HUGH MILLER

PREFACE

In the absence of material dealing especially with his last years in Edinburgh a complete Life of Hugh Miller will probably never be attempted. I am informed by his daughter, Mrs. Miller Mackay, F.C. Manse, Lochinver, that the letters and materials sent out to Australia to form the basis of a projected biography by his son-in-law and daughter disappeared, and have never been recovered. The recent deaths of his son and of others who knew Hugh Miller in Cromarty and in Edinburgh still more preclude the appearance of a full and authentic presentation. To the scientist the works of Miller will ever form the best biography; to the general reader and to those who, from various causes, regard biography as made for man and not man for biography some such sketch as the following may, it is believed, not be unacceptable.

To treat Hugh Miller apart from his surroundings of Church and State would be as impossible as it would be unjust. Accordingly the presentation deliberately adopted has been from his own standpoint—the unhesitating and undeviating traditions of Scotland.

Geology has moved since his day. In the last chapter I have accordingly followed largely in the steps of Agassiz in the selection of material for a succinct account of Miller's main scientific and theological standpoints or contributions. My best thanks are due to Principal Donaldson of the University of St. Andrews for looking over the proof-sheets; to Sir Archibald Geikie, Director-General of the Geological Survey, London, for his admirable reminiscence of his early friend contained in the last pages of this work; and to my friend J. D. Symon, M.A., for the bibliography of Miller in the closing appendix.

W. K. L.

Aberdeen, April 1896.

CONTENTS

HUGH MILLER

  CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS—IN CROMARTY

The little town of Cromarty lies perched on the southern shore of the entrance to the Firth of that name, and derives its name from the Cromachty, the crook or winding of the magnificent stretch of water known to Buchanan and the ancient geographers as the Ecclesiastical History, 'in which the very greatest navies may rest secure from storms.' In the history of Scotland the place is scarcely mentioned; and, indeed, in literary matters is known only from its association with the names of Hugh Miller and the rare figure of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, who had followed Charles II. to the 'crowning mercy' of Worcester fight, to land at last in the Tower. But for the silence of history the imagination or the credulity of the knight has atoned, by the production of a chronicle which rivals fairly the Ecclesiastical History of the old wandering Scottish scholar Dempster, who had in Italy patriotically found the Maccabees to be but an ancient Highland family. According to Urquhart, whose translation of Rabelais has survived his eccentric disquisitions in genealogy and history, Alypos, the forty-third lineal descendant of Japhet, was the first to discover Cromarty, and, when the Scythians under Ethus pitched on the moor bounding the parish on the north, they had been opposed by the grandson of Alcibiades; in proof of which Sir Thomas could triumphantly point to remaining signs of 'trenches and castrametation' with a confidence which would have won the heart of Jonathan Monkbarns in The Antiquary.

The population of the district is essentially a mixed one, and strongly retains the distinctive features of the Scandinavian and the Gael. From Shetland to the Ord of Caithness, the population of the coast is generally, if not wholly, of the former type. Beyond the Ord to the north of the Firth of Cromarty, we find a wedge of Celtic origin, while from the southern shore to the Bay of Munlochy the Scandinavian element again asserts itself. Thus, as Carlyle escaped being born an Englishman by but a few miles, the separation from the Celtic stratum was, in Miller's case, effected by the narrow single line of the one-mile ferry. In later years, at all events, he would refer with evident satisfaction to his Teutonic origin. There was, as we shall have occasion to notice, a certain Celtic lobe of imagination on the mother's side, but in his mental and political character the great leading features of the other race were undoubtedly predominant.

Whence Buchanan drew the possibilities of great fleets in the Firth of Cromarty is unknown unless he had in his memory some of the vessels of the old mariners, such as Sir Andrew Wood and the bold Bartons, or even the 'verrie monstrous schippe the Great Michael' that 'cumbered all Scotland to get her to sea.' Certain it is that for many a day its position had marked out the town as the natural centre of a coasting trade, though shortly after the Union the commerce of the place which had been considerable had declined. The real commencement of the prosperity of the place was due to the energy of a native, William Forsyth, whose life Miller has sketched in a little memoir originally drawn up for the family, and subsequently republished in his Tales and Sketches under the title of 'A Scottish Merchant of the Eighteenth century.' Forsyth had been appointed by the British Linen Company, established about 1746 in Edinburgh to promote the linen trade, its agent in the North throughout the whole district extending from Beauly to the Pentland