'He meditated his articles as an author meditates his books or a poet his verses, conceiving them as wholes, working fully out their trains of thought, enriching them with far brought treasures of fact, and adorning them with finished and apposite illustration. In the quality of _completeness_ those articles stand, so far as I know, alone in the records of journalism. For rough and hurrying vigour they might be matched, or more, from the columns of the _Times_; in lightness of wit and smart lucidity of statement they might be surpassed by the happiest performances of French journalists--a Prévost-Paradol, or a St. Marc Girardin; and for occasional brilliancies of imagination, and sudden gleams of piercing thought neither they nor any other newspaper articles, have, I think, been comparable with those of S. T. Coleridge. But as complete journalistic essays, symmetrical in plan, finished in execution, and of sustained and splendid ability, the articles of Hugh Miller are unrivalled.' Certainly few modern editors could produce such a leader as he did on Dugald Stewart (Aug. 26, 1854), or upon the _Encyclopoedia Britannica_ (April 30, 1842), or could, finding themselves for a day in London, 'when time hung heavy on my hands,' buy a cheap reprint of Eugene Sue's _Wandering Jew_ and convert its hurried perusal into a capital paper on the conflict between Continental Ultramontanism and Liberalism. The individuality of the writer and the tenacity with which he held to his opinions gave the journal a tone naturally impossible to an ordinary party paper. The great mass of the readers of _The Witness_ were of course Liberals, yet he strenuously contended against making it an organ of any political party. Part of the prospectus ran--'_The Witness_ will not espouse the cause of any of the political parties which now agitate and divide the country. Public measures, however, will be weighed as they present themselves, in an impartial spirit, and with care proportioned to their importance.' He had noticed, he said, the Church of Scotland for a time converted by Conservatism into a mine against the Whigs, and he was determined that no 'tool-making politician' should again convert it to a party weapon. It was to remain the organ of 'the Free Church people against Whig, Tory, Radical, and Chartist.' So careful was he of the good name of the paper that he 'often retained communications beside him for weeks and months, until some circumstance occurred that enabled him to determine regarding their real value.' Chalmers read the paper to the last with approval, and this was a source of joy and support to Miller. Nothing but such a wise supervision could have piloted _The Witness_ through the abuse and the inventions of the Tory organs. When the _Edinburgh Advertiser_, of June 13, 1848, could try to improve on that rhetorical flight of Barrère, characteristically fathered by its author on 'an ancient