be called, have been of very various kinds,- as high as that won in the south country by some of them little di quisitions on points of the Ettrick Shepherd, the same man was in passing interest; others sketches of contem-possession of another, and, in some respects, porary men and events; others humorous more substantial title to public regard, of a and satirical; and others in a highly poeti- kind to which Hogg never had any pretencal and imaginative vein. All of them, how- sions. Led partly by circumstances, partly ever, bearing the stamp of a massive indivi- by inclination, he had, from his boyhood, duality, and received with an amount of been an industrious student in a science the attention not usually accorded to news- principles of which he learned almost before paper articles, have contributed powerfully he knew its name. On the beach and among to the formation of Scottish public opinion the rocks of his native district, he had picked during the period over which they extend; up fossils and other objects of natural hiswhile, on some questions-as, for example, tory; and afterwards, in his various journeys on Scottish banking, and on national educa- as an operative in different parts of Scotland, tion-Mr. Miller has stood forward manfully, he had so extended his observations, and so and with all the energy of a leader, on ground digested their results, with scanty help from of his own. All this, in spite of the neces-reading, as to have become, while yet hardly sary disadvantage attending a position where aware of it, not only a self-taught geologist, conflict both with individuals and with parties but also a geologist capable of teaching has been unavoidable, has rendered Mr. others. He had broken in upon at least one Miller a far more influential man than when geological field in which no one had preceded he first came from Cromarty. But this is him, and had there made discoveries which not all. During the fourteen years of his only required to be known to insure him editorship, Mr. Miller has made various ap- distinction in the scientific world. When he pearances in other walks than that of the came to Edinburgh, therefore, it was with a journalist. Before his editorship, and while collection of belemnites, fossil fishes, &c., yet a comparatively unknown man, he had and a collection of thoughts and speculations published one or two volumes, both of prose about them, which formed, in his own eyes, and verse, showing imaginative powers of a more valuable capital than his merely liteno common order, particularly his "Scenes rary antecedents. Nor was he mistaken. In and Legends of the North of Scotland;" the very first year of his editorship, bringing and these, either reproduced by himself, or his literary powers to the aid of his geology, sought out by his admirers since he became he published those papers, since known colbetter known, have helped to give a more lectively under the title of "The Old Red full impression of the character of his mind. Sandstone," in which, while treating the geHe has also found time to write one or two neral public to a series of lectures in the new works of a literary nature, exhibiting, science more charming than any to be found on a tolerably large scale, his genius for de- elsewhere, he detailed the story of his own scription and narration, his fine reflective researches. The effect was immediate. Geotendency, his cultivated acquaintance with logists like Murchison, Buckland, and Manthe lives and works of the best English au- tell in England, and Agassiz and Silliman in thors, and his shrewd relish for social hu- America, at once recognized Mr. Miller's dismors. One of these works-an account of coveries as forming an important addition to a vacation tour, entitled "First Impressions the geology of the day, and hailed himself of England and its People"-has been of a as a fellow laborer in the literature of the kind to find numerous readers out of Scot- science, from whose powers as a writer great land. That, however, which has done most things were to be expected. At the meeting to add to his eminence in Scotland, and to of the British Association in 1840, Mr. Milmake his name known over a wider circle ler and his discoveries were the chief theme; since he began to be conspicuous as a jour-on that occasion, honest Scotch fossils, nalist, 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, 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 Wit pounds more of family cash, with the paternal or maternal will to spend it in college fees, converted from farmer's sons like himself into parish clergymen, schoolmasters, medical men, and other functionaries of an upper grade. At this day, too, many Scot tish mechanics, clerks, and grocers, have had just as good a school education as a consi ness 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 in-derable number of those who, in the English tervals of his other labors, he is, piece by piece, achieving what he intends 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 misericordiam, or any desire to benefit too much by the plea of having pursued knowledge under difficulties. Mr. Miller is a man who can disdain any such appeal, who requires no such plea. A man who has grappled in hard fight with many a college-bred notability, and visibly thrown not a few he has grappled with on ground of their own choosing; a man who has taken rank among the eminent in at least one walk of natural science; a man whose writings are not mere exhibitions of rough natural genius, in which one has to overlook a grain of coarseness, but careful and beautiful performances, in which the most fastidious taste can find nothing inelegant; a man whose mastery of the English idiom is so perfect, that, but for an occasional would where an Englishman would say should, he might have been taught composition in an English grammar-school-such a man, so far as the critics are concerned, can afford to throw the Cro marty stone-mason overboard whenever he likes. Indeed, the whole notion of being unusually charitable or unusually complimentary to what are called "self educated men," admits of question. This is the case now, at least; and especially as concerns Scotland. There has been far too much said of Burns's having been a ploughman, if any thing more is meant than simply to register the fact, and keep its pictorial significance. Burns had quite as good a school education, up to the point where school education is necessary to fit for the general competition of life, as most of those contemporary Scottish youths had, whom the mere accident of twenty or thirty metropolis, edit newspapers, write books, or paint Academy pictures. There are at this moment not a few gentlemen of the press in London, whom no one dreams of calling uneducated, or who, at least, never took that view of the subject themselves, who yet know nothing of Latin, could not distinguish Greek from Gaelic, might suppose syllogistic to be a species of Swiss cheese, and would blunder fearfully if they had to talk of conic sections. After all, the faculty of plain reading and writing in one's own language is the grand separation between the educated and the non-educated. All besides--at least, since books were invented and increasedis very much a matter of taste, perseverance, and apprenticeship in and apprenticeship in one direction rather than in another. The fundamental accomplishment of reading, applied continuously in one direction, produces a Cambridge wrangler; applied in another, it turns out a lawyer; applied in many, it turns out a variously cultivated man. The best academic classes are but vestibules to the library of published literature, in which vestibules students are detained that they may be instructed how to go farther; with the additional privilege of hearing one unpublished book deliberately read to them, whether they will or no, and of coming in living contact with the enthusiasm of its writer. To have been in those vestibules of literature is certainly an advantage; but a man may find his way into the library and make very good use of what is there, without having lingered in any of them. In short, whoever has received from schools such a training in reading and writing as to have made these arts a pleasant possession to him, may be regarded as having had, in the matter of literary education, all the essential outfit. The rest is in his own power. All this, we say, Mr. Miller knows well; and if now, after fourteen years of celebrity as a journalist, a man of letters, and a geologist, he still reverts, in his intercourse with the public, to the circumstances of his former life, it is for a nobler reason than the desire of increased credit for himself. It is because, like Burns, he can regard the fact of having been one of the millions who earn their bread by manual toil, as, in itself, something to be spoken of with manly pleasure. It is because, reverting in his own memory to his past life, and finding that nearly one-half the way through which that memory can travel, lies through scenes of hard work in quarries, and on roadside moors, and among headstones in Scottish churchyards, he feels that it would be a kind of untruth, if, appearing in the character of a descriptive writer at all, he were to refrain from drawing bis facts largely and literally from that part of his experience. Lastly, it is because, Laving thoroughly discussed with himself that very question of the mutual relations of school-education and self-education upon which we have been touching, he has come to certain conclusions upon it, which, in sober earnest, he thinks the story of his own life as a Cromarty stonemason better fitted to illustrate than any thing else he knows. As the title shows, it is this last reason, in particular, that has prompted Mr. Miller's present book, or, at least, that has been kept in view in its composition. Under the title of "My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, The Story of my Education," the book is really an autobiography. Written by Mr. Miller in his fifty-second year, it is an account of his whole life anterior to the period when public reputation evoked him from obscurity; that is, it closes with his thirty-eighth year, when he left Cromarty for Edinburgh. Mr. Miller had previously published occasional fragments from his autobiography; and, indeed, as has been stated, an autobiographic vein runs through most of his writings, even those which are geological; but here, for the first time, we have a large portion of his autobiography complete. It is, as all would anticipate, no ordinary book. Written with all Mr. Miller's skill and power, and exhibiting all his characteristic excellences, it is about as interesting a piece of reading as exists in the whole range of English biographical literature. Its healthiness, its picturesqueness, its blending of the solid and suggestive in the way of thought with all that is charming and impressive in description and narrative, make it a book for all readers. It is calculated to please the old as well as the young, and be no less popular in England than in Scotland. But though thus sure to attract generally as a work of fine literary execution, and as the autobiography of a remarkable man, it is still an autobiography written with a special purpose. It is less an account of Mr. Miller's whole life, than an | account of what he considers the process of his education. Proceeding on the idea, which he may well assume, that the last fourteen years of his life are regarded as a result, the steps towards the attainment of which cannot fail to be interesting to many, and especially to working-men, he undertakes to show honestly what these steps were. The very ambiguity of the title, "My Schools and Schoolmasters," has its effect in relation to the writer's purpose. Reading such a title before seeing the book itself, one might expect a series of sketches of north country pedagogues, somewhat after the manner of Wilkie's paintings. Catching the reader in this trap, Mr. Miller gains his first point. "Yes," he as much as says, addressing more particularly working-men, "there is the mistake. The word 'schools' cannot be mentioned without calling up the idea of certain buildings where youths of different ages sit on forms to be taught; the word 'schoolmasters,' without calling up the idea of certain men in desks teaching in those buildings. This is a mistake, of which the story of my life is calculated, I think, to disabuse you. I have been at schools, but the best of them have not exactly been these; I have had my schoolmasters-good schoolmasters, too but they have not been chiefly of that kind. My education has been mainly of a kind from which no one is debarred; and, as it may interest you to know what it has been, and where it is to be had, I propose to give an account of it." Hugh Miller was born in Cromarty in the year 1802. Such is the first fact; and there is something bearing on the result even here, if we knew how to bring it out. The year 1802 can never come back again; neither can every working-man be born in Cromarty. To be a Scotch man of the east coast,—to be one of that half Scandinavian population which inhabits the Scottish shores of the German Ocean from Fife to Caithness, and so to have the chance of a bigger head and a more massive build than fall to the lot of average mortals, or even of average Britons, is, as some believe, itself a privilege of nature. Most eminent Scotchmen, say some, have come from the east coast, or from certain districts of the Border. The "some" who say this are, we fear, east coast people themselves, which may mar their testimony. It is, at all events, a fact for their budget, that Hugh Miller is an east coast man. What special type of the general east coast character belongs to Cromarty, or wherein a Cromarty man should differ from a Fife man, |