Miller

Miller, Hugh (1802-56), geologist and man of letters, was the son of a seaman of Cromarty, where he was born and brought up. Hoping to gain time for writing, he became a stonemason, and continued to labour in the quarry for fifteen years. His first volume, Poems written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Mason (1829), was favourably reviewed, but he himself soon became convinced that he lacked the poet's inspiration, and determined that henceforward he would attempt prose alone. Scenes and Legends of Cromarty appeared in 1835. About the same time he gave up stonecutting and became a bank clerk. His pamphlet entitled A letter to Lord Brougham (1839) brought him to the notice of the leaders of the "Free Church" party, and in 1840 he became the editor of their journal, the Witness. The appointment occasioned his removal to Edinburgh, where he remained during the rest of his life. The mental strain proved too great for a constitution already weakened by the hardships of his youth, and in a fit of madness Miller committed suicide. In the Witness were published the series of papers called The Old Red Sandstone (1841). In his pictorial works, Footprints of the Creator (1850) and the Testimony of the Roclts (1857), he wrote eloquently on behalf of revealed religion. He was also author of an extremely interesting autobiographical sketch called My Schools and Schoolmasters (1854).