afford, it was not their fault, nor that of his teacher. The fetters of a gymnasium are not easily worn by the adventurous youth who has sought and found his pleasures among the hills and on the waters. They chafe the young and active limb that has grown vigorous under the blue sky, and never known repose but at midnight. The young philosopher of Cromarty was a member of this restless community; and he had been the hero of adventures and accidents among rocks and woods, which are still remembered in his native town. The parish school was therefore not the scene of his enjoyments; and while he was a truant, and, with reverence be it spoken, a dunce, while under its jurisdiction, he was busy in the fields and on the sea-shore in collecting those stores of knowledge which he was born to dispense among his fellow-men. He escaped, however, from school, with the knowledge of reading, writing, and a little arithmetic, and with the credit of uniting a great memory with a little scholarship. Unlike his illustrious predecessor, Cuvier, he had studied Natural History in the fields and among the mountains ere he had sought for it in books; while the French philosopher had become a learned naturalist before he had even looked upon the world of Nature. This singular contrast is not difficult to explain. With a sickly constitution and a delicate frame, the youthful Cuvier wanted that physical activity which the observation of Nature demands. Our Scottish geologist, on the contrary, in vigorous health, and with an iron frame, rushed to the rocks and the sea-shore in search of the instruction which was not provided for him at school, and which he could find no books to supply. After receiving this measure of education, Mr. Miller set out in February, 1821, with a heavy heart, as he himself confesses, “to make his first acquaintance with a life of labor and restraint:”—