Of these two uncles, the James and Sandy of his _Schools and Schoolmasters_, Miller has spoken with deserved affection and loyalty. To them he confesses he owed more real education than ever he acquired from all other sources; and, belonging as they do to the class of humble and worthy men that seems pre-eminently the boast and pride of Scottish life, they will merit a detailed account. Of this type some little knowledge had been made known by Lord Jeffrey in his review of Cromek's _Reliques_, where such men as the father of Burns and those of his immediate circle were first introduced to their proper place as those 'from whom old Scotia's grandeur springs.' In his own _Reminiscences_, Carlyle has added to our acquaintance with these men through his sketch of his own father and others, who are, says Professor Blackie, the natural outcome of the republican form of our Scottish Church government, and of the national system of education so early developed by Knox and the first Reformers. The elder of the two brothers, James, was a harness-maker in steady employment in the surrounding agricultural district, so that from six in the morning till ten at night his time would be fully occupied, thus leaving him but scanty leisure. But, in the long evenings, he would fix his bench by the hearth, and listen while his nephew or his own younger brother or some neighbour would read. In the summer, he would occupy his spare hours upon his journeys to and from his rural rounds of labour in visiting every scene of legend and story far and near, and so keen were his powers of perception and ready expression in matters of a historical and antiquarian nature, that his nephew regrets he had not become a writer of books. Some part of this information, however, he has attempted to preserve in his _Scenes and Legends_.