CHAPTER II.

HIS COLLEGE-LIFE.

AT thirteen Irving began his studies at the Edinburgh University such was, and is still, to a great extent, the custom of Scotch universities,—a habit which, like every other educational habit in Scotland, promotes the diffusion of a little learning, and all the practical uses of knowledge, but makes the profounder depths of scholarship almost impossible. It was nearly universal in those days, and no doubt partly originated in the very long course of study demanded by the Church (always so influential in Scotland, and acting upon the habits even of those who are not devoted to her service), from applicants for the ministry. This lengthened process of education cannot be better described than in the words used by Irving himself, at a much later period of his life, and used with natural pride, as setting forth what his beloved Church required of her neophytes. "In respect to the ministers," he says, "this is required of them,-that they should have studied for four years in a university all the branches of a classical and philosophical education; and either taken the rank in literature of a Master of Arts, or come out from the university with certificates of their proficiency in the classics, in mathematics, in logic, and in natural and moral philosophy. They are then, and not till then,

26 PROLONGED PROBATION OF SCOTCH MINISTERS.

permitted to enter upon the study of theology, of which the professors are ordained ministers of the Church, chosen to their office. Under separate professors they study theology, Hebrew, and ecclesiastical history, for four years, attending from four to six months in each year. Thus eight years are consumed in study." This is, perhaps, the only excuse which can be made for sending boys, still little more than children, into what ought to be the higher labours of a university. Even beginning at such an age, the full course of study exacted from a youth in training for the Church could not be completed till he had reached his twenty-first year, when all the repeated "trials" of the Presbytery had still to follow before he could enter upon his vocation; an apparent and comprehensible reason, if not excuse, for a custom which, according to the bitter complaints of its victims, turns the university into a kind of superior grammar school.

At thirteen, accordingly, Edward, accompanied by his elder brother John, who was destined for the medical profession, came to Edinburgh under the charge of some relatives of their Annan schoolfellow, Hugh Clapperton; and the two lads were deposited in a lofty chamber in the old town, near the college, to pursue their studies with such diligence as was in them. Even to such youthful sons the Edinburgh University has no personal shelter to offer: then, as now, the Alma Mater was a mere abstract mass of class-rooms, museums, and libraries, and the youths or boys who sought instruction there were left in absolute freedom to their own devices. Perhaps the youths thus launched upon the world were too young to take much harm; or

perhaps that early necessity of self-regulation, imposed under different and harder circumstances than those which have brought the English public schools into such fresh repute and popularity, bore all the fruit which it is now hoped and believed to produce. But whatever may be the virtues of self-government, it is impossible to contemplate without a singular interest and amaze, the spectacle of these two boys, one thirteen, the other, probably, about fifteen, placed alone in their little lodging in the picturesque but noisy old town of Edinburgh, for six long months at a stretch, to manage themselves and their education, without tutors, without home care, without any stimulus but that to be received in the emulation of the class-room, or from their books and their own ambition. These circumstances, however, were by no means remarkable or out of the common course of things; and the surprise with which we look back to so strange a picture of boyish life would not have been shared by the contemporary spectators who saw the south-country boys coming and going to college without perceiving anything out of the way in it. The manner in which the little establishment was kept up is wonderfully primitive to hear of at so short a distance from our sophisticated times. Now and then the lads received a box from home, sent by the carrier, or by some "private opportunity," full of oatmeal, cheese, and other homely necessities, and doubtless not without lighter embellishments to prove the mother's care for her boys. Probably their linen was conveyed back and forward to the home-laundry by the same means; so that the money expense of the tiny establishment, with its por

ridge thus provided, and its home relishes of ham and cheese, making the schoolboy board festive, must have been of the most limited amount. Altogether it is a quaint little picture of the patriarchal life, now departed for ever. No private opportunities now-a-days carry such boxes; and those very railways, which make the merest village next neighbour to all the world, have made an end of those direct primitive communications from the family table to its absent members. Nor is it easy to believe that boys of thirteen, living in lonely independence in Edinburgh, where the very streets are seducing and full of fascinations, and where every gleam of sunshine on the hills, and flash of reflection from the visible Firth must draw youthful thoughts away from the steep gradus of a learning not hitherto found particularly attractive, could live within those strait and narrow limits and bear such a probation. But times were harder and simpler in the first twenty years of the century. Scotland was a hundred times more Scotch, more individual, more separate from its wealthier yoke-fellow than now. No greater contrast to the life of undergraduates in an ancient English university, could be imagined, than that presented by those boystudents in their lofty chamber, detached from all collegiate associations, living in the midst of a working-day population, utterly unimpressed by the neighbourhood of a university, and interpolating the homely youthful idyll of their existence into the noisy, bustling, scolding, not over-savoury life of that old town of Edinburgh. Even such a vestige of academical dress as is to be found in the quaint red gown of Glasgow is unknown to the rigid Protestantism of the Scotch metropolis.

The boys came and went, undistinguished, in their country caps and jackets, through streets, which, full of character as they are, suggest nothing so little as the presence of a college, and returned to their studies in their little room, with neither tutor nor assistant to help them through their difficulties, and lived a life of unconscious austerity, in which they themselves did not perceive either the poverty or the hardship; which, indeed, it is probable they themselves, and all belonging to them, would have been equally amazed and indignant to have heard either hardship or poverty attributed to. Crowds of other lads, from all parts of Scotland, lived a similar life; the homely fare and spare accommodation, the unassisted studies; and in most cases, as soon as that was practicable, personal exertions as teachers or otherwise, to help in the expense of their own education, looked almost a natural and inevitable beginning to the life they were to lead.

By such methods of instruction few men are trained to pursue and love learning for learning's sake; but only by such a Spartan method of training the young soldiers of the future, could the Annan tanner, with eight children to provide for, have given all his sons an education qualifying them for professional life and future advancement.

The Edinburgh "Session" lasts only from November till May; leaving the whole summer free for the recreation, or, more probably, the labours of the selfsupporting students. Indeed, the whole system seems based upon the necessity of allowing time for the intervening work which is to provide means for the studies that follow. When the happy time of release