tion he had died by his own hand, on the night of December 23d,
1856. The cause was over much brain-work. He had been long and
incessantly engaged in preparing the present work for the press, when,
just as he had given the last touches to the eloquent, the immortal
record, reason abandoned her throne, and in the brief interregnum, that
great light of science was quenched forever.

The event caused universal lamentation throughout the British Isles. It
was treated as a public calamity. The British press, from the _London
Times_ to the remotest provincial newspaper, gave expression to the
general sorrow in strains of unwonted eloquence; and in so doing
recounted his great services to the cause of science, and paid homage to
his genius.

Some of the articles which the event thus called forth have seemed to
the American publishers worthy of preservation, from the authentic facts
which they embody, the judgments which they express, and the literary
excellence by which they are marked. They have therefore determined to
print them in connection with this work as permanent Memorials of its
distinguished and lamented author.

The first piece appeared in the _Edinburgh Witness_ of December 27th,
1856,--the paper of which Mr. Miller had been the editor from its
establishment in 1840. It presents an authentic account of the
circumstances attending his death, and is understood to be from the pen
of the REV. WILLIAM HANNA, L.L.D., the son-in-law and biographer of Dr.
Chalmers, and sometime editor of the _North British Review_.

In the belief that nothing touching the character and memory of
such a man can be regarded with other than the deepest interest,
the friends of Mr. Hugh Miller have thought it due at once to his
great name and to the cause of truth, to lay fully before the
public a statement of the most mournful circumstances under which
he has departed from this life. For some months past his
over-tasked intellect had given evidence of disorder. He became the
prey of false or exaggerated alarms. He fancied--if, indeed, it was
a fancy--that occasionally, and for brief intervals, his faculties
quite failed him,--that his mind broke down. He was engaged at this
time with a treatise on the "Testimony of the Rocks," upon which he
was putting out all his strength,--working at his top-most pitch of
intensity. That volume will in a few weeks be in the hands of many