is more favourable than any other to the development of genius. We believe that for minds such as his own, it really is so. Had Hugh Miller become a banker's clerk some dozen years before he entered the bank at Cromarty, he would probably not have been so great a man. His was one of those natures that seem rather dwarfed than developed under any specially-forced culture. For those meditative observant powers for which his writings are so pre-eminently distinguished, we should seek in vain a better training than they received amidst those marvels of nature, in whose companionship so much of his life as an operative was passed. But while this peculiar training gave his intellect and character a kind of granitic strength and tenacity on the one side, it left it only partially developed on the other.

A point on which he obviously piqued himself here became his weakness. Indiscriminate eulogists praise Hugh Miller for the resolute way in which he stood aloof from all trades'-unions. It is our belief that had he mingled but a little with these associations, instead of standing aside scanning their weaknesses with the most lynx-eyed scrutiny, though he might probably not have reaped much profit as a handicraftsman from descending into the arena where labour and capital waged their all too-unequal strife, he would have taken lessons in a school, the want of whose lessons was a much greater disadvantage in after life than the neglect of that classical lore in which he cut but so sorry a

figure in the Grammar School of Cromarty. His general estimate of the worth of trades' unions might not be far from just; but while he would have exhibited more of the temper of the philosopher, had he been a little more tolerant of their failings, and a little more kind to their faults, he would also have enjoyed the opportunity of studying men in masses, and of noting the influence a dominant idea exercises upon a host of minds, each differently constituted from the other, yet all animated by the same potent impulse. The result of such experiences upon a mind so pre-eminently capable of being taught by experience, but so little capable of being taught by aught else, would doubtless have been, that while retaining in undiminished power the capacity for appreciating with admirable precision and comprehensiveness the historic epochs through which a people have passed, he should no longer have failed to comprehend the exigencies of acted history. We do not think he was ever very far astray, in the matter of principle, in any of the conflicts into which he sometimes entered with so much vehemency and maintained with so much ability; but without losing an atom of independence, had Hugh Miller ever been a director, instead of always an opponent of trades' unions, it would have taught him greater tenderness for the exigencies of a church-leader, by enabling him better to comprehend the difficulties of such a position.

Some haughty ecclesiastic may, perchance, be disposed to smile at the comparison of great things with

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small, implied in the presumption of any analogy between the direction of a trade's union, and the leadership of a clerical confederation. If so, let such remember the historian of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not ashamed to confess, that to his very modest military attainments as a captain of Hampshire militia, he owed a more definite conception of the phalanx and the legion, than to all his reading besides; nor can we doubt that the vividness with which Lord Macaulay has portrayed the growth, struggles, and intrigues of political parties, springs in no small measure from having himself mingled in the strifes of faction. Hugh Miller could study, estimate, comprehend, but could not well co-operate with his compeers. In this primary fact is to be found the key to the partial estrangement that latterly existed between himself and certain leading lights of the Free Church. It was scarcely possible that two so very differently constituted minds as those of Candlish and Miller, should long have been found in harmony with each other. Candlish the man of the hour, always equal to the occasion, ready to grapple with any emergency, the most dexterous tactician Scottish ecclesiastical polemics ever produced,what had that musing, contemplative, stubborn stonecutter, whom the drift-currents of the moral world had separated from his native North and set down in the editorial chair of the Witness newspaper, in common with the agile church leader, skilled in the ways of diplomacy, an adept in "circumlocution and the lan

guage of friendly intercourse?" Nothing-absolutely nothing! As speculative writers on church principles, had they compared notes, they might not, indeed, have been found far apart; but upon almost all the modes in which these principles were to be made dominant, their minds were nearly the antipodes of each other. And without robbing either of the guerdon justly due to great talents perseveringly and honourably exerted in a most honourable cause, it may be acknowledged, that while to Miller belongs the credit of that far-reaching sagacity which comprehended at a glance the future of the Free Church, and could define its peculiar sphere with an almost mathematical precision; to Candlish belongs the honour of having breathed into what might else have proved a mere inert mass of pretentious ecclesiastical machinery, the energy and resolution of his own dauntless, and restless as it is dauntless, spirit; and if occasionally, on field days, he boasted a larger muster-roll than was altogether warranted by facts, let men forget his error in his devotion-the ends he sought were at least always noble, if the means by which he sought them were not always equal to the ends And yet, perhaps, it was well the impetuosity of Candlish was tempered and kept in check by the sagacity of Miller. Through a dearth of men either able or willing, we do not exactly presume to say which, Dr. Candlish has been necessitated to do much of a kind of work in church courts, usually left by a leader to his lieutenants. The consequence has been, that, occasionally forgetting the

more exalted in the more subordinate position, he has been seen, as sometimes Napoleon's best generals were seen, compromising the common safety by a special impetuosity. In point of fact, for a commander-in-chief he mingles too much in the ranks, and as a natural consequence, the smoke and tumult of the battle occasionally deprive him of that clearness of vision and serenity of soul so indispensable in the direction of all great contests, whether on the tented field or on the floor of a general assembly.