flowers depicted by Japanese artists, and, by ascertaining the places whence they came, to introduce many for the first time into England. Miles was less successful as an artist in later days. He was popular in society, and was about to be married when he was afflicted by a cerebral malady, which proved incurable, and necessitated his removal to Brislington Asylum, near Bristol, on 27 Dec. 1887. A false report of his death was circulated soon after, but he lived on until 15 July 1891. He was buried at Almondsbury, near Bristol.
[Obituary notices in Nottingham Guardian, 2 March 1888, Magazine of Art, April 1888, &c.; private information.]
MILES, HENRY, D.D. (1698–1763), dissenting minister and scientific writer, was born at Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 2 June 1698. He was educated for the dissenting ministry, probably in London. His first settlement was at Lower Tooting, Surrey, where he succeeded Francis Freeman (d. 17 Nov. 1726), a presbyterian. Miles was at this time an independent. He was ordained in 1731. In 1737, still retaining his Tooting charge, he became assistant to Samuel Chandler [q. v.], at the Old Jewry. From this time he ranked as a presbyterian. He held the double appointment till 1744, and for the rest of his life was minister at Tooting only, having John Beesley as his assistant from 1756. In 1743 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1744 he received the degree of D.D. from Aberdeen. His communications to the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ extend from 1741 to 1753, and relate to natural history, meteorology, and electricity, in which he made new experiments. He gave important assistance to Birch in his edition (1744) of the works of Robert Boyle [q. v.] To his pulpit work, for thirty years, he devoted two days a week, rising between two and three in the morning to write his sermons. He was a friend of Daniel Neal [q. v.], and Nathaniel Lardner [q. v.], and a correspondent of Philip Doddridge [q. v.], to whom he sent some criticisms of his ‘Family Expositor.’ In private life he bore the character of great amiability. He died on 10 Feb. 1763. His funeral sermon was preached by Philip Furneaux [q. v.] . His widow, Emma Miles (d. 1790), by deeds of 6 Oct. 1763 and 15 Feb. 1766, settled an endowment of 500l. on the ministry at Tooting, and conveyed the meeting-house to trustees for the use of dissenters of ‘the presbyterian or independent denomination.’ In 1880 the property became the subject of a chancery suit, which was decided on 1 March 1888 in favour of the independents.
[Furneaux's Funeral Sermon, 1763; Stedman's Letters to and from Doddridge, 1790; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, ii. 384; Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, 1822, i. p. xxxi; Humphreys's Correspondence of Doddridge, 1830, vol. iii; Waddington's Surrey Congregational History, 1866, pp. 312 sq.; Attorney-General v. Anderson, 1888.]
MILES, SIBELLA ELIZABETH (1800–1882), poetess, born at Falmouth 28 Sept. 1800, was daughter of John Westby Hatfield, auctioneer in West Cornwall, who died at York 13 Jan. 1839, aged 72, by his wife Sibella, who died on 1 June 1832, aged 68. For some years previous to 1833 she kept a girls' boarding-school at Penzance, and occupied her leisure hours with the composition of poetry. On 13 Aug. 1833 she married, at Madron, Cornwall, Alfred Miles, a commander in the royal navy, who was afterwards an assistant in the hydrographic department of the admiralty, and edited two editions (1841 and 1852) of Horsburgh's ‘Indian Directory.’ He died at Lympston, Devonshire, 28 Nov. 1851, leaving one son, Frederick Arundel Miles, who died 3 June 1862, aged 26, and one daughter, Helen Jane Arundel Miles, a book illustrator. Mrs. Miles died at 54 South Lambeth Road on 29 March 1882.
She wrote: 1. ‘The Wanderer of Scandinavia, or Sweden delivered,’ in five cantos, 1826, 2 vols. 2. ‘Moments of Loneliness, or Prose and Poetic Efforts,’ 1829. 3. ‘Fruits of Solitude,’ 1831. This was dedicated to Sir R. T. Wilson, and a letter from him to her is printed in his ‘Essay on Canning's Administration.’ 4. ‘Essay on the Factory Question’ (anon.), 1844. 5. ‘Leisure Evenings, or Records of the Past,’ 1860. 6. ‘The Grotto of Neptune,’ 1864. Many of her contributions appeared in the ‘Forget-me-Not’ for 1825 and subsequent years, the ‘Selector or Cornish Magazine,’ 1826–8, the ‘Oriental Herald’ for 1827 and later volumes, and the ‘Nautical Magazine’ for 1833 onwards. Some poems in ‘Original Cornish Ballads,’ 1846 (pt. ii.), with the introductory essay, were by her, and she wrote the introduction to ‘Te Deum, with illustrations by Helen J. A. Miles’ (1877). Her lines on ‘St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall,’ are quoted in works on West Cornwall.
[Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornubiensis; O'Byrne's Naval Biog. Dict.; Ellen C. Clayton's English Female Artists, 1876, ii. 110–11.]
