Excerpt from Essays, Historical and Biographical, Political, Social, Literary, and Scientific Unusual as it is to republish newspaper articles, no apology is deemed necessary in presenting this volume to the public. At the time of Mr Hugh Miller's death, it was felt that a large proportion of his contributions to the "Witness" deserved a permanent place in the literature of his country. They were recognised as distinguished - both by their literary merit and their sterling value - from the fugitive and ephemeral productions of every-day journalism. Assuming the conduct of a newspaper in the maturity of his powers, and in the plenitude of his literary and scientific information, Mr Miller's habit of composition was entirely different from that of ordinary ready writers of the press. As was correctly remarked at the time of his death, "he did not work easy, but with laborious special preparation." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.