jam; and these being all duly partaken of, I prepared to take my leave. "Ye maun just wait awee," said my uncle, “I canna let you gang hame, in a strange town, by yoursell.-Girzy, send Jenny to tell Sanders Mac Auslan to come here frae the office directly, for he maun see Cyril safe hame to the College.", In vain did I protest, that I knew the way perfectly, and would infinitely prefer walking alone, to being placed under Sanders MacAuslan's protection. Entreaties and protestations were of no avail; and I was obliged to submit. At length Sanders arrived; but I found my annoyances did not end here. "Ye'll just wrap this aboot yer craig," said Girzy, approaching me with a huge old greasy-looking comforter in her hand, and applying it officiously to my throat, and blocking up my mouth with a triple entrenchment of woollen. "And here's my big-coat," said Mr. Spreull, seizing me at the same moment by the arms, and pushing them successively into the sleeves of an upper Benjamin, under the weight of which I could scarcely move. "The streets are wat the night," said Girzy, coming again to the attack, "and ye'll no gang hame without my pattens." This was too much; and finding my only hope of escape consisted in flight, I watched my opportunity,-bolted through the door, with all the rapidity which the weight of my accoutrements would allow of,-and, in spite of the oppression of my comforter and upper Benjamin, reached the College in safety. 1 CHAPTER VII. Here science rears Her proud emblazon'd front on high, and here The Principal, an Epic Poem. A FEW weeks passed away, and the courts of the College, formerly deserted and silent, were instinct with life and bustle. The session had now commenced, and nearly two thousand students crowded its halls. These were principally the sons of merchants and tradesmen of the city, and natives of the north of Ireland, of the very lowest order of the people, who came generally in a state of miserable destitution, to qualify themselves in the speediest and cheapest manner for the functions of the ministry. The leavening of English in this promiscuous assemblage was comparatively small, and chiefly furnished by the dissenters, who were compelled to seek in the more liberal establishments of Scotland, that access to knowledge and instruction, from which they were legally excluded by the great seminaries of their native land. There were also a few Englishmen of a higher class, who were placed like myself under the more immediate guidance and tuition of some particular professor, and in whose family they were received as inmates. Educated as I had been in comparative privacy and seclusion, the scene in which I now mingled was naturally fraught with powerful interest. I entered with ardour the new field of honourable contention that was opened to my exertions, and received all the advantage which is invariably found to result, from the collision of youthful minds and the successful excitement of emulation. Learning now dropped the forbidding mask which she had hitherto worn in my eyes, and appeared adorned in graces which I had never imagined her to possess. In short, I entered, in jockey phrase, for all the University plates and sweepstakes for which I was qualified, and though generally not first in the race, I always saved my distance, and was more than repaid by the vigour of limb and elasticity of muscle which I permanently acquired from my exertions, even when unsuccessful in the struggle. I feel a melancholy pleasure in looking back on the eminent persons who then shed a lustre on the University, and to whose kindness and instruction I have been so deeply indebted. Many years have passed, and they all, with one exception, sleep in the grave. May I be pardoned if I venture to embody in these Memoirs my own youthful impression of men, whose names have at least outlived their generation, and whose memory is yet warmly cherished in the hearts of thousands? They are now beyond the reach of praise or censure, but I would speak of them only in a spirit of reverence and love. Of Professor R-I have already transiently spoken. He was certainly a person of elegant accomplishments, and, as a man of the world, stood unrivalled among his colleagues. It must be a rare circumstance, that an obscure northern university can number in its members a person, who, like him, was qualified to shine in a more conspicuous, if not a higher sphere. Of the depth of his learning it is not for me to speak; but I believe it was his ambition rather to be distinguished as a poet and a polite writer than as a scholar-that he would have preferred the character of the Addison to that of the Porson of his age. Perhaps this bias of his inclinations proceeded from a knowledge of his own powers, and he chose that walk in which he was qualified to shine, in preference to one which he could have pursued with little prospect of distinguished success. If so, he did wisely. In the "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays," he has left behind him a work which may serve as a model of elegant and philosophical criticism, and which, notwithstanding all that has since been written on the subject, still maintains its place in our literature. In poetry he was less successful. What, in the present day, can be said of a Rondeau on a Rose, or an Idyllium on a Lady knitting? He wrote a play, too, which, if I remember rightly, was damned; if not, it should have been so. His mind was essentially unpoetical. He could not disembody his spirit, and quicken with it the beings of a new creation. His soul was chained to its tenement, and bore about it too plainly the marks of scholarship and criticism. It was not the soul of a poet, but of Professor R No person could have filled the Chair of Humanity with greater usefulness and success. His mind was thoroughly imbued with the beauties of Roman literature; and he was happy in the mode of communicating his instruction: though it must be confessed, that a gentleman distinguished, as he was, for the elegance and refinement of his manners, was not the person best calculated to maintain a constant subordination in the crowd of turbulent and vulgar bovs ง by whom he was surrounded. Mr. RI think, was somewhat of a mysogynist; at all events, he was not partial to female society, and seldom mingled in it. He was a bachelor; and there were rumours afloat among the students, of an attachment to a Russian princess, when he resided at Petersburg with Lord which was believed to have occasioned the celibacy of his future life. In large and mixed society, he was perhaps a little formal and precise. It may be, that he disliked the general tone of society in Glasgow, and it probably was so. But of a small and select circle, he was the life and the ornament. I look back with pleasure and gratitude to those hours of familiar intercourse which I enjoyed as an inmate of his family, when, vailing the high claims of his age and character, he appeared only as the companion and the friend. The Greek Chair was filled by Professor YHe it was who made the strongest and most vivid impression on my youthful mind, and it is his image which is still imprinted there, the most deeply and ineffaceably. That he was a profound and elegant scholar, I believe has never been denied. No master ever ruled with more despotic sway the minds of his pupils. None ever possessed the art of communicating his knowledge so beautifully and gracefully, -of transfusing the glowing enthusiasm of his own mind into that of his audience. Over every subject to which his great powers were devoted, did he cast a mantle of grace. From him a dissertation on the Digamma, or a Greek particle, became instinct with interest. His mind was the real philosopher's stone: it transmuted all baser metals into gold. I cannot analyse his character, and examine its separate elements. He appears to me only one grand and majestic whole, and as such only can I consider him. |