He was still in the enjoyment of his great physical power in spite of the severe strain to which his editorial and literary labours exposed him, added to as these were by his appearances in London and elsewhere as a public lecturer. As an exponent of science he could attract an audience in Exeter Hall of five thousand persons, whose attention he held to the close in spite of his northern accent; though perhaps this, like the Fifeshire speech of Chalmers and the Annandale tongue of Carlyle, may have given an extra charm to the individuality of the lecturer. The quarrel with Candlish had thinned the ranks of some of his friends, nor did he ever draw to the circle of Edinburgh as he had done to those in Cromarty. He was not to be easily got at by the eminent men who sought his acquaintance, yet it is with pleasure we catch occasional glimpses of him in the society of the best that either Edinburgh or London could produce. Stewart in Cromarty had passed away, in 1847, during the prosecution to him of a call to St. George's to succeed Candlish, who had been translated to the college chair left vacant by Chalmers. None of his friends were nearer to him than Mackgill-Crichton of Rankeillour in Fife, and there we find him one Christmas along with Sir David Brewster and Guthrie. Both Miller and his host were men of great physical powers, and--as Professor Masson notes--the geologist had a habit of estimating men by their physique. Crichton had narrated how he had started by the side of the mail coach as it passed his gates, and after a run of twenty miles he had been the first at the ferry. 'A horse could do more than either of you,' was the amused rejoinder of Brewster. The issue of his _Schools and Schoolmasters_ (1854), republished from the columns of his paper, brought him warm encomiums from Carlyle, Robert Chambers, and others. Miller in politics and other points differed strongly from Chambers, and of course at this time the secret of the authorship of the _Vestiges_ had not been divulged. Yet beautifully does Chambers, to whom Scottish publishing and periodical literature owes so much, refer to the early days in Cromarty in comparison with his own struggles in Peebles. Readers who may have not quite forgiven some passages in Chambers's _History of the Rebellion of 1745_ will doubtless soften their asperity after reading Chambers's account of his struggling through a whole set of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ which he had in a lumber garret,--setting out at sixteen, 'as a bookseller with only my own small collection of books as a stock--not worth more than two pounds, I believe, quickly independent of all aid--not all a gain, for I am now sensible that my spirit of self-reliance too often manifested itself in an unsocial, unamiable light, while my recollections of "honest poverty" may have made me too eager to attain and secure worldly prosperity. Had I possessed uncles such as yours, I might have been much the better of it through life.'