red,"' he remarks, 'the more am I struck with the patience and sagacity manifested in Hugh Miller's researches, and by the natural insight which in his case seems to have supplied the place of special anatomical knowledge.' He refers to the 'excellent restoration of _Osteolepis_,' in which even some of the minute peculiarities had not escaped notice, and he declares that Hugh Miller had made known almost the whole organisation of _Dipterus_, and had thus anticipated the most important part of Professor Pander's labours in the same field, the distinguished Russian palæontologist not having been aware that the work had already been done in Scotland.

But it is not, in my opinion, by the extent or value of his original contributions to geology that the importance of Hugh Miller's scientific labours and writings should be measured. Other men, who have left no conspicuous mark on their time, have surpassed him in these respects. What we more especially owe to him is the awakening of a wide-spread interest in the methods and results of scientific inquiry. More than any other author of his day, he taught men to recognise that beneath the technicalities and jargon of the schools, that are too apt to conceal the meaning of the facts and inferences which they express, there lie the most vital truths in regard to the world in which we live. He clothed the dry bones of science with living flesh and blood. He made the aspects of past ages to stand out picturesquely before us, as his vivid imagination conceived that they must once have been. He awakened an enthusiasm for geological questions, such as had never before existed, and this wave of popular appreciation which he set in motion has never since ceased to pulsate throughout the English-speaking peoples of the world. His genial ardour and irresistible eloquence swept away the last remnants of the barrier of orthodox prejudice against geology in this country. The present generation can hardly realise the former strength of that bigotry, or appreciate the merit of the service rendered in the breaking of it down. The well-known satirical criticism of the poet Cowper[100] expressed a prevalent feeling among the orthodox of his day, and this feeling was still far from extinct when Miller began to write. I can recall manifestations of it even within my own experience. No one, however, could doubt his absolute orthodoxy, and when the cause of the science was so vigorously espoused by him, the voices of the objectors were finally silenced. There was another class of cavillers who looked on geology as a mere collecting of minerals, a kind of laborious trifling concealed under a cover of uncouth technical terms. Their view was well expressed by Wordsworth when he singled out for contemptuous scorn the enthusiast who carried a pocket hammer with which he chipped off splinters of the rocks, and left raw scars as marks of his progress.[101]

But a champion had now arisen who, as far as might be, discarding technicalities, made even the dullest reader feel that the geologist is the historian of the earth, that he deals with a series of chronicles as real and as decipherable as those that record human events, and that they can be made not only intelligible but attractive, as the subjects of simple and eloquent prose.

The absence of technical detail, which makes one of the charms of Hugh Miller's books to the non-scientific reader, may be regarded as a defect by the strict and formal geologist. Like every other branch of natural science, geology rests on a basis of observation, which frequently depends for its value upon the minuteness and accuracy of its details. To collect these details is often a laborious task, which is seldom undertaken save by those to whose department of the science they specially belong. A palæontologist cannot be expected to devote his time to the study of the microscopic characters of minerals and rocks. He leaves that research to the petrographer, who, on the other hand, will not readily embark on an investigation of the minute anatomy of fossil plants or animals. This specialisation, which has always to some extent existed, necessarily becomes more pronounced as science advances. The days are far past for Admirable Crichtons, and it is no longer possible for any one man to be equally versed in every branch of even a single department of natural knowledge.