No. 769.-19 February, 1859.—Third Series, No. 47. THE LIFE AND REMAINS OF DOUGLAS JERROLD. By his son, Blanchard Jerrold. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. BIOGRAPHIES OF DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIFIC MEN. By François Arago. Translated by Admiral W. H. Smyth, D.C.L., F.R.S., etc., the Rev. Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., etc., and Robert Grant, Esq., M.A., F.R.A.S. Second Series. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. SYMBOLS OF THE CAPITAL; OR, CIVILIZATION IN NEW YORK. By A. D. Mayo. New LIFE OF BISHOP CROSS, OF NEW JERSEY. By the Rev. John H. Norton. New York: [This book contains many things of interest to us, as a Jerseyman; but there is much less than we expected and desired about our venerable friend, the late Bishop. Still we are grateful for a memorial of his steady, consistent, Christian life, which could only be appreciated by those who personally knew him.] PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON & Co., Bofton; and DELISSER & PROCTER, 508 Broadway, New-York. For Six Dollars a year, remitted directly to either of the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series. in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a halfin numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 12 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any brokenvolumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. HUGH MILLER. [THE first article which follows, was written some years ago to accompany the portrait which is prefixed to this number of the Living Age. The second article is copied from the American edition of "Testimony of the Rocks," by permission of Messrs. Gould and Lincoln.] We believe that there are few living literary or scientific men, about whose personal appearance so much curiosity is felt as about that of Hugh Miller, who came forth as a self-educated man from the quarry in which he had toiled as a stone-mason. Mr. Miller is considerably above the average height; his frame well and strongly built-though we are sorry to say that of late, owing to the severity with which he has prosecuted his studies, his health has been considerably affected. The head (in spite of rough and sandy-colored hair) and the face (in spite of whiskers of considerable bushiness) attest his genius. His eyes are like lamps of earnest and profound study upon every object to which they are turned. The whole countenance, though strongly masculine, has a feminine expression -yearning and tender. Coleridge (as we learn from his published "Table Talk ") was wont to maintain that genius is femininemeaning that there are several womanly qualities in its constitution; and to adduce, as a patent proof, the soft, delicate, and yearning expression almost invariably found in the face of those men who have been distinguished by the rare possession. The expression of Mr. Miller's face, and the character of his writings, strikingly confirm the truth of Coleridge's remark, which we have just been amplifying and explaining. It has been often whispered —and, indeed, sometimes printed—that Mr. Miller, by the simplicity and other peculiarities of his dress, strives hard to make his person notable. We admit that he, as well as Professor Wilson, might show a little more care in combing his hair, shaving his beard, and brushing his clothes; but as the most cogent possible demonstration that the carelessness of both of these great men is not affected, we point to their literary works, in which, when referring to illustrious predecessors or contemporaries, little or no notice is taken of their personal appearance. The man who does not note, in his talk, the personal appearance of his neighbors, is indiffer ent about his own. Mr. Miller's conversation is fluent, strong, and original. He has generous words for those with whom he has differed in his walks as a journalist. We shall not soon forget the enthusiastic manner in which he mentioned the "Devil's Dream" of Thomas Aird (with whom, a few years ago, he had a keen controversy) as a piece of unrivalled grandeur and sublimity; nor will our memory let slip some fine discriminating and sarcastic fragments of criticism upon the intellectual character of men with whom he has a close party alliance. In all of these cases, he showed that he loved truth more than clique prejudice for or against persons. Before speaking of Mr. Miller's genius and its fruits, we may inform our readers of a few notable incidents in his history; and, shall quote from an account published recently, by Sir David Brewster, in the "North British Review":— "Mr. Miller was born at Cromarty, of humble but respectable parents, whose history would have possessed no inconsiderable interest, even if it had not derived one of a higher child. By the paternal side, he was descended kind from the genius and fortunes of their from a race of sea-faring people, whose family burying-ground, if we judge from the past, seems to be the sea. Under its green waves, his father sleeps: his grandfather, his two grand-uncles (one of whom sailed round the world with Anson), lie also there; and the several of his more distant relatives. His same extensive cemetery contains the relics of father was but an infant of scarcely a year old at the death of our author's grandfather, and had to commence life as a poor ship-boy; but such was the energy of his mind, that, when little turned of thirty, he had become the master and owner of a fine large sloop, entitled his son to the franchise on the passand had built himself a good house, which ing of the Reform Bill. Having unfortunately lost his sloop in a storm, he had to begin the world anew, and he soon became master and owner of another, and would have thriven, had he lived; but the hereditary fate was too strong for him, and when our author was a little boy of five summers, his father's fine new sloop foundered at sea in a terrible more heard of. Mr. Miller had two sisters tempest, and he and his crew were never younger than himself, both of whom died ere they attained to womanhood. His mother experienced the usual difficulties which a widow has to encounter in the decent educaand successfully, and ultimately found her retion of her family; but she struggled honestly ward in the character and fame of her son. It is from this excellent woman that Mr. Miller has inherited those sentiments and feelings which have given energy to his talents as the defender of revealed truth. She was the genius. When a bank was established in his great-granddaughter of a venerable man, native town of Cromarty, he received the still well known to tradition in the north of appointment of accountant, and he was thus Scotland as Donald Roy of Nigg-a sort of employed, for five years, in keeping ledgers northern Peden. Tradition has represented and discounting bills. When the contest in him as a seer of visions, and a prophesier of the Church of Scotland had come to a close, by prophecies; but, whatever credit may be given the decision of the House of Lords in the to stories of this kind, which have been told Auchterarder case, Mr. Miller's celebrated also of Knox, Welsh, and Rutherford, he was letter to Lord Brougham attracted the para man of genuine piety, and the savor of his ticular attention of the party which was about ennobling beliefs and his strict morals has to leave the Establishment, and he was selected survived in his family for generations. If the as the most competent person to conduct the child of such parents did not receive the best "Witness" newspaper, the principal metroeducation which his native town could afford, politan organ of the Free Church. The great it was not their fault, nor that of his teacher. success which this journal has met with is The fetters of a gymnasium are not easily owing, doubtless, to the fine articles-political, worn by the adventurous youth who has sought ecclesiastical, and geological--which Mr. Miland found his pleasures among the hills and ler has written for it. In the few leisure on the waters. They chafe the young and hours which so engrossing an occupation has active limb, that has grown vigorous under allowed him to enjoy, he has devoted himself the blue sky, and never known repose but at to the ardent prosecution of scientific inquiries; midnight. The young philosopher of Cro- and we trust the time is not far distant when marty was a member of this restless commu- the liberality of his country, to which he has nity; and he had been the hero of adventures done so much honor, will allow him to give and accidents among rocks and woods, which his whole time to the prosecution of science." are still remembered in his native town. The parish school was therefore not the scene of his enjoyments; and, while he was a truant and, with reverence be it spoken, a dunce, when under its jurisdiction, he was busy in the fields and on the sea-shore in collecting those stores of knowledge which he was born to dispense among his fellow-men. He escaped, however, from school with the knowledge of reading, writing, and a little arithmetic, and with the credit of uniting a great memory with a little scholarship. Unlike his illustrious predecessor Cuvier, he had studied natural history in the fields and among the mountains ere he had sought for it in books; while the French philosopher had become a learned naturalist before he had even looked upon the world of nature. This singular contrast it is not difficult to explain. With a sickly constitution and a delicate frame, the youthful Cuvier wanted that physical activity which the observation of nature demands. Our Scottish geologist, on the contrary, in vigorous health, and with an iron frame, rushed to the rocks and the sea-shore in search of the instruction which was not provided for him at school, and which he could find no books to supply. After receiving this measure of education, Mr. Miller set out, in February, 1821, with a heavy heart, as he himself confesses, to make his first acquaintance with a life of labor and restraint.' In the exercise of his profession, which was a wandering one,' our author advanced steadily, though slowly and surely, in his geological acquirements. After having spent nearly fifteen years in the profession of a stone-mason, Mr. Miller was promoted to a position more suited to his Mr. Miller's history, even thus meagrely detailed, should furnish a rare stimulus to kindred minds complaining of a lot very ungenial-but, surely, not more ungenial and ill-starred than the one from which Mr. Miller has bravely, and by his own unassisted efforts, arisen. Born and bred in obscurity, receiving only the simplest elements of such rude scholarship as was deemed necessary to all boys in uncivilized Cromarty, apprenticed when but a boy to the trade of a mason, and kept to it for fifteen years, these were not the most propitious circumstances in which genius could be reared; yet his hard and long manual employments seem to have been little more to him than the trifling amount of out-of-door exercise taken by literary men, showing what immense force and vast comprehensiveness his genius must have possessed, when, instead of being overborne, it could convert all the circumstances of physical toil into the arrangements and methods of study; and his success must be wholly ascribed to native energy, to his own high aspirations and gallant exertions, and not to accidents of good luck. In boyhood and youth, his large and thirsty nature drew continually from the material world, from men and from books, the richest nutriment. When, at length, he appeared before the world both as a literary and scientific man, it was acknowledged that he deserved, and would maintain, the highest position. He had been largely endowed with the comple |