Miller was a naturalist from his infancy, in the sense of habitually observing nature and laying up store of natural facts in his memory; but it was not until he had passed his thirtieth year, and until his severe self-censure pronounced him to have failed, first in poetry and secondly in prose literature, that he conscientiously and with the whole force of his mind devoted himself to science. His mental changes and processes were never sudden, and there was a transition period, during which he hesitated between literature and science; but when his resolution had once been taken, he cast no look behind. With intense, absorbing, impassioned energy, he gave himself to the pursuit of science. His experience in the quarry--of quite inestimable value to him as a geologist--determined his choice of a scientific province for special culture. His progress was wonderfully rapid. The geological nomenclature which he found in books served to classify and formalise knowledge which he had already acquired, and opened his eyes to the fact that he was a geologist. But for the interruption of his plans, by the agitation which issued in the disruption of the Scottish State Church in 1843, and his being summoned to Edinburgh to undertake the conduct of the _Witness_ newspaper, he would have published a treatise, on the geology of the Cromarty district at least a year earlier than the date at which he became known to the public as a man of science. It reminds us how fast and how far the world has travelled in the last thirty years to note that, in the year 1840, Hugh Miller was an enthusiast for the State Church of Scotland. There are no enthusiastic believers in the State Church theory, or what Miller called the 'establishment principle,' now. The most logical and consistent members of the State Church of England avow that her chance of vindicating her claim to the name and privilege of a Church depends upon her ceasing to be a State Church; and the back of the Established Church of Scotland was broken by the disruption. Sensible men, with nothing of the revolutionist in their composition, are now generally of opinion that the days of both our ecclesiastical establishments are numbered. The opinion, also, would be generally assented to, that it is when viewed as a contribution to the cause of ecclesiastical freedom throughout the United Kingdom, that the disruption of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, in 1843, can be seen to be of historical importance. Of this Hugh Miller had no idea. He accepted the theory of a State Church, and he lent his championship to the Majority in the Scottish Church, when contending against the Court of Session, because he believed that the compact agreed upon between Church and State in Scotland, at the time of the union of England and Scotland, had been infringed. It would occupy too much space to explain fully to English readers how the State Church of Scotland had become endeared to the