ing tablets and cutting inscriptions in churchyards, thus leading an

easy sort of life, which frequently took him into the surrounding country, where he laboured diligently in adding to his stock of local traditions, and continued to enlarge his knowledge of natural history and the science of the rocks. His professional avocations having led him to Inverness, he put a collection of his verses into the hands of a printer, and made his first appearance before the public in a small volume of "Poems written in the leisure hours of a Journeyman Mason." The production was upon the whole favourably received, although the author ultimately discovered that his strength lay in a different direction. In the local newspaper he published about the same time a series of letters on the herring-fishing, descriptive of the habits of the fishermen, which excited still greater interest in the northern counties, and were afterwards published in a collected form. His literary reputation won him many friends, and gained him a footing in the better class of society. At length he was enabled to exchange manual labour for the vocation of accountant in a branch of the commercial bank of Scotland established in Cromarty, after undergoing a brief preliminary training for his new duties in the branch at Linlithgow. Shortly after entering on his accountantship he published a volume entitled "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland," which speedily acquired popularity, and met with much favour from the critics. The late Baron Hume, in a letter to a north-country friend, described the work as "written in an English style which he had begun to regard as one of the lost arts." Two years after he became an accountant, Mr. Miller was united in marriage to the accomplished lady who survives him, and is now editing the posthumous edition of his works. The non-intrusion controversy was now being waged with increasing keenness in the Scottish church, and Miller was induced, not more by his traditional sympathies than by his conscientious convictions, to espouse the cause of the popular party. He gave expression to his opinions in the celebrated "Letter to Lord Brougham" on the decision of the house of lords in the Auchterarder case. The leaders of the non-intrusionists in Edinburgh had for some time been desirous of establishing a newspaper in that city for the defence of their views, but had been unable to carry out their purpose for want of a suitable editor. Their attention was at once turned to Hugh Miller on the publication of his masterly pamphlet. The offer of the editorship was without delay made and accepted, and at the beginning of 1840 Mr. Miller commenced his career in Edinburgh as editor of the Witness. His writings in its columns were elaborate essays, characterized by extensive information on public topics, by breadth of view, strong moral earnestness, and high literary finish—qualities which gave a new feature to the Scottish press, and raised the journal to an influential position in the country. Its columns were enriched from time to time by the successive chapters of "The Old Red Sandstone," the materials of which he had accumulated while exploring the ichthyic remains of his native district. The rocks of the old red sandstone had as yet scarcely been accorded the character of a distinct geological system; and no geologist did more to elevate it to the rank it now holds than Hugh Miller. When the British Association met for the first time in Glasgow in 1840, the papers then appearing in the Witness were a theme of unqualified admiration to Murchison, Agassiz, Buckland, and other leading geologists, and his beautiful suite of specimens proved equally new and instructive. Dr. Buckland declared that "that wonderful man described these objects with a felicity which made him ashamed of the comparative meagreness and poverty of his own descriptions in the Bridgewater Treatise;" adding in his fervent manner that "he would give his left hand to possess such powers of description as this man." On the same occasion Agassiz, the greatest living authority on fossil fishes, gave the name of Pterichthys Milleri to one of the newly-discovered organisms from Cromarty. The principal works which he afterwards published were the "Cruise of the Betsy;" the "Footprints of the Creator, or the Asterolepis of Stromness," a refutation of the development theory revived in the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation; "First Impressions of England and its people," a charming series of descriptive and scientific sketches; "My Schools and Schoolmasters," containing his autobiography till the period of his settlement in Edinburgh; and the "Testimony of the Rocks," his last production, in which he discusses the bearing of geological phenomena upon the Mosaic account of creation. This book was on the eve of issuing from the press when the author became affected by cerebral disease caused by incessant intellectual toil. The brilliant career of Hugh Miller closed under a dark and mysterious shadow. On the 26th of December, 1856, he was found dead in his study, his chest pierced by the ball of a pistol which he had discharged with his own hand. A note addressed to his wife bore the words, "A fearful dream rises upon me; I cannot bear the horrible thought." The sorrow occasioned by this mournful event was universal, and in Edinburgh was touchingly manifested by the multitudes who attended or who witnessed his funeral. In his native town the memory of Hugh Miller is commemorated by a monument, which, on the suggestion of his warm friend and admirer. Sir Roderick Murchison, has been built of old red sandstone. Hugh Miller's principal works have been republished in America.—W. K. MILLER, James, a miscellaneous writer, was born in 1703; and educated at Wadham college, Oxford. He entered into holy orders, and in 1744 was presented to the living of Upcerne in Dorsetshire, which had been held by his father. He died a few weeks after. Miller was the author of a satirical piece called the "Humours of Oxford;" of the tragedy of "Mahomet," and some other plays; and of several political pamphlets against Sir Robert Walpole.—J. T. MILLER, Johann Martin, a German novelist and lyric poet, was born at Ulm in 1750, and died there in 1814. Whilst a student at Göttingen he was a member of the so-called Hainbund, and distinguished himself by his poetic aspirations; in later years he held a professorship in the gymnasium at Ulm. His "Siegwart, eine Klostergeschichte" enjoyed an immense popularity, but at last fell into ridicule for its extreme sentimentality. It was followed by a host of imitations.—K. E MILLER, Joseph, an actor who flourished in the reign of Queen Anne. To his good playing was due much of the success of Congreve's comedies. There exists a portrait of him in the character of Sir Joseph Wittol in Congreve's Old Bachelor. His reputation as a jester has been strangely preserved and extended by the publication of a book of jests compiled by John Mottley, the author of a History of Russia under Peter the Great. The name of Joe Miller has at length become the synonym for a stale joke. The merry actor died in 1738, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes, London. His epitaph was written by Stephen Duck.—R. H. MILLER, Joseph, a British engineer, died in the state of Virginia in February, 1860. He was a pupil of Boulton and Watt, and for many years the senior partner of the firm of Miller and Ravenhill, well known for their skill and success in the construction of marine steam-engines. He was a member of the council of the Institution of Civil Engineers.—W. J. M. R. MILLER, Patrick, one of the inventors of steam navigation, was a Scottish country gentleman, proprietor of the estate of Dalswinton in Dumfriesshire. For many years he turned his attention to various branches of practical mechanics, and especially to naval architecture and the propulsion of vessels; and in 1787 he published a pamphlet containing a description and drawings of a triple vessel, propelled either by sails or by paddle-wheels revolving in the channels between the vessel's three hulls, those wheels being driven by capstans worked by the strength of men. In the course of the pamphlet occurs the following passage:—"I have also reason to believe that the power of the steam-engine may be applied to work the wheels, so as to give them a quicker motion, and consequently to increase that of the ship. In the course of this summer I intend to make the experiment; and the result, if favourable, shall be communicated to the public." In 1785, 1786, and 1787, he built and experimented upon several small vessels upon the plan described, propelled by sails and by manual power; but was much hampered in their use by a law then in force which regulated the proportion of breadth to length in merchant vessels, and so prevented his adopting the best proportion. His experiments made in a double or twin vessel in the Firth of Forth, on the 2nd of June, 1787, are described in a letter to the council of the Royal Society, dated the 5th December, 1787. She was sixty feet long and fourteen and a half feet broad, and had one paddle-wheel, which, when driven by five men at the capstan, propelled her at a speed of from three and a half to four and a half miles an hour. The merit of having first suggested the use of the steam-engine to Miller as a means of driving his paddle-wheels, is claimed by James Taylor, a scholar and a man of science, who in 1785 became tutor to two of Miller's sons, and frequently assisted him in his experiments. In 1788 Miller engaged William Symington,