Hugh Miller

“ What good does all your theology do you?"—"Independently altogether of religious considerations," I replied, "it has done for our people what all your Societies for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and all your Penny and Saturday Magazines, will never do for yours; it has awakened their intellects, and taught them how to think. The development of the popular mind in Scotland is a result of its theology." ”

“ In England, on the contrary, one often travels, stage after stage, through an unvarying expanse of flat fields laid out on the level formations, which, undisturbed by trappean or metamorphic rocks, stretch away at low angles for hundreds of miles together, forming blank tablets, on which man may write his works in whatever characters he pleases. Doubtless such a disposition of things adds greatly to the wealth and power of a country;—the population of Yorkshire, at the last census, equalled that of Scotland in 1801. ”

“ If, on the contrary, there can be remission without the shedding of blood, we may be infallibly certain the unnecessary blood will not be demanded, nor the superfluous atonement required. To believe otherwise would be to believe that God deals with his moral agent, man, on principles that do not spring out of his own moral nature, but are mere arbitrary results of an unregulated will."—"But are you not leaving the question, after all, just where you found it?" ”

“ But I soon began to weary of an infinity of green enclosures, that lay spread out in undistinguishable sameness, like a net, on the flat face of the landscape, and to long for the wild free moors and bold natural features of my own poor country. One likes to know the place of one's birth by other than artificial marks: by some hoary mountain, severe yet kindly in its aspect, that one has learned to love as a friend ”

“ Who could fight for a country without features,—that one would scarce be sure of finding out on one's return from the battle, without the assistance of the mile-stones?
As I looked on either hand from the ancient ramparts, now down along the antique lanes and streets of the town, now over the broad level fields beyond, I was amused to think how entirely all my more vivid associations with York—town and country—had been derived from works of fiction. ”

“ I found it well suited to repay the trouble of a visit; and such is the liberality of the Newcastle people, that it cost me no more. It is superior, both in the extent and arrangement of its geologic department, to any of our Scotch collections with which I am acquainted; and its Anglo-Roman antiquities, from the proximity of the place to the wall of Hadrian, are greatly more numerous than in any other museum I ever saw,—filling, of themselves, an entire gallery. ”

“ Eugene Aram seems not to have been the high heroic character conceived by the novelist,—not a hero of tragedy at all, nor a hero of any kind, but simply a poor egotistical litterateur with a fine intellect set in a very inferior nature. ”

“ August was dragging on to its close through a moist and cloudy atmosphere; every day had its shower, and some days half a dozen, but I hoped for clearer skies and fairer weather in the south; and so, taking my seat at Edinburgh on the top of the Newcastle coach, crossed Carter Fell a little after mid-day, and found myself, for the first time, in England. The sun on the Scottish side looked down clear and kindly on languid fields surcharged with moisture, that exhibited greener and yet greener tints as we ascended from the lowland districts to the uplands ”

“ They are the fossils of an extinct order of things, newer than the Tertiary,—of an extinct race,—of an extinct religion,—of a state of society and a class of enterprises which the world saw once, but which it will never see again. And with but little assistance from the direct testimony of history, one has to grope one's way along this comparatively modern formation, guided chiefly, as in the more ancient deposits, by the clue of circumstantial evidence. ”

“ As we advanced, appearances did not improve. The wheaten fields exhibited, for their usual golden tint slightly umbered, an ominous tinge of earthy brown; the sullen rivers had risen high over the meadows; and rotting hay-ricks stood up like islands amid the water. At one place in the line the train had to drag its weary length in foam and spray, up to the wheel-axles, through the overflowings of a neighboring canal. The sudden shower came ever and anon beating against the carriage windows, obscuring yet more the gloomy landscape without ”

“ It is in Northumberland, what it is rarely or never in Scotland, a true Mountain Limestone, that rises into tall hills, and sinks into deep valleys, and spreads laterally over a vast extent of area. The ocean of the Carboniferous era in England must have been greatly more persistent and extended than the ocean whose deposits form the base of the Coal Measures in the sister country: it appears to have lain further from the contemporary land, and to have been much less the subject of alternate upheavals and depressions. We were several hours in driving over the formation. ”

“ In his statement of the doctrine of the atonement,—a simple digest of the Scriptural statement,—all is made to hinge on the important fact, that God having once willed the salvation of men, an atonement became as essentially necessary to Him, in order that the moral nature which He did not give himself might not be violated, as to the lapsed race, who might recognize in it their sole hope of restoration and recovery. ”

“ First, we have evidence that in those remote times when the northern half of the island had just become a home of men, the land was forest-covered, like the woody regions of North America, and that its inhabitants were rude savages unacquainted with the metals, but possessed of a few curious arts which an after age forgot,—not devoid of a religion which at least indicated the immortality of the soul,—and much given to war. ”

“ When the sky is clear and the sun bright, even the smallest and tamest patches of country have their charms: there is beauty in even a hollow willow pollard fluttering its silvery leaves over its patch of meadow-sedges against the deep blue of the heavens ”

“ A tumbling sea of dark-green hills, delicately checkered with light and shadow, swelled upwards on either side towards the line of boundary, like the billows of opposing tide-ways, that rise over the general level where the currents meet ”

“ Many ages must have elapsed since it was the living devotion I had witnessed on the previous evening in the double-bedded room,—if, indeed, it was ever so living a devotion, or aught, at best, save a mere painted image. Not even as a piece of ceremonial is it in keeping with the august edifice in which it is performed. The great organ does its part admirably, and is indisputably a noble machine ”

“ The phosphoric light of genius, that throws so radiant a gloom athwart the obscurities of nature, has in some cases been carried by a frivolous insect, in some by a creeping worm: there are brilliant intellects of the fire-fly and of the glow-worm class; and poor Eugene Aram was one of them. In his character, as embodied in the evidence on which he was convicted and condemned, we see merely that of a felon of the baser sort: a man who associated with low companions; married a low wife ”

“ We passed, on the Scottish side, a group of stalwart shepherds,—solid, grave-featured men, who certainly did not look as if they loved fighting for its own sake; and on the English side, drove by a few stout, ruddy hinds, engaged in driving carts, who seemed just as little quarrelsome as their Scottish neighbors. War must be intrinsically mischievous. ”

“ York, like all the greater towns of England, if we except the capital and some two or three others, stands on the New Red Sandstone; and the broad extent of level fertility which it commands is, to a Scotch eye, very striking. There is no extensive prospect in even the south of Scotland that does not include its wide ranges of waste, and its deep mountain sides, never furrowed by the plough ”

“ Viewed, however, in another phase, we find that this low felon possessed one of those vigorous intellectual natures that, month after month, and year after year, steadily progress in acquirement, as the forest-tree swells in bulk of trunk and amplitude of bough; till, at length, with scarce any educational advantages, there was no learned language which he had not mastered, and scarce a classic author which he had not read. ”

“ He represents the extreme type of unfortunately a numerous class,—the men of vigorous talent, in some instances of fine genius, who, though they can think much and highly of themselves, seem wholly unable to appreciate their true place and work, or the real dignity of their standing, and so are continually getting into false, unworthy positions,—in some instances falling into little meannesses, in others into contemptible crimes. ”

“ It is quite enough for the English, as shown by the political history of modern times, that they conquered Ireland; had they conquered Scotland also, they would have been ruined utterly. "One such victory more, and they would have been undone." Men have long suspected the trade of the hero to be a bad one ”

“ It does not seem natural to the species to associate mighty consequences with phenomena that wear a very humble aspect. The teachings of experience are essentially necessary to show us that the seeds of great events may be little things in themselves ”

“ A rude, straggling village runs for some one or two hundred yards along both sides of the road. On the left there is a group of tall trees, elevated on a ridge, which they conceal; and a bare, undulating, somewhat wild country, spreads around. All is quiet and solitary ”

“ We find the remains of tesselated pavements, baths, public roads, the foundations of houses and temples, accumulations of broken pottery, and hoards of coin. Then comes another important clause in the story; we ascertain that the civilized people failed to conquer the whole of the northern country ”

“ The extensive morass, in which huge trunks lie thick and frequent,—the stone battle-axe,—the flint arrow-head,—the Druidic circle,—the vitrified fort,—the Picts' house,—the canoe hollowed out of a single log,—are all fossils of this early period. Then come the memorials of an after formation. This wild country is invaded by a much more civilized race than the one by which it is inhabited ”

“ A purple curtain fell over the opening behind them, as the last figure in the procession passed in; while a few lay saunterers, who had come to be edified by the great organ, found access by another door, which opened into one of the aisles.
The presiding churchman, on the occasion, was Dean Cockburn,—a tall, portly old man, fresh-complexioned and silvery-haired, and better fitted than most men to enact the part of an imposing figure in a piece of impressive ceremony. I looked at the dean with some little interest ”

“ It served to show, in a manner sufficiently striking, how much more indelibly nature inscribes her monuments of the dead than art. The limestone slab had existed as a churchyard monument for perhaps a thousand years ”

“ Such is the history of this bygone series of occurrences, as written, if one may so speak, in the various fossils of the formation. The antiquities of a museum should always piece on to its geologic collection. ”

“ Interior not less impressive; Congreve's sublime Description.—Unpardonable Solecism.—Procession.—Dean Cockburn; Crusade against the Geologists.—Cathedral Service unworthy of the Cathedral.—Walk on the City Ramparts.—Flat Fertility of the surrounding Country.—The more interesting Passages in the History of York supplied by the Makers.—Robinson Crusoe.—Jeanie Deans.—Trial of Eugene Aram.—Aram's real Character widely different from that drawn by the Novelist. ”