’The mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
  Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.’

Miller’s appearance, when in trim attire, was that of the Scottish ‘Dominie,’ or parish schoolmaster; but, like the great American editor, he was exceedingly slovenly, both by nature and by long habits of carelessness.  When in the street, he always wore the plaid, although that garment was quite out of use, and indicated at once something quaint or rustic in the wearer.  At this time Miller was living in one of the suburbs of Edinburgh, called Porto Bello.  When we exchanged greetings in the street, his countenance, usually overcast with the pale hue of thought, would light up with a bright and open smile, which continued as long as he was speaking, but soon yielded to returning abstraction.  One of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen was the groups of youth whom Miller used to invite as companions of an afternoon walk.  None were forbidden on the score of childhood, and many a ’wee bairn’ trotted after the larger lads who accompanied ’the gude stane-cracker,’ and ‘the bonnie mon what gaes amang the rocks.’  He might well be called the ‘stane-cracker,’ since I have seen him on Calton Hill, or Arthur’s Seat, or among the crags, lecturing, in a calm, quiet tone, on the mysteries which his hammer had brought to light.  These were the only recreations of one whose days and nights were, with the exception of a brief and often wakeful season of rest, given to laborious study.  Had he indulged more freely in them, he might have escaped the terrible fate which overtook him.  But he never could emancipate himself from the labor to which he was chained.  His ‘Impressions of England,’ which is one of the most delightful of his books, was the product of a subsequent tour for health.  If such were his recreations, what must have been his labors?  Miller’s domestic life did much to cheer an over-worked system.  He gives, in the ’Schools and Schoolmasters,’ a pleasing allusion to the fascination of his courtship; and his subsequent life was graced by one whoso appearance, as I remember her, was singularly lovely and interesting.  In his home circle, Miller was truly a happy man.  I may remark, in passing, that this is a feature in Scottish genius.  While Shelley, Byron, Bulwer, Dickens, and other English authors, have been wrecked by home difficulties, Scott, Chalmers, Miller, Wilson, and the whole line of Scottish authors, drank deep of domestic felicity.  Perhaps this may be explained by the contrast between the warmth of Scottish character, and the saturnine and unsocial disposition of the English.  Edinburgh could at that time boast of two distinguished men of the name of Miller; and the great geologist had almost his fellow in the professor of surgery.  The two were very intimate, and the one found in the other not only a friend, but a faithful medical adviser.  Professor Miller was then printing his leading work, and I had frequent occasion to visit