istic of it. Theoretic education, the education of letters, is in his case rather peculiarly blended with the education of practice. He is one of the strong men who, amid the sternest toil of mechanical employment, have become acquainted, and that not cursorily and superficially but systematically and profoundly, with those stores of book-knowl edge now open to all, if only they have learned to read and have natural force not to be daunted by difficulty: yet his character has derived its brawn and sinew from practice, from the rough jostling and wrestling of life. He has all along been a man of action. Born of a wild, strong, determined kindred, who seem from of old to have lived a life of “sturb and strife," and in a rank of life just sufficiently high to save him from knowing the pangs of want, the world-oyster was to him very firmly closed, but he was the kind of man to open it. Roughing it in the quarry or barrack, seizing the brief intervals of labor to heap up knowledge which a tenacious memory never lost, losing no opportunity, ever ready to strike occasion in its flight, he suddenly emerged into public view, an expert literary workman, and with store of scientific information, the fruit of original discovery, sufficient to secure him a place among the first physical philosophers of his time. Too long a stonemason to be ever sleeked down into the smooth drawingroom gentleman, rugged, shaggy, burly, like a rough-hewn statue of old red sandstone, he was yet possessed of a very high intellectual culture, familiar with the discussions which have agitated philosophical schools, intimately acquainted with his country's poetry, and master of a style which reminded one of Addison.

His school education was meagre. Through life, he has learned more by the eye than by the ear, and he did not find much to interest him in the instructions of the village

pedagogue. He commenced Latin. But he found nothing to attract him in the rudiments of the language. They were exceedingly dry, and he saw no prospect of their becoming alive or useful. He felt his eyes bandaged, and he would not open his mouth to receive the necessary though unpalatable fare. He experienced precisely such a craving for the tangible and practical, as made Arnold, when a boy, refuse to master quantities and accents, and turn from "words" to "things." But Arnold regretted his early refusal, and Miller has still more reason to lament his boyish aversion to Latin. We may remark in passing, that though it ought to be the aim of every teacher to cast, by his skill, an interest over the barest matters, it is an indubitable principle in early education, that the pupil should receive much blindfold, without either liking or understanding it. Both for the culture of faculty, and in order to prepare a man for the many cases in life, in which he will have to proceed unfaltering, when, for a time, the interest flags, and the result is obscure or uncertain, this is a principle of capital importance.

The fact, however, was so, that Hugh Miller left school without gaining even an initial acquaintance with the ancient languages. It is in perfect consistence with all which can be urged in honor of the present and the practical, to avow a feeling of regret on account of this circumstance. True it is, that there exists a vast and noble modern literature, and that the man who knows modern history and a few modern languages, has undergone a very valuable intellectual training. Yet it is a fact, at no time to be forgotten, that every man is "heir of all the ages" behind him, that, in virtue of his intellect, imagination, and sympathy, he may connect himself with earliest times, that he may enrich and exercise his mind by a sympathizing acquaintance

with every form of national and individual life, and every masterpiece of mind, which the centuries behind him can show. The past may be compared to a great, ever-ascending pyramid, to which each generation has added a layer or stratum, and from the top of which each generation, as it emerges into the light of the present, may see further than its predecessor. Education is in every age more difficult than in the preceding. But the reward increases in exact proportion to the labor: the higher the pyramid to be ascended, the wider the prospect to be obtained. And it is precisely the strong man, the man endowed with great powers of intellectual vision, who will profit most largely by the extension of the horizon. Hugh Miller, with his fine, scholarly memory, and calm comprehensiveness of glance, is just the man we should like to have seen standing on the pyramid of the past.

It may seem strange, but we must confess that our regret that Hugh Miller did not at an early period acquaint himself with the languages of antiquity is confirmed rather than removed by a consideration of his style. That style we have already alluded to in terms of commendation; and it were not easy to confer on it too high praise. Dr. Buckland did not scruple to inform the world, that he "would give his left hand to possess such powers of description" as Hugh Miller. Recollecting the staid and prosaic habits of professors, we cannot but feel that Dr. Buckland must have been very much struck indeed. The style in question is one of very rare excellence. Easy, fluent, clear, and expressive, it adapts itself, like a silken shawl, to every swell, and motion, and curve of a subject. It is graphic yet not extravagant, strong without vociferation, measured without formality, classically chaste yet pleasingly adorned. It has the soft

flow and easy cadence which marked the best distinctive styles of the eighteenth century, stubborned with something of the sterner music of the nineteenth. Such a style belongs only to men of genius. Rich, lucid, pictorial, it casts fascination over the old armor of the pterichthys, or shows a whole geographical district at one view, the physiognomic features strongly brought out, and the whole robed in a beauty at once poetic and scientific.

It

Yet, we repeat, it seems to us matter for regret, in a linguistic point of view, that Hugh Miller turned away from the portals of antiquity. The almost universally received canon of English style, that it ought to be extremely Saxon, we venture to call in question. appears rather to be the case that Saxon may be generally trusted to take care of itself, and that mass, majesty, power, and deep, rhythmic cadence, are best secured by an infusion of the Latin element. The grandest prose styles in the language are cased in the Roman armor. The "cathedral music" of Milton was toned by the classic tongues. Johnson went, no doubt, to an unnatural excess, yet the power exercised by his style when he used it must not be overlooked. Burke was a classical scholar. So, with emphasis, was Gibbon. De Quincey, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Macaulay, the most wonderful stylists of our day, are all familiar with the ancient languages. It were, perhaps, bold to assert that this element is absolutely necessary to an English style of the highest order. But the instances cited, together with the fact that very important component parts of our language-parts which embrace more than mere words, and must have influenced the very idiom of the tongue-are derived from antiquity, may sufficiently vindicate the declaration, that Hugh Miller's style would have gained in stateliness and range, had

he become, in his earlier days, a thorough classical scholar. In the treatment of a vast majority of subjects, a simple Saxon style, of the Bunyan or Goldsmith type, will suffice; a good Saxon style is as superior to a bad Latin style, as that of Goldsmith was to that of Johnson; but in the highest flights of an author-and Hugh Miller has thought to sustain him in the loftiest linguistic flights best on the broad pinions of Latin.

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But if the classic tongues are an important accession to a literary education, there are other parts, still less easily dispensed with, and in regard to these Hugh Miller furnishes no subject for complaint. With quick faculty and open sympathy, he mastered all the English books that came in his way. He commenced to read at about six years of age, and set about forming a little library for himself. It began with our invaluable nursery literature, rich in adventure, abounding with heroes,-the epic Jack, the travelled Sinbad, the interesting, neat-footed Cinderella, the shifty and politic Puss, knowing how to turn boots. to advantage; and the rest. Pope's heroes, in his metamorphosis of Homer's Iliad, came next. The author of Eothen testifies how the heart of every noble boy is stirred by the fierce and fine-spoken valor of the Popian warriors, set as it is in a melody, clear and ringing as the clang of The Pilgrim's Progress, that book for the nursery, the home, the shop, the study, the deathbed, followed. At ten, he fell in with blind Harry's Wallace, and some time after, with Barbour's Bruce, and was forthwith a patriot and Scotchman to the finger-tips. During all this time, he was under the full influence of Presbyterian opinions and prepossessions. And thus his days passed, until he reached the threshold of manhood, and adopted a profession.

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The life of Hugh Miller as an apprentice and journey