said, who thought they were
prepared for the end of all things; some going so far as to lay
in a large stock of ascension robes. Though no writer himself, he
was the cause of a great deal of writing on the part of others,
who flooded the land with a special and curious literature--the
literature of Millerism. It is not of that, however, that we
would speak now.

But before this Miller arose--we proceed to say, if only to show
that we are familiar with other members of the family--there was
another, and very different Miller, who was born in old England,
about one hundred years earlier than our sadly, or gladly,
mistaken Second Adventist. His Christian name was Joseph, and he
was an actor of repute, celebrated for his excellence in some of
the comedies of Congreve. The characters which he played may have
been comic ones, but he was a serious man. Indeed, his gravity
was so well known in his lifetime that it was reckoned the height
of wit, when he was dead, to father off upon him a Jest Book!
This joke, bad as it was, was better than any joke in the book.
It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years
every little _bon mot_ was laid at his door, metaphorically
speaking, the puniest youngest brat of them being christened "Old
Joe."

After Joseph Miller had become what Mercutio calls "a grave man,"
his descendants went into literature largely, as any one may
see by turning to Allibone's very voluminous dictionary, where
upwards of seventy of the name are immortalized, the most noted
of whom are Thomas Miller, basket-maker and poet, and Hugh
Miller, the learned stone-mason of Cromarty, whose many works, we
confess with much humility, we have not read. To the sixty-eight
Millers in Allibone (if that be the exact number), must now be
added another--Mr. Joaquin Miller, who published, two or three
months since, a collection of poems entitled "Songs of the
Sierras." From which one of the Millers mentioned above his
ancestry is derived, we are not informed; but, it would seem,
from the one first-named. For clearly the end of all things
literary cannot be far off, if Mr. Miller is the "coming poet,"
for whom so many good people have been looking all their lives.
We are inclined to think that such is not the fact. We think,
on the whole, that it is to the other Miller--Joking Miller--his
genealogy is to be traced.

But who is Mr. Miller, and what has he done? A good many besides
ourselves put that question, les