The close was cheered by the thought that he had fairly earned the admiration and confidence of his country. Yet nothing that could in any way fetter his editorial independence or freedom of action could he permit. When the money invested in _The Witness_ was offered to him by Chalmers it was firmly declined, and the proposal to requite his services to the country by providing him with a residence he would not allow. 'I know,' he said, 'that as the defender of Free Church principles my intentions have been pure and loyal, but I am not quite sure I have been successful in doing the right thing, nor have I done anything that is worthy of such consideration from my friends. I believe my way is to make yet.' The same was his answer to a proposal to allow his name to stand for election as Lord Rector of Marischal College in Aberdeen; he met it pretty much in the vein of Carlyle at Edinburgh, when he felt that here was a generation in young Scotland rising up who seemed to say that he had not altogether, after a hard-spent day, been an unprofitable servant. Time had softened the ecclesiastical asperities of other years, and in 1853 Lord Dalhousie wrote to Lord Aberdeen to secure his election for the vacant Chair of Natural History in Edinburgh. But it fell to Edward Forbes. Again he was singled out by Lord Breadalbane, in 1855, and he was offered the post of Distributor of Stamps for Perthshire, an office which would to him have been a comfortable sinecure, securing alike competence and much leisure. For twenty-eight years Wordsworth in Westmoreland filled such a post, and Miller's banking experiences would have fitted him perfectly for it. But he felt that a man turned fifty could not take up a new vocation with success. That in this he was too modest there can be no doubt; but after a brief consideration he made up his mind to decline. 'I find,' he said, 'my memory not now so good as it was formerly. I forget things which I was wont to remember with ease. I am not clear, in such circumstances, about taking upon me any money responsibility.' In fact, the long and severe strain of sixteen years had told. Of the extraordinary memory whose failure he regrets, Guthrie supplies a forcible example. In the shop of Johnstone the publisher a discussion turned on some debate in the Town Council, when Miller said it reminded him of a scene in Galt's _Provost_. He repeated the passage, halting at the speech of the convener of the trades, but was evidently vexed at the temporary breakdown. He got a copy from the front shop, and turned up the passage. Then they learned that, though it was fifteen years since last he had seen the book, he had repeated page after page _verbatim_.