MILLER, HUGH, a distinguished geologist, WRS b. in Cromarty, in the north of Scot land, Oct. 10, 1802. He was descended from a family of sailors, and lost his own father by a storm at sea when lie was only five years of age. In consequence of this misfortune he was brought up chiefly under the care of two of his mother's uncles, one of whom <" uncle Sandy") imbued him with a taste for natural, and the other (" uncle James") for traditional, history. He acquired a good knowledge of English at the Cromarty grammar-school. Before his 11th year he had read those glorious romances of childhood, Jack the Giant-killer, Jack and the Beanstalk, Sindbad the Sailor, The Yellow Dwarf, and Aladdin and the Wonde7ful Lamp, besides several other works of higher literary preten sions. As he grew older he became extremely fond of the great English poets and prose writers. From his 17th to his 34th year he worked as a common stone-mason, devoting his leisure hours to independent researches in natural history, and to the extension of his literary knowledge. In 1829 he published a volume entitled Poems written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Mason, which was followed, a few years afterwards, by Scenes and Legends of the North, of Scotland. His attention was soon drawn to the ecclesiastical controversies which were agitating Scotland, and his famous Letter to Lord Brougham on the " Auchterarder case" brought him prominently into notice. In 1840 he went to Edinburgh as editor of the Witness, a newspaper started in the interest of the non-intru sion party in the church of Scotland, and in the course of the same year published in its columns a series of geological articles, which were afterwards collected under the title of The Okl Red Sandstone, or New Walks in an Old Field. These articles were very remarkable, both in a scientific and literary point of view. They contained a minute account of the author's discovery of fossils in a formation believed, until then, to be des titute of them, and written in a style which was a harmonious combination of strength, beauty, and polish. At the meeting of the British association in the same year (1840) he was warmly praised by Murchison 'and Buckland, and in fact his discoveries were the principal topic of discussion among the savans. His editorial labors during the heat of the disruption struggle were immense, and so seriously injured his health that for some time he had to give up all literary activity. About 1846 he resumed his pen, and
became the most vigorous and eloquent writer in the service of the newly constituted free church. After ten years of hard, earnest, fagging toil his brain gave way, and in a moment of aberration lie put an end to his own existence, at Portobello, near Edinburgh, on the nig.ht of the 23d or morning of the 24th Dec., 1856. Miller's principal works, besides those already mentioned, are: First Impressions of England and its People; Footprints of the Creator, 02' the Asterolepis of Stromn,ess, designed as a reply to the Vestige,s of the Natu ral History of Creation; Hy Schools and Schoolmasters, or the Story of My Education; and Testimony of the Rocks, the last of which is an attempt to reconcile the geolog,y of the Pentateuch with the geology of nature, by the hypothesis that the days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis do not represent the actual duration of the successive periods of creation, but only the time occupied by God in unrolling a panoramic vision of these periods before the eyes of Moses.
Miller's services to science have undoubtedly been great, but he is even more distin • guished as a man than as a savant. Honest, high-minded, earnest, and hugely industri ous, a true Scot, a hearty but not a sour Presbyterian (for he loved Burns as much as lie revered Knox), there are few of whom Scotland has better reason to be proud than " the stone-mason of Cromarty." Besides his autobiography quoted above, see Life by Peter Bayne (2 vols., 1871).
MILLER„TAmEs, 1776-1851; b. N. H.; was educated for the bar, but when not far from 30 years old entered the army as maj. and took part in the frontier warfare, where he displayed great gallantry-. In 1812 he was made col. by brevet, and in 1814 took. part in the Canadian invasion In command of the 21st infantry. In the battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane he did material service. The latter contest was virtually decided by his gallant charge on ft British battery. These services were recognized by congress: a gold medal was presented him, and he was promoted to the rank of brig.gen. From 1819-25 he was governor of Arkansas, then a territory; and from that time until he reached the ag-e of 73 was collector of the port of Salem, Mass.