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.