distinct advantages which must spring out of such a system, may not be counterbalanced, upon the whole, by the disadvantages which I should suppose must be equally inseparable from the mode of carrying it into practical effect; in other words, whether the result of good may not be less considerablé in the great issue than that of evil, both to the individuals themselves, and to the community, of whose general character so much must directly and indirectly be dependent upon theirs. For myself, I say even so much with great hesitation, concerning a subject of which I cannot imagine myself to have had time or opportunity for any adequate examination; and of which, even had I possessed more of time and opportunity than I have done, I am still suspicious that my own early prejudices might render it impossible I should form a fair and impartial judgment.

The expenses of University education, in the first place, amount in Scotland to no more than a very inconsiderable fraction of what they are in England. With us, we all know, a father of a family seldom thinks of sending his son to college, unless he can afford to give him an allowance of some £300 per annum, or thereabouts. It is, no doubt, quite possible, to have apartments in a college, to attend prayers in chapel, and eat commons in hall, and to arrive, after four years' residence, at the style and dignity of a Bachelor of Arts, without having disposal of so large an income. But, taking young men as they are, and as they always have been, it is needless to expect, that any one of them will easily submit to lie under any broad and distinct mark of inferiority to his fellows; and therefore it is, that we in common parlance speak of it as being impossible to live at Oxford or Cambridge, on less expensive terms than those I have mentioned. So long as our church retains her privileges and possessions, (which, thank God, I see no likelihood of her losing,) the benefices she has in her gift will always be enough to create a regular demand for a very large number of graduates born in the higher classes of society-so large a number, indeed, that even they alone would be able to give the tone in any University, and any College in England. And while this is so, young men of generous dispositions, who cannot afford to keep up with the tone thus given, would much rather be excused from entering upon a course of life, which must bring their incapacity of doing so continually before the eyes of other

people, and of themselves. It would take along time, moreover, to satisfy the great majority of English fathers of families, even in the more elevated walks of society, that a University education is a matter of so very great importance as to warrant them in running the risk of injuring the feelings and comfort of their children, by compelling them to submit to residing in college on inadequate means. I believe it is well, that, in England, character is generally, regarded as a far more important thing than mere intellect: and I consider the aversion I have just described, as one very honourable manifestation of this way of thinking.

In Scotland, feelings of an equally honourable kind have led to a very opposite way of thinking and acting. The poverty of the colleges themselves, or at least of most of them, has prevented the adoption of any such regular and formal style of academical existence, as that which prevails in other countries, and most of all in our own. Instead of being possessed of large and ancient landed estates, and extensive rights of patronage in the church, and elsewhere, and so of forming in itself a very great and formidable corporate body in the state, as the University of Oxford or Cambridge does with us; the University of Edinburgh, for example, is a very recent and contracted institution, which possesses scarcely any property or patronage of any kind beyond the money paid annually in fees by pupils to their professors, and the necessary influence which the high character of some of these individual professors must at times give to their favour and recommendation. The want of public or corporate splendour has taken away all occasion or pretence for large expenditure in private among the members of the University; and both the corporation, and the individuals, have long since learned to consider their honour as not in the least degree affected by the absence of all those external "shows and forms," which, with us, long habit has rendered such essential parts of every academical exercise and prospect. The barriers which prevent English parents and English sons from thinking of academical education, are thus entirely removed. Any young man who can afford to wear a decent coat, and live in a garret upon porridge or herrings, may, if he pleases, come to Edinburgh, and pass through his academical career, just as creditably as is required or expected. I am assured that the great majority of the students here, have seldom more than £30 or £40 per annum, and that very many most

1

respectable students contrive to do with little more than half so much money.

Whatever may be thought of the results of this plan, there is no possibility that any man of good feeling should refuse his warmest admiration to the zeal both of the children and the parents by whose exertions it is carried into effect. The author of the Scotch novels bas several times alluded, in a very moving way, to the hardships to which a poor man's family in Scotland will submit, for the sake of affording to one of its members even those scanty means which a Scottish University education demands. You must remember the touches of pathos which he has thrown over the otherwise ludicrous enough exertions made in this way by the parents of the redoubtable Dominie Sampson; and those of Reuben Butler, in the last Tales of My Landlord, are represented in much the same kind. I bave seen a little book of Memoirs, lately written, and very well written, by a soldier of the 71st regiment, in which there occurs a still more affecting, because a real picture, of circumstances exactly similar. I question whether there can be imagined a finer display of the quiet heroism of affection and principle, than is afforded in the long and resolute struggle which the poor parents maintainthe pinching penury and self-denial to which they voluntarily submit, in order that their child may be enabled to procure advantages of which themselves are destitute, and which, when obtained, cannot fail to give him thoughts and ideas such as must, in spite of nature, draw some line of separation between him and them. There cannot be a nobler instance of the neglect of self-a more striking exemplification of the sublimity of the affections. Nor can the conduct of the son himself be regarded as much less admirable. The solitary and secluded life to which he devotes so many youthful years --the hard battle which he, too, must maintain against poverty, without any near voice of love to whisper courage into his hosom--the grief which he must feel when compelled to ask that which he well knows will freely, but which, he too much fears, will be painfully given;-all these sorrows of poverty, united with those many sorrows and depressions which the merely-intellectual part of a young student's existence must always be sufficient to create-the doubts and fears which must at times overcloud and darken the brightest intellect that ever expanded before the influence of exertionthe watching and tossing of over-excitement-the self-reproach of languor the tightening of the heart-strings-and the

blank wanderings of the brain-these things are enough to complete the gloomy fore-ground of a picture which would indeed require radiance in the distance to give it any measure of captivation. And yet these things are not more, unless books and men alike deceive us, than are etually operating at this moment in the persons of a very great proportion of the young men whom I have seen at work in the class-rooms of Brown and Playfair. Truly, I think there was too much of lightness in the remarks I made to you, a few days ago, concerning the first impressions of their external appearance and demeanour.

The worst view of the subject, however, still remains to be given. To what end does all this exertion-this noble and heroic exertion, lead? That is a question which nothing can hinder from crossing us every now and then, in the midst of all our most enthusiastic admiration. It is one which it is perhaps a wrong thing to attempt answering in any way; and I much fear it is one which will not admit of being answered in a satisfactory manner, either by you or by me. There are few splendid rewards of worldly honour held up before the eyes of the Scottish student. The same circumstances which enable him to aspire, enable hundreds and thousands to do as much as he does; and the hope of obtaining any of the few prizes which do exist, is divided among so many, that no man would venture to count his own individual chance as worthy of much consideration. The style of education and exertion to which he submits, are admirably fitted for sharpening and quickening the keenness of his understanding, but do not much tend to fill his mind a store of thoughts, feelings, and images, on which it might repose itself, and in which he might possess for ever the means of a quiet and contemplative happiness. He is made a keen doubter, and a keen disputer; and in both of these qualities. there is no doubt he will at first have pleasure. But in neither is he furnished with the elements of such pleasure, as may endure with him, and increase with him throughout a laborious, and, above all, it may be, a solitary life. He is not provided with such an armoury of recollections as that which the scholar (properly so called) presents against the pressure of corporeal and mental evils.

th

Without much prospect, then, of any great increase of wordly goods, and without procuring to himself any very valuable stronghold of peaceful meditation, the Scottish student

submits to a life of such penury and difficulty, as would almost be sufficient to counterbalance the possession even of the advantages which he has not. At the end of his academical career, be probably finds himself either a burden upon his relatiost, or providing for himself by the discharge of some duties, which might have been as well discharged without so expensive a preparation. Is it worth while to bear so much, in order to have a chance of gaining so little? As Mr. Macleod says in Miss Edgeworth's novel-" It may be doubted;" and yet perhaps it cannot be doubted without somewhat of a sin against the higher parts of our nature. But such sins we all commit often enough, but consciously and unconsciously.

P. M.

LETTER XVII.

TO THE SAME.

I REGARD, then, the academical institutions of England and Scotland, as things specifically distinct, both in their structure and in their effects. The Universities, bere, educate, in proportion to the size and wealth of the two countries, twenty times a larger number than ours in England educate. They educate these persons in a very different way, and for totally different purposes-in reality at least, if not in profession. They diffuse over every part of the kingdom, and over many parts of the neighbouring kingdoms, a mighty population of men, who have received a kind and measure of education which fits them for taking a keen and active management in the affairs of ordinary life. But they seldom send forth men who are so thoroughly accomplished in any one branch of learning, as to be likely to possess, through that alone, the means of attaining to eminence; and, what is worse, the course of the studies which have been pursued under their direction, has been so irregular and multifarious, that it is a great chance whether any one branch of occupation may have made such a powerful and commanding impression on the imagination of the student, as might induce him afterwards to perfect and complete for himself what the University can only be said to have begun..