OF THE
DEATH AND CHARACTER OF HUGH MILLER,
WITH AN
ACCOUNT OF HIS FUNERAL OBSEQUIES.
Near the end of last autumn the American publishers of Hugh Miller's works received from him, through his Edinburgh publishers, the offer of a new work from his pen. The offer was accepted and a contract was at once closed. Soon the advance sheets began to come; and as successive portions were received and perused, it became more and more evident that the work was destined not only to extend his fame, but to establish for him new and special claims to the admiration and gratitude of mankind. In the midst of these anticipations, and ere more than half the sheets had been received, the publishers and the public here were startled by the news that Mr. Miller had come to a violent death. The paragraph conveying the intelligence was such as to leave the mind in a state of painful suspense. But the next steamer from Europe brought full details of the lamentable event. It appeared that in a momentary fit of mental aberration he had died by his own hand, on the night of December 23d, 1856. The cause was over much brain-work. He had been long and incessantly engaged in preparing the present work for the press, when, just as he had given the last touches to the eloquent, the immortal record, reason abandoned her throne, and in the brief interregnum, that great light of science was quenched forever.
The event caused universal lamentation throughout the British Isles. It was treated as a public calamity. The British press, from the London Times to the remotest provincial newspaper, gave expression to the general sorrow in strains of unwonted eloquence; and in so doing recounted his great services to the cause of science, and paid homage to his genius.
Some of the articles which the event thus called forth have seemed to the American publishers worthy of preservation, from the authentic facts which they embody, the judgments which they express, and the literary excellence by which they are marked. They have therefore determined to print them in connection with this work as permanent Memorials of its distinguished and lamented author.
The first piece appeared in the Edinburgh Witness of December 27th, 1856—the paper of which Mr. Miller had been the editor from its establishment in 1840. It presents an authentic account of the circumstances attending his death, and is understood to be from the pen of the Rev. William Hanna, L.L.D., the son-in-law and biographer of Dr. Chalmers, and sometime editor of the North British Review.
In the belief that nothing touching the character and memory of such a man can be regarded with other than the deepest interest, the friends of Mr. Hugh Miller have thought it due at once to his great name and to the cause of truth, to lay fully before the public a statement of the most mournful circumstances under which he has departed from this life. For some months past his over-tasked intellect had given evidence of disorder. He became the prey of false or exaggerated alarms. He fancied—if, indeed, it was a fancy—that occasionally, and for brief intervals, his faculties quite failed him—that his mind broke down. He was engaged at this time with a treatise on the "Testimony of the Rocks," upon which he was putting out all his strength—working at his top-most pitch of intensity. That volume will in a few weeks be in the hands of many of our readers; and while they peruse it with the saddened impression that his intellect and genius poured out their latest treasures in its composition, they will search through it in vain for the slightest evidence of feebleness or decaying power. Rather let us anticipate the general verdict that will be pronounced upon it, and speak of it as one of the ablest of all his writings. But he wrought at it too eagerly. Hours after midnight the light was seen to glimmer through the window of that room which within the same eventful week was to witness the close of the volume, and the close of the writer's life. This over-working of the brain began to tell upon his mental health. He had always been somewhat moodily apprehensive of being attacked by footpads, and had carried loaded firearms about his person. Latterly, having occasion sometimes to return to Portobello from Edinburgh at unseasonable hours, he had furnished himself with a revolver. But now, to all his old fears as to attacks upon his person, there was added an exciting and over-mastering impression that his house, and especially that Museum, the fruit of so much care, which was contained in a separate outer building, were exposed to the assault of burglars. He read all the recent stories of house robberies. He believed that one night, lately, an actual attempt to break in upon his Museum had been made. Visions of ticket-of-leave men, prowling about his premises, haunted him by day and by night. The revolver, which lay nightly near him, was not enough; a broad-bladed dagger was kept beside it; whilst behind him, at his bed head, a claymore stood ready at hand. A week or so ago, a new and more aggravated feature of cerebral disorder showed itself in sudden and singular sensations in his head. They came only after lengthened intervals. They did not last long, but were intensely violent. The terrible idea that his brain was deeply and hopelessly diseased—that his mind was on the verge of ruin—took hold of him, and stood out before his eye in all that appalling magnitude in which such an imagination as his alone could picture it. It was mostly at night that these wild paroxysms of the brain visited him; but up till last Monday he had spoken of them to no one. A friend who had a long conversation with him on the Thursday of last week, never enjoyed an interview more, or remembers him in a more genial mood. On the Saturday forenoon another friend from Edinburgh found him in the same happy frame. As was his wont when with an old friend with whom he felt particularly at ease, he read or recited some favorite passages, repeating, on this occasion, with great emphasis, that noble prayer of John Knox,[1] which, he told his friend, it had been his frequent custom to repeat privately during the days of the Disruption. On the forenoon of Sunday last he worshipped in the Free Church at Portobello; and in the evening read a little work which had been put into his hands, penning that brief notice of it which will be read with melancholy interest as his last contribution to this journal. About ten o'clock on Monday morning he took what with him was an altogether unusual step. He called on Dr. Balfour, in Portobello, to consult him as to his state of health. "On my asking," says Dr. Balfour, in a communication with which we have been favored, "what was the matter with him, he replied, 'My brain is giving way. I cannot put two thoughts together to-day. I have had a dreadful night of it; I cannot face another such. I was impressed with the idea that my Museum was attacked by robbers, and that I had got up, put on my clothes, and gone out with a loaded pistol to shoot them. Immediately after that I became unconscious. How long that continued, I cannot say; but when I awoke in the morning I was trembling all over, and quite confused in my brain. On rising I felt as if a stiletto was suddenly, and as quickly as an electric shock, passed through my brain from front to back, and left a burning sensation on the top of the brain just below the bone. So thoroughly convinced was I that I must have been out through the night, that I examined my trousers to see if they were wet or covered with mud, but could find none.' He further said—'I may state that I was somewhat similarly affected through the night twice last week, and I examined my trousers in the morning to see if I had been out. Still the terrible sensations were not nearly so bad as they were last night; and I may further inform you, that towards the end of last week, while passing through the Exchange in Edinburgh, I was seized with such a giddiness that I staggered, and would, I think, have fallen, had I not gone into an entry, where I leaned against the wall, and became quite unconscious for some seconds.'" Dr. Balfour stated his opinion of the case; told him that he was over-working his brain, and agreed to call on him on the following day to make a fuller examination. Meanwhile the quick eye of affection had noticed that there was something wrong, and on Monday forenoon Mrs. Miller came up to Edinburgh to express her anxiety to Professor Miller, and request that he would see her husband. "I arranged," says Professor Miller, "to meet Dr. Balfour at Shrub Mount (Mr. Hugh Miller's house), on the afternoon of next day. We met accordingly at half-past three on Tuesday. He was a little annoyed at Mrs. Miller's having given me the trouble, as he called it, but received me quite in his ordinary kind, friendly manner. We examined his chest and found that unusually
