higher fruit in modern than in ancient days. It is a system utterly unfit to combat the many evils existing throughout the world: indeed, why should it seek to combat that which it does not recognize in any proper sense as an antagonist force? It has nothing of the Christian sense of evil about it; it sees not that in every garret there is either a "haill Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained;" its ethical theory, notwithstanding the snaky fascination with which the magic of genius and the glitter of antithesis have invested it, is a meagre and jejune substitute for the morale of the Sermon on the Mount. That compensatory system with which some of its votaries are so much charmed, and which Emerson has so adorned that the dread bird of destiny which hovers over it is not once perceived by its disciples, was preached of old to that man of Uz, who, perfect and upright, feared God and eschewed evil. The consolation it brought near to Job in the midst of his cumulative calamities, extorted from even his patient spirit the upbraiding cry, "Miserable comforters are ye all." In a certain weakness of the human mind lies the power of the pantheistic system; for that large class who dislike a dogmatic theology, it has a certain nameless attraction and indescribable charm. It is precisely the kind of thing for those who prefer to look at their relations to the infinite through a subdued and coloured medium, rather than in the white light which a definite theology sheds on man's nature and destiny; and it is only natural the predilections of this class

should go with a system which disports itself with the imagination, rather than one that addresses itself to the conscience, and which just sheds over earth enough. of the hues of heaven to impart thereto a diviner beauty and more intense fascination.

G

CHAPTER VII.

POETRY AND A PATRON.

FOR several months after his return to Cromarty, Hugh Miller continued in a delicate and rather precarious state of health. The stone-cutters' malady had made deeper inroads upon his system than he at first supposed; ultimately, however, his constitution threw off the disease, and he began to experience the quiet and exquisite pleasures of convalescence. An ornate stone dial which he cut for his uncles at this time still exists, a memorial of his superior skill as a workman, even in the more elaborate and ornamental department of the traft. When health had become more fully established, he set about executing sculptured tablets and tombstones in his native town and neighbourhood, becoming, in point of fact, a sort of improved edition of Old Mortality, minus the pony; only that it was for money rather than love he gave what immortality his iron pen could bestow upon many whom, probably, the satiric couplet of Byron might correctly have described,—

"When all is done, upon their tombs are seen

Not what they were, but what they should have been."

The style in which this work was executed was of a

superior order to any that had been attempted in the North, while the biblical knowledge and literary tastes of the craftsman prevented him from falling into any such mistakes as did an English mason engaged upon the same kind of employment.

A bereaved widower had hired the Englishman to erect a tablet to the wife of his youth, and with great good taste selected for her tombstone one of those aphorisms of the wise king of Israel, which condense. into a single sentence what feebler men would require a page to describe: "A virtuous woman is a crown unto her husband." Whether John Bull had been studying Crabbe's synonyms, or from what other cause report sayeth not; but, casting over in his mind what relation a crown bore to the other coin of the realm, with about as little reverence for the authorized translation as any one of the appellants for an improved version, he "gave bond in stone" to this very important announcement-a virtuous woman is five shillings to her husband.

Work failing Hugh Miller in the vicinity of Cromarty, by the advice of a friend whose opinion of his skill as a sculptor was very decided, he visited Inverness, and inserted an advertisement in one of the newspapers soliciting employment. As a voucher for the truth of his advertisement, which described his tablet-cutting as neat and correct, he brought with him a bundle of poetry, and, favoured with a letter of introduction to an influential minister,

he repaired without delay to the residence of the reverend gentleman. After waiting some time in the ante-room, amidst a concourse of paupers and intending communicants, he at length obtained audience, and presented the reverend man with his letter, together with an ode to the Ness he had just written. The clergyman belonged to that pretty numerous class of divines who keep "the gloss of the clerical enamel' always peculiarly bright; doubtless, he thought it an act of very great condescension indeed, even to read the verses of the stone-cutter. It was, however, particularly unfortunate that he attempted to criticise them. The solemn shake of the head, in which they are invariably perfect, is the only safety of such men. A shake of the head may mean anything, and, as our Lord Justice Clerk judiciously remarks, cannot be taken down; but, forgetting the aphorism of the royal sage "even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is accounted wise"-he unhappily stooped to a verbal dissent, and, to his dismay, instantly found the artizan armed at all points, prepared to dispute, and able to dispute with success, every critical position he assumed, until, hunted out of each successive loophole of retreat, his reverence was fairly at bay. Only the most magnanimous of patrons could have relished such horseplay, and certainly that was the very opposite of the mode in which most men would have expected to interest any patron in their behalf Hugh Miller adopted. Legree, according to Harriet Beecher Stowe,