Miles easily carried off the reward with his play "Mohammed." Rich with all the colors of the East, glowing with the warmth and poetry of Arabian romance and story, "Mohammed" was rather the work of a thinker and a poet than of a master dramatist.

It was never acted, Forrest himself judging that it had not that ebb and flow of passion, nor that strong presentation of character which of all things are so necessary for the stage.

Yet in other plays, notably in "_Senor Valiente_" and especially in "_De Soto_," and "Mary's Birthday," Miles showed that in him the dramatic note was not lacking, and in both he scored remarkable successes.
From Baltimore, after he had left the pursuit of the law, and from Thornbrook, close to the academic halls in which from 1859 he passed his entire life, Miles seldom emerged into public notice.

Twice he visited Europe, his impressions of the second journey (1864) being recorded in "Glimpses of Tuscany." In 1851 President Fillmore sent him on a confidential mission to Madrid.

That same year, John Howard Payne, the loved singer of "Home, Sweet Home," was reinstated in his consulship of Tunis.