reformer. Among Englishmen, even Englishmen hold ing substantially a Calvinistic creed, no such hallowed conception of the great Frenchman is found to exist. Cowper's theology is well known, yet Cowper could say of Calvin:— "Religion, in him intolerant, austere, Dickens's caricatures of religious characters, are little more than an amplification of Cowper's lines; indeed, the epithets which the bard of Olney has brought together in this single verse, would almost exhaust the portraits of religious life Dickens has drawn. Given a character intolerant, austere, with a needless severity of manner, and lacking the smile, the sweetness, and the grace of Christianity, and we realize to the life the glowing asceticism of Dickens's religious characters. Noticing not only in Dickens, but in other scarcely less popular modern English novelists, pious people always painted of the same obnoxious school, we suspect it must surely be a degenerate Calvinism compared with the Scottish type-a sort of parasitic plant that has entwined itself with a certain order of the English mind. In Kingsley's "Alton Locke" we recognize the same disgusting features in the religious characters, that so sicken us in the novels of Dickens. They are Calvinistic clergymen who devour Widow Locke's house, and for a pretence make long prayers during the process. It may, therefore, be possible that Scotchmen do English authors an injustice in sometimes mistaking for caricature what has been copied from the life. It may be that, like plants which flourish luxuriantly in their own proper latitude, but which get dwarfed so soon as transferred to a less genial soil, some forms of faith may acquire a maturity, a strength, and a nobleness among certain peoples, which degenerate into a puerile fanaticism among peoples less fitted to profit by their peculiar power. CHAPTER XVIII. SCIENCE. As years rolled away, Hugh Miller felt his early passion for science growing upon him. The storms of ecclesiastical controversy had subsided, and though he bore himself nobly and as a man of honour throughout the great church struggle, yet the editor of the Witness made no secret of the regret he felt for some of the more personal controversies in which he had been engaged. It was occasionally his lot, during the latter years of his life, to meet some of those towards whom, in the earlier part of his connection with the Witness, he had violated the dictates of good taste. When he found men on whom in other days he had poured the vials of his sevenfold wrath, forgetful of the past and all that had been personal between them, had nothing for him save honour and attention, the recollection of these rencounters was intolerable. Nor was the recoil of such feelings weakened by the mode in which some he had served only too well, were disposed to treat his labours. His fame was indeed no longer in the keeping of any sect or party. But to a man with the deep attachments of which Hugh Miller was capable, the approbation of his party would naturally often be set above the fame which came from a more extended arena. When therefore he discovered that approbation could only be purchased by stooping to the immoralities of party, and laying the Witness at the feet of a conclave of ecclesiastical censors, was it wonderful his manly but sensitive heart sickened, and became suspicious of the combination of mendacity and meanness with which his work was rewarded. We hope we shall not be misunderstood here. It was no vulgar reward Hugh Miller sought. Indeed, such recognitions of service as are usually only too highly esteemed in this world, had not been wanting. The money originally invested in the Witness, was offered him through Dr. Chalmers, as something of a honorarium for his eminent services, but as resolutely declined as it was handsomely tendered. When, at a subsequent period, Professor Miller representing a select circle of opulent Free Churchmen, waited upon him to intimate a resolution to bestow a testimonial in the form of a mansion, the proposal met the same fate. "I know," said the editor of the Witness in reply to his friend, "I know that, as the defender of Free-church principles, my intentions have been pure and loyal, but I am not quite sure I have always been successful in doing the right thing, nor have I done anything that is worthy of such consideration from my friends. I believe my way is to make yet." But though perfectly aware he possessed a large body of the sincerest admirers, he was also aware his independent conduct had created numerous jealousies among that considerable section of the clergy of the Free Church, who possess no higher idea of the function of a newspaper editor, than that he should be the echo of their every crotchet and every whim. Naturally enough these gentlemen felt irritated "this courser of the sun could not be yoked in the harness of the dray-horse." It was only to be anticipated the consciousness such feelings were entertained respecting him would have strengthened his distaste for ecclesiastical controversy; and during several of the last years of his life, he took but little interest in those squabbles which furnish so much excitement to polemical divines. He saw, moreover, what too many ecclesiastics did not see-that since the Disruption other foes to truth, and other antagonists to Christianity had arisen, than any against whom the Free Church had lifted her protest. Not some mere outwork or unimportant position of the evidences of revealed religion was now called in question, but its most fundamental verities. A pseudo-philosophy sought to supersede creation by development. "Vestiges of the Natural |