^liM
THE LIBRARY
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OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
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doth
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mind
hook
itrife,
your
Return this hook to me ijuite clean,
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A. D. KEAN.
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AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
MY
Schools and Schoolmasters ;
OR, THE
STORY OF MY EDUCATION.
BY
HUGH MILLER,
AUTHOR OF "the OLD RED SANDSTONE," "FOOTPRINTS OF THB CREATOR,"
" Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills ;
The silence that is in the starry sky, —
The sleep that is among the lonely hUls."
Wordsworth.
NINETEENTH THOUSAND.
NEW YORK:
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS,
S30 Broadway.
1882.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1854, by
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
In the Clerk's oflSce of the District Court of the District of Massachosetta.
TO
THE READER.
It is now nearly a hundred years since Goldsmith
remarked, in his httle educational treatise, that " few
subjects have been more frequently written upon than
the education of youth." And during the century
which has well nigh elapsed since he said so, there
have been so many more additional works given to
the world on this fertile topic, that their number has
been at least doubled. Almost all the men who ever
taught a few pupils, with a great many more wh<?
never taught any, deem themselves qualified to say
something original on education ; and perhaps few
books of the kind have yet appeared, however medio-
cre their general tone, in which something worthy oi
being attended to has not actually been said. And
yet, though I have read not a few volumes on the
subject, and have dipped into a great many more, I
aever yet found in them the sort of direction or en-
couragement which, in working out my own education,
[ moat needed. They insisted much on the varioua
iV TO THE READER.
modes of teaching otliers, but said nothing — or, what
amounted to the same thing, nothing to the purpose —
on the best mode of teaching one's self. And as my
circumstances and position, at the time when I had
most occasion to consult them, were those of by much
the largest class of tke people of this and every other
civilized country, — for I was one of the many millione
who need to learn, and yet have no one to teach them,
— I could not help deeming the omission a serious one.
I have since come to think, however, that a formal
treatise on self-culture might fail to supply the want.
Curiosity must be awakened ere it can be satisfied ;
nay, once awakened, it never fails in the end fully to
satisfy itself ; and it has occurred to me, that by sim-
ply laying before the working men of the country the
"Story of my Education," I may succeed in first ex-
citing their curiosity, and next, occasionally at least,
in gratifying it also. They will find that by far the
best schools I ever attended are schools open to them
all, — that the best teachers I ever had are (though
severe in their discipline) always easy of access, — and
that the special y^m at which I was, if I may say so, most
successful as a pupil, was a form to which I was drawn
by a strong inclination, but at which I had less assist-
ance from my brother men, or even from books, than
at any of the others. There are few of the natural
sciences which do not lie quite as open to the working
men of Britain and America as geology did to me.
My work, then, if I have not wholly failed in it,
TO THE READER. V
may be regarded as a sort of educational treatise,
thrown mto the narrative form, and addressed more
especially to working men. They will find that a
considerable portion of the scenes and incidents which
It records, read their lesson, whether of encouragemeni
or warning, or throw their occasional lights on pecn-
iiarities of character or curious natural phenomena, to
which their attention might be not unprofitably direct-
ed. Should it be found to possess an interest to any
other class, it will be an interest chiefly derivable from
the glimpses which it furnishes of the inner life of the
Scottish people, and its bearing on what has been
somewhat clumsily termed "the condition-of-the-coun-
try question." My sketches will, I trust, be recognized
as true to fact and nature. And as I have never pe-
rused the autobiography of a working man of the more
observant type, without being indebted to it for new
facts and ideas respecting the circumstances and char-
acter of some portion of the people with which I had
been less perfectly acquainted before, I can hope that,
regarded simply as the memoir of a protracted journey
through districts of society not yet very sedulously ex-
plored, and scenes which few readers have had an op-
portunity of observing for themselves, my story may
be found to possess some of the interest which attaches
'to the narratives of travellers who see what is not
often seen, and know, in consequence, what is not
generally known. In a work cast into the autobio-
graphic form, the writer has always much to apologize
n TO THE READER.
for. "With himself for his subject, he usually tells not
only more than he ought, but also, in not a few in-
stances, more than he intends. For, as has been well
remarked, whatever may be the character which a
writer of his own Memoirs is desirous of assuming, he
rarely fails to betray the real one. He has almost
always his unintentional revelations, that exhibit pecu-
liarities of which he is not conscious, and weaknesses
which he has failed to recognize as such ; and it will,
no doubt, be seen, that what is so generally done in
works similar to mine, I have not escaped doing. But
I cast myself full on the good nature of the reader.
My aims have, I trust, been honest ones ; and should
I in any degree succeed in rousing the humbler classes
to the important work of self-culture and self-govern-
ment, and in convincing the higher that there are in-
stances in which working men have at least as legiti-
mate a claim to their respect as to their pity, I shall
not deem the ordinary penalties of the autobiographer
a price too high for the accomplishment of ends so
important.
r;ONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
TAfll
fhe utile boy of the farm-house. — His early education. — Enters the navy.— A
muti'ay, and its happy termination. — Instance of great physical strength. — Quits
the service. — Subsequent adventures.— Enters the coasting trade. — The master's
home. — Unliappy accidents.— The curate of Nigg. — Vessel lost in a storm.^
Jack's narrative of the shipwreck. — A second marriage. — Terrible anger of a
good-natured man 1
CHAPTER 11.
My birth and parentage.— My thologic characterof the recollections of early child-
hood, — My father lost in a storm on the sea. — An apparition. — A dreary season.
— Stanzas. — My early education and reading. — Donald Roy. — Supernatural ele-
ment in the religious character of the Highlanders. — Donald become aSeceder.
— Some account of his descendants. — My two uncles Vt
CHAPTER III.
Blind Harry's " Wallace," and its effects upon me. — Enter the grammar school.
— Early individual development correspondent with an early national one.
Lessons learned at the grammar school.— Bellicose peat expeditions. — The pat-
Wi schoolmaster.— My progress in Latin.— Development of a talent for story--
telling. — Became a sort of favorite with the master. — The yearly cock-fight.-
My dislike of such barbarous exhibitions. — Evils of fixing the foundation of
ethics on the practices of old divines.- Old Francie, the retired clerk, and his
curious collections. — Lessons learned on the sea-shore. — The blank mica and
garnet crystals of Cromarty.- Exploration of Cromarty Hill. — A wild paradise
of Picks. — " Getting siller in the stanes" 38
VTU CONTEXTS
CHAPTER IV.
Quiet hours in the Ebb with Uncle Sandy.— Curious anecdotes of crabs and lob-
sters. — Notices of the lump-fish. — Amphitrites and thei.- masonry. — Dye fish and
beauliful exotic shells. — Evidence Ihat the relative levels of sea and land are
not altering. — Effect of winds upon the tides. — Philosophy of the drift current
and gulf stream.— Instincts and habits of insects. — Wild bees and their robbers.
— Important discoveries of fragmentary vegetable and animal remains. — The
dropping cave of the Cromarty Sutors. — Superstition of the townspeople. — An
apparition.— The Sutor cavas as' seen by torchlight.— The " Puir Wife's Meal
iiist" and the Pigeon Caves. — Exploration of Doocot, — formation of its stalac-
tites and petrified moss, — view from the interior. — Imprisonment by the tide.
— Want of wings sometimes a great inconvenience. — Night, and a storm. —
Imaginary evils often greatly worse than real ones. — .\ midnight voice from the
rocks. — Deliverance. — The incident immortalized in some enormously bad
verse 51
CHAPTER V.
"Letters of a Village Governess," and poor Miss Bond. — My dislike of the com-
mon amusements of the school. — A nm of ill-luck in my sports. — The sea-shore
become a miniature muster-ground. — Essays in bark-building and navigation
unsuccessful. — Unlucky accident, and " break" with a friend.— A visit to the
Highlands. — Family worship. — Honesty a better security than locks and bolts.
— The valley of the Cruids, — its interesting features.— Cousin William's guests.
— Authenliclty ofOasian. — A genuine Celtic breakfast. — Clan stories and legends
)( the dislricL— " No fool like an old fool" 81
CHAPTER VL
Another Journey to the Illghland.s.— A deliglitful residence.- Scenery of Loch
Shin. — Memorials of the barbarism of our ancestors fast disappearing.— Charms
and love-fillers.— Celtic theory of dreaming. — A congenial companion. — Luxury
of seeing one's self in print.— A suit of tartan inconslslent wl'.h a knowledge of
Ga«>lic.— Aij lntero«tin'.( excursion.— .\ «ad story in a solitary valley.— The
salmon leaj — A lodge In the wilderness. — A sublime p^em ^really <liiiimged
CONTENTS. IX
PtOB
In the reading.— Homeward bound. — A story thirty miles long suddenly
broken off. — Niglit amons strangers. — Oomarty. — Tho end of the righteous. —
Further desolation.'* of death.— fJliinpsesof the past. — Witch-burning. — Tales of
Culloden 1<)2
CHAPTER VII.
The subscription school and its schoolmasters. — Rory Shingles' Cave.— A wild,
half-savage life. — A new friend. — Intiamniability of shale due to tlie animal
substance it contains. — Evils of leadership. — A serious scrape. — Discipline of a
wholesome lesson. — The new schoolmaster. — Curious revelations of arithmetic
and copy-books. — Increased warmth of the water in windy days accounted for.
— A test poem. — Offences and punishments. — Abrupt termination of my school
education. — A pasquinade. — A broken circle of companions. — Wise plans in-
terrupted. — Johnstone, the old forty-two man. — A desperate enterprise success-
ful.— The old soldier's difficulties 1 23
CHAPTER VIII.
Choice of a profession. — Work in the Cromarty quarries. — Dreams of a hermit
life not restricted to poets. — Nobility of toil. — Varieties of the quarry limestone.
—A taste for the beauties of natural scenery a never-failing spring of delight.
—Mental depression consequent upon physical fatigue. — Instances of great in-
sensibility to personal danger.— Drinking usages of the profession.— Temptation
overcome.— Organisms of the lias. — Use of spent thunderbolts. — Fossil wonders
»f the eathi ; lias.— An important discovery not followed up.— Journey into the
lighlands,— the old shepherd's vision. — Forest of native Scotch pine. — A new
<cquaiDtance. — Moonlit exhibitions of natural scenery 144
CHAPTER IX.
I aon Side.— A midnight hour.— Gillie-Christ. — Spectral appearance m the
Jiurchyard.— The poor maniac— Origin of the soul. — Traditionary stories. —
•Sighland character.— The m.aniac's quarrel with her husband.— Something pe-
culiarly unwholesome in the society of a sirong-minded maniac. — Her anec-
dotes of a brother.— A specimen of barrack-life.— A new school.— Professional
eharacteristics -Bothy life of the North-country masons 169
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
ntc.-esting objects around CononSide. — The poetic mood. — The accomplishment
of verse distinct from the poetic faculty. — Stanzas. — Unio .Marg-nritifcrus, and
the formation of pearls. — Bathing in the haunted pools of Conou. — Superstition
has her figures as certainly as poesy. — The ruined chapel in the woods. — A dark
rivulet and its trout. — Curious property of Flounders. — Ubellula. — Different
stages of the animal creation. — Human contrivances anticipated in both animal
and vegetable nature. — Jock, the story-teller of the barracks. — The faculty for
extemporary fabrication a peculiarity of a rude society. — Musings. — Verses to
the Cunon !90
CHAPTER XI.
rhe young painter's home. — Symbolism of ancient Celtic sculpture. — " Poor lame
Danie." — Barrack-life again. — The conglomerate deposits of Conon. — Goblin
of Craighouse. — Highlanders of the border districts inferior to those of the in-
terior. — Superstition natural to a state of failing health. — Disastrous effects of
the large farm system on the people of tho agricultural districts. — Study of the
old Scotch poets. — Alleged superiority of tho old Greek and Roman writers
accounted for 310
CHAPTER XTI.
DIsiiBfrous consequences to the mechanic of being an inferior workman.— My
friend of tlie Doocot Cave. — A perilous adventure. — I.udicrous expedient to fix
a boundary-stone.— Click Clack, the Carter. — Unique features of the metamoi*
phic system. — Recession of the shore of Loch Maree.— Music on tho wulurs.—
Island Miirce. — Comforts of n barr.ack.— Ilotno of a Highlander. — "Without
Gaellcin Gairloch." — Kffccl of a potato famine.— Disparity among people of
contiguous districts due to a mixture of rncos.— Discrepancy In the appearance
of the i»xi% on the west coast of Scotland.— Gaelic Thinking in Scripture Eng-
lish 239
CONTENTS. »
CHAPTER XIII.
7AOK
A terra r'ncog'nttrt.— Contentment sometimes rather a vice than a virtue.— A kc-
nius.— A grave difference between porridge with, and porridge without milk.
—Relative powers of fairies and ice to walk off with great stones.— Flora of
Gairloch —Law of increase in the animal and vegetable world,— the same ap-
plies to mnn.— View of the western islands.— Differences between the produc-
tions of the eastern and western coasts of Scotland.— Submarine scenery.—
Primitive arts of uncultivated districts. — Gloomy prospects of the cotters,— their
Celtic blood not the only cause of their indolence.— A resurrectionist.— Sabbaths
In Flowerdale. — Poverty of the Highlanders 2.''*
CHAPTEE XIV.
A sad Accident.— Belief in a particular Providence natural to the mind.— Tho
last eagle of Cromarty Hill.— The ancient records of geology confirmed by the
present extinction of animal species on the globe.— Resolve to seek my fortune
among the stone-cutters of Edinburgh.— Scenery of the Frith of Forth.— Distant
view of the Scottish capital.— .\n unfortunate patrimony.— Edinburgh a city
of the past and present.—" A Highlander newly come to Scotland."— A culti-
vated and fenced country less beloved by a people than a wild, open one.— The
carboniferous system,— Visions of science.— Serfdom in the coal districts. —
Collier women of Niddry.— The democratic watchword " Liberty and Equality"
fllulty in its phlosophy.— Moral degradation in the environs of Edinburgh.—
My lodjjmg '^
CHAPTER XV.
Disaffection toward religious establishments among the working-men of Scotland.
—My fellow-Ic/isers.— Irreligion among the masons.- Family worship estab-
lished in our cottage.— Habits of dissipation among the masons.— The province
of intelligence in reforming the morals.— The nobler virtues unknown to black-
guards.— Charles the hero of our part^ —Evil effect of the practice of promis-
cuous imprisonment, — Intolerance of new sects. — Strike among the masons. —
Scene in a public house.— Human nature a difficult problem. — Evil.^ of strikes.
— The self-conceit of the young a wise provision. — " Old .Vlie, llie witch," and
• Davie, the apprentice." — A city playhouse 3U^
XII CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVI.
PAQI
A great fire in Ediaburtch. — Speciai visitations of heaven difficult to be deter-
mined. — Dr. M'Cric. — .My reading and Rambles. — JVoj; Ambrosiana. — We mi-
derstand an author the better for knowing how lie looks. — Quit Edinburgh for
Cromarty.— Superstilioii of sailors. — Stanzas written at sea. — Reflections on the
condition of the lower classes, — causes of their degradation on the increase. —
Renewed acquaintance with my friend at Doocot. — Man had no responsible
predecessor on earth.— Intellectual superiority of the scholar over the work-
ing-man not so great as has been supposed 333
CHAPTER XVII.
My religious impressions, — Powerlessness of mere speculative theology. — Con-
vinced that the "Word made flesh"' is the central object of the Christian sys-
tem, — importance of this belief. — Adaptation of the scheme of redemption to
the heart of man,— practical power of this principle.— Teachings of geology on
the doctrine of the union of two natures in Christ.— Kailing health.— Stanzas.
-Convalescence .—Sketches of a gipsy party 3S1
CHAPTER XVIII.
S new branch of employment.— Observations on the floras of KlrkmiclitBl,—
their bearing on the development hypothesis — An^\is, the idiot of Nigg. —
Jock Cordon, the imbecile of Cromarty, —their rivalsliip, and its issue.— An
original theory of the mind.— The ministers of Cromarty.— Meeting with Mr.
Stewart,— our subsequent intimacy.— His manner of preaching , fK
CHAPTER XIX.
Ret out to seek omployment lit Invcrnes.s.— Interview with the p.irish rainistet.—
The sort of patronage which loiters of introduclion procure.— Planning to Ret
omployment.— Rolli vorMO mid old I'.iiglisli fail mo. — A Jilted bridegroom.—
The Osnrs of In vorne«».— Criticism on the iniigistrnles.- DiMermino lo piililish
» voliimnof poemn.— Dealli of my uncle James, and of my friend William Rom. 31H
CONTENTS. XU;
CHAPTER XX.
PA OB
Ptsrace to my volume of versp. — Write for the Courier on the herring fishery, —
cxiracts. — Reception of my verses by the critics. — ^A near criticism. — A severe
attai,K from an itinerant elocutionist,— the lecturer barely escapes a drubbing.
— A generous critique from Edinburgh. — My circle of friends become consider-
ably enlarged. — Interview with Dr. Baird. — Other literary enterprises. — The
error of forsaking an honest calling. — An interesting group of literary ladies.
Teu (Tesprit on a young naval oliiuer 411
CHAPTER XXI.
Laid wastes of Culbin. — Peculiarities of the sub-aerial formation. — Great age of
,be globe,— the Scriptures do not fix its antiquity.— Tremendous slorm on the
Hill of Cromarty,— extraordinary character of the scene.- Origin of Scottish
mosses. — Molusca of the Shandwick lias. — Dissection of a loligo. — The oulitic
and lias deposits.— Organism of the second age of vertebrate existence iil
CHAPTER XXII
The Baptist cause at Cromarty. — Opposition to the Catholic Relief Bill. — Trouble
in the parish, — a dire ecclesiastical dispute. — Approach of the cholera ^Our
Barrier Sanitaire measure. — The virtues of the smoke of sulphur and chloride
tested, — fumigation of the Inverness politicians. — Ravages of the pestilence. —
A time of peace favorable to the growth of opinion. — The Revolution in France,
^reception of the news by the crew of a French lugger. — Effects of the Reform
Bill on the politics of Cromarty. — Beginning and ending of my mimicipal
Rareer tU
CHAPTER XXITI.
iSTcnlngs with the ladies. — A pretty young lady and " the Cromarty poet-"— A
lovely apparition. — The propriety of conversing privately with an operative
mason. — A dream maiden displa !ed by a real one. — Thoughts of a home in the
XIV CONTENTS.
backwoods 01 America. — The business of the newspaper editor not always an
independent one. — A special providence,— employed as accounlant of the
Branch Bank. The ill-condition of the laboring classes often overdrawn. — Vo\'"
age to Edinburgh, — object of the journey. — My slay at Linlithgow.— Organisms
of the mountain limestone. — Ketiirn to Cromarty. — Comparative educational
advantages of the mechanic and the clerk. — Reception of my traditional vol-
ume. — The biink proves an admirable school, suited to cultivate a shrewd com-
Bon sense. — My bridal excursion. — Cathedral of Elgm.— Return to Cromarty.
•— Ijisiizas.. ill
CHAPTER XXIV.
Contributions to the " Border Tales." — The reward of " pains-taking research."—
Robert Chambers and his journal. — Ichlhyolitic deposits of the old red sand-
stone, — these have no representative among recent fishes.— Mr. Dinkefs alleged
restoration of the Cephalaspcans disproved. — Cheiracanthus and Chcirolcpsis,
— Evening excursions to Moray Frith. — Triumph of the Liberals over Presby-
terial bigotry. — An ability of efBcient squabbling proved to be a very market-
able one.— Memoir of William Forsyth.— .\ sad bereavement.— Stanzas 4S9
CHAPTER XXV.
The voluntary controversy. — My uncles become .''ecoders. — Sympathy with the
establishment— Critical position of the Church, — it is defended in a letter to
Lord Brougham,— great success of the pamphlet.— Story of the "Deserted
Church." — Become editor of the IVitness, — a non-intrusion paper. — Oratory of
Dr. Chalmers,- great orators imperfectly represented in their written speeches.
—Anecdotes of Dr. Chalmers.— Brief history of a friend.— Quit Cromarty. — Buo-
I of tbo WjtjiMa.— Reflections on the past >lt
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS.
MY
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
OR,
THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I.
" Ye gentlemen of Ensland
Who live at home at ease,
O, little do you think upon
The dangers of tlie seas."
Old Sono.
Rather more than eighty years ago, a stout little boy, in his
sixth or seventh year, was despatched from an old-fashioned
farm-house in the upper part of the parish of Cromarty, to
drown a litter of puppies in an adjacent pond. The commis-
sion seemed to be not in the least congenial. He sat down
beside the pool, and began to cry over his charge ; and finally,
after wasting some time in a paroxysm of indecision and sor-
row, instead of committing the puppies to the water, he tucked
them up in his little kilt, and set out by a blind pathway
which went winding through the stunted heath of the dreary
Maolbuoy Common, in a direction opposite to that of the farm
house, — his home for the two previous twelvemonths. After
some doubtful wandering on the waste, he succeeded in reach-
ing, before nightfall, the neighbouring seaport town, and pre-
sented himself laden with his charge, at his mother's door.
2 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
The poor woman, — a sailor's widow, in very humble circura
stances, — raised her hands in astonishment : " O, my unlucky
boy," she exclaimed, " what's this ? — what brings you here 1"
*' The little doggies, mither," tSi.i the boy ; " I couldna drown
the little doggies ; and I took them to you." What after-
wards befell the " little doggies," I know not ; but trivial as
the incident may seem, it exercised a marked influence on che
circumstances and destiny of at least two generations of crea.
tures higher in the scale than themselves. The boy, as he
stubbornly refused to return to the farm-house, had to be sent
on shipboard, agreeably to his wish, as a cabin-boy ; and the
writer of these chapters was born, in consequence, a sailor's
son, and was rendered, as early as his fifth year, mainly de-
pendent for his support on the sedulously plied but indiflTcr-
ently remunerated labors of his only surviving parent at the
time, a sailor's Avidow.
The little boy of the farm-house was descended from a long
line of seafaring men, — skilful and adventurous sailors, —
some of whom had coasted along the Scottish shores as early
as the times of Sir Andrew Wood and the " bold Bartons,"
and mayhap helped to man that " verrie monstrous schippe
the Great Michael," that " cumbered all Scotland to get her to
sea." They had taken as naturally to the water as the New-
foundland dog or the duckling. That waste of life which is
always so great in the naval profession had been more than
usually so in the generation just passed awaJ^ Of the boy's
two uncles, one had sailed around the world with Anson, and
assisted in burning Paita, and in boarding the Manilla gal-
leon ; but on reaching the English coast he mysteriously dis-
appeared, and was never more heard of. The other uncle, a
reniarkaUly handsome and jwwerful man, — or, to borrow the
homely but not inexpressive language in which I have heard
him descril)ed, " as pretty a fellow as ever stepped in shoe-
leather," — perished at sea in a storm ; and several years after,
the hoy's father, when entering the Frith of Cromarty, was
struck overl)oard, during a sudden gust, by the boom of his
vessel, and, apparently stunned by the blow, never rose again.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 3
Shortly after, in the hope of securing her son from what
seemed to be the hereditary fate, his mother had committed
the boy to the charge of a sister, married to a former of the
parish, and now the mistress of the farm-house of Ardavell ;
but the family death was not to be so avoided ; and the ar
rangement terminated, as has been seen, in the transaction
beside the pond.
In course of time the sailor boy, despite of hardship and
rough usage, grew up into a singularly robust and active man ;
not above the middle size. — for his height never exceeded
five feet eight inches, — but broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
strong-limbed, and so compact of bone and muscle, that in a
ship of the line, in which he afterwards sailed, there was not,
among five hundred able-bodied seamen, a man who could lift
so great a weight, or grapple with him on equal terms. His
education had been but indifferently cared for at home ; he
had, however, been taught to read by a female cousin, a niece
of his mother's, who, like her too, was both the daughter and
the widow of a sailor ; and for his cousin's only child, a girl
somewhat younger than himself, he had contracted a boyish
affection, which in a stronger form continued to retain possess-
ion of him after he grew up. In the leisure thrown on his
hands in long Indian and Chinese voyages, he learned to write ;
and profited so much by the instruction of a comrade, an in-
telligent and warm-hearted though reckless Irishman, that
he became skilful enough to keep a log-book, and to take a
reckoning with the necessary correctness, — accomplishments
far from common at the time among ordinary sailors. He
formed, too, a taste for reading. The recollection of his
cousin's daughter may have influenced him, but he commenced
life with a determination to rise in it, — made his first money
by storing up instead of drinking his grog, — and, as was com-
mon in those times, drove a little trade with the natives of
foi'eign parts, in articles of curiosity and vertu, for which, I sus-
pect, the custom-house dues were not always paid. With all
his Scotch prudence, however, and with much kindliness of
heart and placidity of temper, there was some wild blood in his
4 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
veins, derived, mayhap, from one or two buccaneering ances
tors, that, when excited beyond the endurance point, became
sufficiently formidable ; and which, on at least one occasion,
interfered very considerably with his plans and prospects.
On a protracted and tedious voyage in a large East India,
man, he had, with the rest of the crew, been subjected to
harsh usage by a stern, capricious captain ; but, secure of re-
lief on reaching port, he had borne uncomplainingly with it
all. His comrade and quondam teacher the Irishman was,
however, less patient ; and for remonstrating with the tyrant,
as one of a deputation of the seamen, in what was deemed a
mutinous spirit, he was laid hold of, and was in the course of
being bound down to the deck under a tropical sun, when his
quieter comrade, with his blood now heated to the boiling
point, stepped aft, and with apparent calmness re-stated the
grievance. The captain drew a loaded pistol from his belt ;
the sailor struck up his hand ; and, as the bullet whistled
through the rigging above, he grappled with him, and dis-
armed him in a trice. The crew rose, and in a few minutes
the ship was all their own. But having failed to calculate on
such a result, they knew not wliat to do with their charge ;
and, acting under the advice of their new leader, who felt to
the full the embarrassing nature of the position, they were con-
tent simply to demand the redress of their grievances as their
terms of surrender ; when, untowardly for their claims, a ship
of war hove in sight, much in want of men, and, bearing down
on the Indiaman, the mutiny was at once suppressed, and the
leading mutineers sent aboard the armed vessel, accompanied
by a grave charge, and the worst possible of characters. Lucki-
ly for them, however, and especially luckily for the Irishman
and his friend, the war-ship was so weakened by scurvy, at
that time the untamed pest of the navy, that scarce two dozen
of her crew could do duty aloft. A fierce tropical tempest,
too, which broke out not long after, j)leaded powerfully in
their fiivor ; and the ailhir terminated in the ultimate pro-
motion of the Iriishman to the office of ship-schoolmaister, and
pf his Scotch comrjide to the captaincy of the foretop.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 5
My narrative abides with the latter. He remained for seve-
ral years aboard men-of-war, and, though not much in love
with the service, did his duty in both storm and battle. He
served in the action off the Dogger-Bank, — one of the last
naval engagements fought ere the manoeuvre of breaking the
line gave to British valor its due superiority, by rendering
all our great sea-battles decisive; and a comrade who sail-
ed in the same vessel, and from whom, w hen a boy, I have re-
ceived kindness for my fixther's sake, has told me that, their
ship being but indifferently manned at the time, and the ex-
traordinary personal strength and activity of his friend well
known, he had a station assigned him at his gun against two
of the crew, and that during the action he actually outwrought
them both. At length, however, the enemy drifted to leeward
to refit ; and when set to repair the gashed and severed rig-
ging, such was his state of exhaustion, in consequence of the
previous overstrain on every nerve and muscle, that he had
scarce vigor enough left to raise the marlinspike employed
In the work to the level of his face. Suddenly, when in this
condition, a signal passed along the line, that the Dutch fleet,
already refitted, was hearing down to renew the engagement.
A thrill like that of an electric shock passed through the frame
of the exhausted sailor ; his fatigue at once left him ; and, vig-
orous and strong as when the action first began, he found
himself able, as before, to run out against his tw^o comrades
the one side of a four-and-twenty pounder. The instance is
a curious one of the influence of that " spirit" which, accord-
ing to the Wise King, enables a man to " sustain his infir-
mity.'
It may be well not to inquire too curiously regarding the
mode in which this effective sailor quitted the navy. The
X)untry had borrowed his services without consulting his will ;
and he, I suspect, reclaimed them on his own behalf without
first asking leave. I have been told by my mother that he
found the navy very intolerable ; the mutiny at the Nore had
not yet meliorated the service to the common sailor. Among
other hardships, he had been oftener than once under not only
6 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
very harsh, but also very incompetent officers ; and on one
occasion, after toiling on the fore-yard in a violent night-squall,
with some of the best seamen aboard, in fruitless attempts to
furl up the sail, he had to descend, cap in hand, at the risk of
a flogging, and humbly implore the boy-lieutenant in charge
that he should order the vessel's head to be laid in a certain
direction. Luckily for him, the advice was taken by the
young gentlemen, and in a few minutes the sail was furled.
He left his ship one fine morning, attired in his best, and hav-
ing on his head a three-cornered hat, with tufts of lace at the
corners, which I well remember, from the circumstance that
it had long after to perform an important part in certain boy-
ish masquerades at Christmas and the New Year ; and as he
had taken effective precautions for being reported missing in
the evening, he got clear off.
Of some of the after-events of his life, I retain such mere
fragmentary recollections, dissociated from date and locality,
as might be most readily seized on by the imagination of a
child. At one time, when engaged in one of his Indian voy-
ages, he was stationed during the night, accompanied by but
a single comrade, in a small open boat, near one of the minor
mouths of the Ganges ; and he had just fallen asleep on the
beams, when he was suddenly awakened by a violent motion,
as if his skiff were capsizing. Starting up, he saw in the im-
perfect light, a huge tiger, that had swam, apparently, from the
neighboring jungle, in the act of boarding the boat. So much
was he taken al}ack, that though a loaded musket lay beside
Aim, it was one of the loose beams, or foot-spars, used as ful-
erums for the feet in rowing, that he laid hold of as a weapon ;
hut such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the creature, as
they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with a tremen
dous snarl, and he saw it no more. On another occasion, ht
was one of three men sent with despatches to some hidian port
in a boat, which, oversetting in the open sea in a squall, left
them for the greater part of three days only its upturned bot-
tom for tlu'ir rosting-phice. And so f liirkly, during that tiino,
did Uie sharlts congregate around them, that ihougii a keg of
OR, THE STORY OP MY EDUCATION. 7
rum, part of the boat's stores, floated for the first two days
within a few yards of them, and they had neither meat noi
drink, none of them, though they all swam well, dared attempt
regaining it. They were at length relieved by a Spanish
vessel, and treated with such kindness, that the subject of my
narrative used ever after to speak well of the Spaniards, as a
generous people, destined ultimately to rise. He was at one
time so reduced by scurvy, in a vessel half of whose crew had
been carried off by the disease, that, though still able to do
duty on the tops, the pressure of his finger left for several
seconds a dent in his thigh, as if the muscular flesh had become
of the consistency of dough. At another time, when over-
taken in a small vessel by a protracted tempest, in which " for
many days neither sun nor moon appeared," he continued to
retain his hold of the helm for twelve hours after every other
man aboard was utterly prostrated and down, and succeeded,
in consequence, in weathering the storm for them all. And
after his death, a nephew of my mother's, a young man who
had served his apprenticeship under him, was treated with
great kindness on the Spanish Main, for his sake, by a West
Indian captain, whose ship and crew he had saved, as the
captain told the lad, by boarding them in a storm, at immi-
nent risk to himself, and working their vessel into port, when,
in circumstances of similar exhaustion, they were drifting full
upon an iron-bound shore. Many of my other recollections of
this manly sailor are equally fragmentary in their character ;
but there is a distinct bit of picture in them all, that strongly
impressed the boyish fancy.
When not much turned of thirty, the sailor returned to nis
native town, with money enough, hardly earned and carefully
kept, to buy a fine, large sloop, with which he engaged in the
coasting trade ; and shortly after he married his cousin's daugh-
ter. He found his cousin, who had supported herself in her
widowhood by teaching school, residing in a dingy, old
fashioned house, three rooms in length, but with the windows
of its second story half-buried in the eaves, that had been
left her by their mutual grandfather, old John Feddes, one cf
8 MY SCHOOL AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
the last of the buccaneers. It had been built, I have every
reason to believe, with Spanish gold ; not, however, with a
great deal of it, for, notwithstanding its six rooms, it was a
rather humble erection, and had now fallen greatly into dis-
repair. It was fitted up, however, with some of the sailor's
money, and after his marriage, became his home — a home
rendered all the happier by the presence of his cousin, now
rising in years, and who, during her long widowhood, had
sought and found consolations amid her troubles and privl^
tions, where it was surest to be found. She was a meek-
spirited, sincerely pious woman, and the sailor during his more
distant voyages — for he sometimes traded with ports of the
Baltic on the one hand, and with those of Ireland and the
south of England on the other — had the comfort of knowing
that his wife, who had fallen into a state of health chronically
delicate, was sedulously tended and cared for by a devoted
mother. The happiness which he would have otherwise en-
joyed was, however, marred in some degree by his wife's
great delicacy of constitution, and ultimately blighted by two
unhappy accidents.
He had not lost the nature which had been evinced at an
early age beside the pond : for a man who had otlen looked
death in the face, he had remained nicely tender of human life,
and had often hazarded his own in preserving that of others ;
and when accompanied, on one occasion, by tiis wife and her
mother to his vessel, just previous to sailing, he had unfortu-
nately to exert himself in her presence, in behalf of one of his
seamen, in a way tliat gave her constitution a shock from which
it never recovered. A clear, frosty, moonlight evening had
set in ; the pier-head was glistening with new-formed ice, and
one of the sailors, when engaged in casting over a haulser
which he had just loosed, missed footing on the treacherous
margin, and fell into the sea. The master knew his man
could not swim ; a powerful seaward tide sweeps past the place
with the first hours of ebb ; there was not a moment to he
lost; and, hastily throwing off his heavy great-ooat, he plunged
after him, and in an instant ihe strong (Minrcnt swept them both
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION; 9
ort of sight. He succeeded, however, in laying hold of the
half-drowned man, and striking with him from out.the peril
ous tide-way into an eddy, with a Herculean effort he regained
the quay. On reaching it, however, his wife lay insensible in
the arms of her mother ; and as she was at the time in the de-
licate condition incidental to married women, the natural con-
sequence followed, and she never recovered the shock, but lin-
gered for more than a twelvemonth, the mere shadow of hei
former self; when a second event, as untoward as the first, too
violently shook the fast-ebbing sands, and precipitated her dis-
solution.
A prolonged tempest from the stormy north-east, had swept
the Moray Frith of its shipping, and congregated the storm-
bound vessels by scores in the noble harbor of Cromarty,
when the wind chopped suddenly round, and they all set out
to sea, the sloop of the master among the rest. The other
vessels kept the open Frith ; but the master, thoroughly ac-
quainted with its navigation, and in the belief that the change
of wind was but temporary, went on hugging the land on the
weather side, till, as he had anticipated, the breeze set full into
the old quarter, and increased into a gale. And then, when
all the rest of the fleet had no other choice left them than just
to scud back again, he struck out into the Frith in a long tack,
and, doubling Kinnaird's Head and the dreaded Buehan Ness,
succeeded in making good his voyage south. Next morning,
the wind-bound vessels were crowding the harbor of refuge
as before, and only his sloop was missing. The first war of
the French Revolution had broken out at the time ; it was
known there were several French privateers hovering on the
coast, and the report went abroad that the missing sloop had
been captured by the French. There was a weather-brained
tailor in the neighborhood, who used to do very odd things,
especially, it was said, when the moon was at the full, and
whom the writer remembers from the circumstance that ho
fabricated for him his first jacket, and that, though he suc«
ceeded in sewing on one sleeve to the hole at the shoulder
where it ^ught to be, he committed the slight mistake of sew
IC MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ing on the other sleeve to one of the pock«;t holes. Toot An
drew Fern had heard that his townsman's sloop had been cap-
tured by a privateer, and fidgety with impatience till he had
communicated the intelligence where he thought it would tell
most effectively, he called on the master's wife, to ask whether
she had not heard that all the wind-bound vessels had got back
again save the master's, and to wonder no one had yet told
her that if his had not got back, it was simply because it had
been taken by the French. The tailor's communication told
more powerfully than he could have anticipated : in less than
a week after, the master's wife was dead ; and long ere her
husband's return, she was lying in the quiet family burying-
place, in which — so heavy were the drafts made by accident
and violent death on the family — the remains of none of the male
members had been deposited for more than a hundred ye<ars.
The mother, now left, by the death of her daughter, to a
dreary solitude, sought to relieve its tedium, during the ab-
sence of her son-in-law when on his frequent voyages, by keep-
ing, as she had done ere his return from foreign parts, an hum-
ble school. It was attended by two little girls, the children of
a distant relation but very dear friend, the wife of a tradesman
of the place — a woman, like herself, of sincere though unpre-
tending piety. Their similarity of character in this respect
could hardly be traced to their common ancestor. He was
the last curate of the neighboring parish of Nigg; and, though
not one of those intolerant Episcopalian ministers that succeed-
ed in rendering their church thoroughly hateful to the Scot-
tish people — for he was a simple, easy man, of much good na-
ture — he was, if tradition .speaks true, as little religious as any
of them. In one of the earlier replies to that curious work,
*' Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed," I find a nonsen-
sical passage from one of the curate's sermons, given as a set-
off against the Presbyterian nonsense adduced by the other
side. "Mr. James M'Kenzie, curate of Nigg in Ross," saya
the writer, "descril)iiig eternity to his parishioners, told them
that in that state they would l)c immortalized, so that nothing
rould hurt them ; a slash of abroad sword could not hurt you.
OK, THE STORF OF MY EDUCATION. 11
saith he ; nay, a cannon-ball would play but haff on you."
Most of the curate's descendants were staunch Presbyterians,
and animated by a greatly stronger spirit than his ; and there
were none of them staunchcr in their Prcsbyterianism than
the two elderly women who counted kin from him in the
fourth degree, and who, on the basis of a common faith, had
become attached friends. The little girls were great favorites
with the schoolmistress ; and when, as she rose in years, her
health began to fail, the elder of the two removed from her
mother's house, to live with and take care of her ; and the
younger, who was now shooting up into a pretty young woman,
used, as before, to pass much of her time with her sister and
fier old mistress.
Meanwhile the shipmaster was thriving. He purchased a
site for a house beside that of his buccaneering grandfather,
and built for himself and his aged relative a respectable dwell-
ing, which cost him about four hundred pounds, and entitled
his son, the writer, to exercise the franchise, on the passing,
considerably more than thirty years after, of the Reform Bill.
The new house was, however, never to be inhabited by its
builder ; for, ere it was fully finished, he was overtaken by
ft sad calamity, that, to a man of less energy and determina-
tion, would have been ruin, and in consequence of which he
had to content himself with the old house as before, and al-
most to begin the world anew. I have now reached a point in
my narrative at which, from my connection with the two little
girls, — both of whom still live in the somewhat altered
character of women far advanced in life, — I can be as minute
in its details as I please ; and the details of the misadventure
which stripped the shipmaster of the earnings of long years
of carefulness and toil, blended as they are with what an old
critic might term a curious machinery of the supernatural,
seem not unworthy of being given unabridged.
Early in November 1797, two vessels — the one a smack
in the London and Inverness trade, the other the master's
square-rigged sloop — lay wind-bound for a few days on their
passage north, in the port of Peterhead. The weather, which
2
12 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
had been stormy and unsettled, moderated toward the even-
ing of the fifth day of their detention ; and the wind choj>
ping suddenly into the east, both vessels loosed from their
moorings, and, as a rather gloomy day was passing into «\
still gloomier night, they bore out to sea. The breeze soon
freshened into a gale ; the gale swelled into a hurricane,
accompanied by a thick snow-storm ; and when, early next
morning, the smack opened the Frith, she was staggering un
ier her storm-jib, and a main-sail reefed to the cross. What
ver wind may blow, there is always shelter within the Su
tors; and she was soon riding at anchor within the road-
stead ; but she had entered the bay alone ; and when day
broke, and for a brief interval the driving snow-rack cleared
up toward the east, no second sail appeared in the . offing.
" Poor Miller !" exclaimed the master of the smack ; " if he
does not enter the Frith ere an hour, he will never enter it at
all. Good sound vessel, and better sailor never stepped be-
tween stem and stern ; but last night has, I fear, been too
much for him. He should have been here long ere now."
Tlie hour passed ; the day itself wore heavily away in gloom
and tempest ; and as not only the master, but also all the crew
of the sloop, were natives of the place, groupes of the town's
folks might be seen, so long as the daylight lasted, looking
out into the storm from the salient points of the old coast-line
that, rising immediately behind the houses, commands the
Frith. But the sloop came not, and before they had retired to
their homes, a second night had fallen, dark and tempestuous
as the first.
Ere morning the weather moderated ; a keen frost bound
up the wind in its icy fetters ; and during the following day,
though a heavy swell continued to roll shorcwards between
the Sntors, and to send up its white foam liigh against tho
cliffs, the surface of the sea had become glassy and smooth.
But the day wore on and evening again fell ; and even the
most sanguine relinquished all hope of ever again seeing the
Bloop or her crew. There was grief in the master's dwelling,
-grief in no degree the less poignant from the circumstaiico
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 18
chat it was the tearless, uncomplaining grief of rigid old age.
Her two youthful friends and their mother watched with the
widow, now, as it seemed, left alone in the world. The town-
clock had struck the hour of midnight, and still she remained
as if fixed to her seat, absorl^ed in silent, stupefying sorrow,
when a heavy foot was heard pacing along the now silent street.
It passed, and anon returned ; ceased for a moment nearly op.
posit e the window ; then approached the door, where there
y?as a second pause ; and then there succeeded a faltering
knock, that struck on the very hearts of the inmates within.
One of the girls sprang up, and on undoing the bolt, shrieked
out, as the door fell open, " O, mistress, here is Jack Grant the
mate !" Jack, a tali, powerful seaman, but apparently in a
state of utter exhaustion, staggered, rather than walked in,
and flung himself into a chair, " Jack," exclaimed the old
woman, seizing him convulsively by both his hands, " where'.«i
my cousin 1 — where's Hugh ?" " The master's safe and well,"
said Jack ; " but the poor Friendship lies in spales on the bar
of Findhorn." " God be praised !" ejaculated the widow
" Let the gear go !"
I have often heard Jack's story related in Jack's own words,
at a period of life when repetition never tires ; but I am not
sure that I can do it the necessary justice now. " We left
Peterhead," he said, " with about half a cargo of coal ; for we
had lightened ship a day or two before ; and the gale freshen-
ed as the night came on. We made all tight, however ; and
though the snow-drift was so blinding in the thick of the show
er that I could scarce see my hand before me, and though it
soon began to blow great guns, we had given the land a good
offing, and the hurricane blew the right way. Just as we were
loosening from the quay, a poor young woman, much knocked
up, with a child in her arms, had come to the vessel's sido,
and begged hard of the master to take her aboard. She was
a soldier's wife, and was travelling to join her husband at Fort-
George ; but she was already worn out and penniless, she said ;
and now, as a snow-storm threatened to block up the roads,
she could neither stay where she was nor pursue her journey.
14 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
Her infant, too, — she was sure, if she tried to force her way
through the hills, it would perish in the snow. The master,
though unwilling to cumber us with a passenger in such weath-
er, was induced, out of pity for the poor destitute creature,
to take her aboard. And she was now, with her child, all
alone, below in the cabin. I was stationed a-hcad on the out-
look beside the foresail horse ; the night had grown pitch dark ;
and the lamp in the binnacle threw just light enough through
the gray of the shower to show me the master at the helm.
He looked more anxious, I thought, than I had almost ever
seen him before, though I have been with him, mistress, in
very bad weather ; and all at once I saw he had got company,
and strange company too, for such a night ; there was a woman
moving round him, with a child in her arms. I could see her
as distinctly as I ever saw anything, — now on the one side,
now on the other, — at one time full in the light, at another
half lost in the darkness. That, I said to myself, must be the
soldier's wife and her child ; but how in the name of wonder
can the master allow a woman to come on deck in such a night
as this, when we ourselves have just enough ado to keep foot-
ing ! He takes no notice of her neither, but keeps looking
on, quite in his wont, at the binnacle. ' Master,' I said, step-
ping up to him, ' the woman had surely better go below.'
' What woman. Jack V said he ; ' our passenger, j'ou may be
sure, is nowhere else.' I looked round, mistress, and found
he was quite alone, and that the companion-head was hasped
down. There came a cold sweat all over me. ' Jack,' said
!he master, ' the night is getting worse, and the roll of the
waves heightening every moment. I'm convinced, too, our
cargo is shifting. As the last sea struck us, I could hear the
coals rattle below ; and see how stiffly we heel to the larboard.
Say nothing, however, to the men, but have all your wits about
you ; and look, inoanwhile, to the 1>oatlacklc and the oars. 1
have seen a boat live in as bad a night as this.' As he spoke,
a blue light from above glimmered on the deck. We looked
up, and saw a dead-fire sticking to the cross-trees. ' it's al]
over with us now, master,' said I. ' Nay, map.' replied the
OB, THE STORY OP MY EDUCATION". 16
master, ii. his easy, humorous way, which I always like well
enough except in bad weather, and then I see his humor is
served out like his extra grog, to keep up hearts that have
cause enough to get low, — ' Nay, man,' he said, ' we can't af-
ford to let your grandmother board us to-night. If you will
ensure me -igainst the shifting coal, I'll be your guarantee
against the dead-light. Why, it's as much a natural appear-
ance man, as a flash of lightning. Away to your berth, and
Keep up a good heart ; we can't be far from Covesea now,
where, when once past the Skerries, the swell will take off;
and then, in two short hours, we may be snug within the Su-
tors.' I had scarcely reached my berth a-head, mistress, when
a heavy sea struck us on the starboard quarter, almost throw-
ing us on our beam-ends. I could hear the rushing of the
coals below, as they settled on the larboard side ; and though
the master set us full before the wind, and gave instant orders
to lighten every stitch of sail, — and it was but little sail we had
at the time to lighten, — still the vessel did not rise, but lay un-
manageable as a log, with her gunwale in the water. On we
drifted, however, along the south coast, with little expectation
save that every other sea would send us to the bottom ; until,
in the first gray of the morning, we found ourselves among the
breakers of the terrible bar of Findhorn. And shortly after,
the poor Friendship took the ground right on the edge of the
quicksands, for she would neither stay nor wear ; and as she
beat hard against the bottom, the surf came rolling over half^
mast high.
" Just as we struck," continued Jack, " the master made a
desperate effort to get into the cabin. The vessel couldn't
miss, we saw, to break up and fill ; and though there was little
hope of any of us ever setting foot ashore, he wished to give
the poor woman below a chance with the rest. All of us but
himself, mistress, had got up into the shrouds, and so could
pee round us a bit ; and he had just laid his hand on the
companion hasp to undo the door, when I saw a tremendous
sea coming rolling towards us like a moving wall, and shouted
on him to h Id fast. He sprang to the weather back-stay.
16 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
and laid hold. The sea came tumbling on, and, breaking
fiill twenty feet over his head, buried him for a minute's space
in the foam. We thought we should never see him more ;
but when it cleared away, there was he still, with his iron gripe
on the stay, though the fearful wave had water-logged the
Friendship from bow to stern, and swept her companion-head
as cleanly off by the deck as if it had been cut with a saw. No
human aid could avail the poor woman and her baby. Master
could hear the terrible choaking noise of her dying agony right
under his feet, with but a two-inch plank between ; and the
sounds have haunted him ever since. But even had he suc-
ceeded in getting her on deck, she could not possibly have sur-
vived, mistress. For five long hours we clung to the rigging,
with the seas riding over us all the time like wild horses ; and
though we could see, through the snow drift and the spray,
crowds on the shore, and boats lying thick beside the pier,
none dared venture out to assist us, till near the close of the
day, when the wind fell with the falling tide, and we were
brought ashore, more dead than alive, by a volunteer crew
from the harbor. The unlucky Friendship began to break up
under us ere mid-day, and we saw the corpse of the drowned
woman, with the dead infant still in its arms, come floating out
through a hole in the side. But the surf soon tore mother and
child asunder, and we lost sight of them as they drifted away
to tlie west. Master would have crossed the Frith himself
this morning to I'clieve your mind, but being less worn out
than any of us, he thought it best to remain in charge of the
wreck."
Such, in effect, was the narrative of Jack Grant the mate.
The master, as I have said, had well nigh to {'omnience the
world anew, and was on the eve of selling his new house at a
disadvantage, in order to make up the sum necessary for pro-
viding himself with a new vessel, when a friend interjiosed and
advanced him tlu^talaiice required. He was assisted, too, b^
B sister in Leith, who was in toK'rably comfortable circura-
stances; and so he got a new sloop, which, IIk )ugh not (juile equal
in size to the one he had last, was built wholly of oak, everjp
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. li
plank and beam of which he had superhitended in the laying
down, and a prime sailer to boot ; and so, though he had to
satisfy himself with the accommodation of the old domicile,
with its little rooms and its small windows, and to let the other
house to a tenant, he began to thrive again as before. Mean-
while his aged cousin was gradually sinking. The master was
absent on one of his linger voyages, and she too truly felt that
she could not survive till his return. She called to her bed-
side her two young friends, the sisters, who had been unwea-
ried in their attentions to her, and poured out her blessing on
.them ; first on the elder, and then on the younger. " But as
for you, Harriet," she added, addressing the latter, — " there
waits for you one of the best blessings of this world also, — the
blessing of a good husband ; you will be a gainer in the end,
even in this life, through your kindness to the poor childless
widow." The prophesy was a true one ; the old woman had
shrewdly marked where the eyes of her cousin had been fall-
ing of late ; and in about a twelvmonth after her death, her
young friend and pupil had become the master's wife. There
was a very considerable disparity between their ages, — the
master was forty -four, and his wife only eighteen, — but never
was there a happier marriage. The young wife was simple,
confiding,' and affectionate, and the master of a soft and genial
nature, with a large amount of buoyant humor about him,
and so equable in temper, that, during six years of wedded
life, his wife never saw him angry but once. I have heard her
speak of the exceptional instance, however, as too terrible to
be readily forgotten.
She had accompanied him on ship-board, during their first
year of married life, to the upper parts of the Cromarty Frith,
where his sloop was taking in a cargo of grain, and lay quietly
embayed within two hundred yards of the southern shore.
His mate had gone away for the night to the opposite side of
the bay, to visit his parents, who resided in that neighbor
hood ; and the remaining crew consisted of but two seamen,
both young and somewhat reckless men, and the ship-boy.
Taking the boy with them to keep the ship's boat afloat, and
18 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
wait their return, the two sailors went ashore ancl, setting out
tor a distant public-house, remained there drinking till a late
hour. There was a bright moon overhead, but the evening
was chill and frosty ; and the boy, cold, tired, and half-over-
come b} sleep, after waiting on till past midnight, shoved off
the boat and, making his way to the vessel, got straightway
mto his hammock, and fell asleep. Shortly after, the two men
came to the shore, much the worse of liquor ; and, failing to
make themselves heard by the boy, they stripped off their
clothes, and, chilly as the night was, swam aboard. The mas-
ter and his wife had been for hours snug in their bed, when
they were awakened by the screams of the boy ; the drunken
men were unmercifully bastinading him with a rope's end
apiece ; and the master, hastily rising, had to interfere in his
behalf, and, with the air of a man who knew that remonstrance
in the circumstances would be of little avail, he sent them
both off to their hammocks. Scarcely, however, had he again
got into bed, when he was a second time aroused by the cries
of the boy, uttered on this occasion in the shrill tones of agony
and terror ; and, promptly springing up, now followed by his
wife, he found the two sailors again belaboring the boy, and
that one of them, in his blind fury, had laid hold of a rope-end,
armed, as is common on shipboard, with an iron thimble or
ring, and that every blow produced a wound. The poor boy
was streaming over with blood. The master, in the extremity
of his indignation, lost command of himself Rushing in, the
two men were in a moment dashed against the deck ; — they
seemed powerless in his hands as children ; and had not his
wife, although very unfit at the time for mingling in a fray, run
in and laid hold of him, — a movement which calmed hiin at
once, — it was her serious impression that, unarmed as he was,
ne would have killed them hoth upon the spot. There are, I
believe, few things more formidable than the unwonted auger
of a good-natured man.
OR THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. tft
CHAPTER II.
"Three stormy nights and stormy days
We tossed upon the raging main;
And long we strove our bark to save,
But all our striving was in vain."
LrOWh.
I WAS born, the first child of this marriage, on the 10th day
of October, 1802, in the low, long house built by my great-
grandfather, the buccaneer. My memory awoke early. I have
recollections which date several months ere the completion of
my third year ; but, like those of the golden age of the world,
jhey are chiefly of a mythologic character. I remember, for
instance, getting out unobserved one day to my father's little
garden, and seeing there a minute duckling covered with soft
yellow hair, growing out of the soil by its feet, and beside it a
plant that bore as its flowers a crop of little mussel shells of a
deep red color. I know not what prodigy of the vegetable
kingdom produced the little duckling ; but the plant with the
shells must, I think, have been a scarlet runner, and the sheila
themselves the papilionaceous blossoms. I have a distinct
"ecollection, too — but it belongs to a later period — of seeing
ny ancestor, old John Feddes, the buccaneer, though he must
..ave been dead at the time considerably more than half a cen-
tury. I had learned to take an interest in his story, as pre-
served and told in the antique dwelling which he had built
more than a hundred years before. To forget a love disap
20 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEliS ;
pointment, he had set out early in life for the Spanish Main,
where, after giving and receiving some hard blows, he suc-
ceeded in filling a little bag with dollars and doubloons ; and
then coming home, he found his old sweetheart a widow, and
so much inclined to listen to reason, that she ultimately be-
came his wife. There were some little circumstances in his
history which nmst have laid hold of my imagination ; for I
used over and over to demand its repetition ; and one of my
first attempts at a work of art was to scribble his initials with
my fingers, in red paint, on the house-door. One day, when
playing all alone at the stair-foot, — for the inmates of the
house had gone out, — something extraordinary caught my eye
on the landing-place above ; and looking up, there stood John
Fcddes, — for I somehow instinctively divined that it was none
other than he, — in the form of a large, tall, very old man,
attired in a light-blue great-coat. He seemed to be steiidfastly
regarding me with apparent complacency ; uul 1 was sadly
frightened ; and for years after, when passing through the
dingy, ill-lighted room, out of which I inferred he had come,
1 used to feel not at all sure that 1 might not tilt against old
John in the dark.
I retain a vivid recollection of the joy which used to light
up the household on my father's arrival ; and how I learned
to distinguish for myself his sloop when in the ofling, by the
two slim stripes of white that ran along her sides, and her two
square topsails. I have my golden memories, too, of splendid
toys that lie used to bring home with him, — among the rest,
of a magnificent four-wheeled wagon of painted tin, drawn
by four wooden horses and a string ; and of getting it into a
quiet corner, immediately on its being delivered over to me,
and there breaking up every wheel and horse, and the vehicle
itself, into their original bits, until not two of the pieces were
led sticking together. Farther, I still remember my disap-
pcjiiitment at not finding something curious within at least the
horses and the wheels ; and as unquestionably the main en-
joyment derival)le from such things is to be had in the break-
yiy of Lhem, I bometimes wonder that our ingenious toymen
OR, THE STOEY OF MY EDUCATION. 21
dc not fall upon the way of at once extending their trade, and
adding to its philosophy, by putting some of their most bril-
liant things where nature puts the nut-kernel, — inside. I
shall advert to but one other recollection of this period. 1
have a dream-like memory of a busy time, when men with gold
lace on their breasts, and at least one gentleman with golden
epaulets on his shoulders, used to call at my father's house,
and fill my newly-acquired pockets with coppers ; and how
they wanted, it is said, to bring my father along with them,
to help them to sail their great vessel ; but he preferred re-
maining, it was added, with his own little one. A ship of
war, under the guidance of an unskilful pilot, had run aground
on a shallow flat on the opposite side of the Frith, known as
the Inches ; and as the flood of a stream-tide was at its height
at the time, and straightway began to fall off", it was found,
after lightening her of her guns and the greater part of her
stores, that she still stuck fast. My father, whose sloop hau
been pressed into the service, and was loaded to the gun-
wale with the ordnance, had betrayed an unexpected knowl-
edge of the points of a large war vessel ; and the command-
er, entering into conversation with him, was so impressed by
his skill, that he placed his ship under his charge, and had hia
confidence repaid by seeing her hauled off" into deep water in
a single tide. Knowing the nature of the bottom, — a soft
arenaceous mud, which, if beat for some time by the foot ot
hand, resolved itself into a sort of quicksand, half sludge, half
water, which, when covered by a competent depth of sea,
could offer no eflfectual resistance to a ship's keel, — the master
had set half the crew to run in a body from side to side, till,
by the motion generated in this way, the portion of the bank
mmediately beneath was beaten soft ; and then the other
moiety of the men, tugging hard on kedge and haulser, drew
the vessel off* a few feet at a time, till at length, after not a
few repetitions of the process, she floated free. Of course, on
a harder bottom the experiment would not have availed ; but
so struck was the commander by its efficacy and originality,
and by the extent of the master's professional resources, thai
22 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
he strongly recommended him to part with his sloop, and en
ter the navy, where he thought he had influence enough, he
said, to get him placed in a proper position. But as the mas-
ter's previous experience of the service had been of a very
disagreeable kind, and as his position, as at once master and
owner of the vessel he sailed, was at least an independent
one, he declined acting on the advice.
Such are some of my earlier recollections. But there wa.
a time of sterner memories at hand. The kelp trade had no
yet attained to the importance which it afterwards acquired,
ere it fell before the first approaches of Free Trade ; and my
father, in collecting a supply for the Leith Glass Works, for
which he occasionally acted both as agent and shipmaster,
used sometimes to spend whole months amid the Hebrides,
sailing from station to station, and purchasing here a few tons
and there a few hundredweights, until he had completed his
cargo. In his last kelp voyage, he had been detained in this
way from the close of August to the end of October ; and at
length, deeply laden, he had threaded his way round Cape
Wrath, and through the Pentland and across the Moray Friths,
when a severe gale compelled him to seek shelter in the har-
bor of Peterhead. From that port, on the 9th of Novem-
ber, 1807, he wrote my mother the last letter she ever re-
ceived from him ; for on the day after he sailed from it, there
arose a terrible tempest, in which many seamen perished,
and he and his crew were never more heard of. His sloop
was last seen by a brother townsman and shipmaster, who, ere
the storm came on, had been fortunate enough to secure an
asylum for his bark in an English harbor on an exposed por*
lion of the coast. Vessel after vessel had been coming ashore
during the day; and the beach was strewed with wrecks and
dead bodies ; but he had marked his townsman's sloop in the
offing from mid-day till near evening, exhausting every nauti-
cal shift and ex[)cdient to keep aloof from the shore; and at
length, as the night was falling, the skill and perseverance
exerted seemed successful ; for, clearing a formidable head-
land that had lain on the lee for hours, and was mottled with
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 23
broken ships and drowned men, the sloop was seen stretching
out in a long tack into the open sea. " Miller's seamanship
has «<aved him once more !" said Matheson, the Cromarty skip
per, as, quitting his place of outlook, he returned to his cabin ;
but the night fell tempestuous and wild, and no vestige of the
hapless sloop was ever after seen. It was supposed that, heavi-
ly laden, and laboring in a mountainous sea, she must have
started a plank and foundered. And thus perished — to bor
row from the simple eulogium of one of his seafaring friends
whom I heard long after condoling with my mother — " one
of the best sailors that ever sailed the Moray Frith."
The fatal tempest, as it had prevailed chiefly on the eastern
coasts of England and the south of Scotland, was represented
in the north by but a few bleak, sullen days, in which, with
little wind, a heavy ground-swell came rolling in coastwards
from the east, and sent up its surf high against the precipices
of the Northern Sutor. There were no forebodings in the mas-
ter's dwelling ; for his Peterhead letter — a brief but hopeful
missive — had been just received ; and my mother was sitting,
on the evening after, beside the household fire, plying the
cheerful needle, when the house-door, which had been left un-
fastened, fell open, and I was despatched from her side to shut
it. What follows must simply be regarded as the recollection,
though a very vivid one, of a boy who had completed his fifth
year only a month before. Day had not wholly disappeared,
but it was fast posting on to night, and a gray haze spread a
neutral tint of dimness over every more distant object, but left
the nearer ones comparatively distinct, when I saw at '^.e open
door, within less than a yard of my breast, as plainly as ever
I saw anything, a dissevered hand and arm stretched towards
me. Hand and arm were apparently those of a female ; they
bore a livid and sodden appearance ; and directly fronting me,
where the body ought to have been, there was only blank,
transparent space, through which I could see the dim forms of
the objects beyond. I was fearfully startled, and ran shriek-
ing to my mother, telling what I had seen ; and the housts-
girl, whom she next sent to shut the door, apparently aflected
24 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
by my terror, also returned frightened, and said that she too
had seen the woman's hand ; which, however, did not seem to
1)e the case. And finally, my mother going to the door, saw
nothing, though she appeared much impressed by the ex-
tremeness of my terror and the minuteness of my description.
I communicate the story as it lies fixed in my memory, with-
out attempting to explain it. Tlie supposed apparition may
'lave been merely a momentary affection of the eye, of the na-
ure described by Sir Walter Scott in his " Demonology," and
Sir David Brewster in his " Natural Magic." But if so, the
affection was one of which I experienced no after-return; and
its coincidence, in the case, with the probable time of my fa-
ther's death, seems at least curious.
There followed a dreary season, on which I still look back
in memory, as on a prospect which, sunshiny and sparkling
for a time, has become suddenly enveloped in cloud and storm.
I remember my mother's long fits of weeping, and the general
gloom of the widowed household ; and liow, after she had sent
my two little sisters to bed, — for such had been the increase of
the family, — and her hands were set free for the evening, she
used to sit up late at night, engaged as a seamstress, in making
pieces of dress for such of the neighbors as chose to employ
her. My father's new house lay untenanted at the time ; and
though his sloop had been partially insured, the broker with
whom he dealt was, it would seem, on the verge of insolvency,
and having raised objections to paying the money, it was long
ere any part of it cauld be realized. And so, with all my
mother's industry, the household would have fared but ill had
it not been for the assistance lent her l)y her two brothers, in-
dustrious, hard-working men, who lived with (heir aged parents
and an unmarried sister, about a bow-shot away, and now not
only advanced her money as she needed it, but also took her
second child, the. elder of my two sisters, a docile little gill of
three years, to live with them. 1 remember 1 used to go wan-
dering disconsolately about the harbor at this season, to ex-
amine the vessels which had come in during the night ; an<*
'iiat I oftener than once set my mother a crying by asking hei
OR, THE STOEY OF MY EDUCATIOK. 25
why the shipmasters who, when my father was alive, used to
stroke my head, and slip halfpence into my pockets, never now
took any notice of me, or gave me anything ? She well knew
that the shipmasters — not an ungenerous class of men — had
simply fliiled to recognize their old comrade's child ; but the
question was only too suggestive, notwithstanding, of both her
own loss and mine. I used, too, to climb, day after day, a
grassy protuberance of the old coast-line immediately behind
my mother's liouse, that commands a wide reach of the Mo-
ray Frith, and to look wistfully out, long after every one else
had ceased to hope, for the sloop with the two stripes of white
and the two square topsails. But months and years passed
by, and the white stripes and the square topsails I never saw.
The antecedents of my fither's life impressed me more
powerfully during my boyhood than at least aught I acquired
at school ; and I have submitted them to the reader at consid-
erable length, as not only curious in themselves, but as form-
hig a first chapter in the story of my education. And the fol-
lowing stanzas, written at a time when, in opening manhood,
I was sowing my wild oats in verse, may at least serve to show
that they continued to stand out in bold relief on my memo-
V' even after I had grown up.
"Hound Albyn'3 western shores, a lonely skiff
Is coasting slow ; — the adverse winds detain ;
And now she rounds secure the dreaded clitf,*
Whose horrid ridge beats back the northern main;
And now the whirling Pentland roars in vain
Her stern beneath, for fovoring breezes rise ;
The green isles fade, whitens tlie watery plain,
O'er the vexed waves with meteor speed she flies,
TUl Moray's distant hills o'er the blue waves arise.
Who guides Uiat vessel's wanderings o'er the wave?
A patient, hardy man, of thoughtful brow ;
Serene and warm of heart, and wisely brave,
And sagely skill'd, when burly breezes blow,
To press through angry waves the adventurous prow.
• Cape Wrath.
26 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
Age hath not quell'd his strength, nor quench'd desire
Of g*:nerous deed, nor chill'd his bosom's glow ;
Yet to a better world his hopes aspire.
Ah I this must sure be thee 1 All hail my honored Sir&(
Alas ! thy latest voyage draws near a close,
For Death broods voiceless in the darkening sky;
Subsides the breeze ; th' untroubled waves repose;
The sceiie is peaceful all. Can Death be uigh,
When thus, mute and unarmed, his vassals lie ?
Mark ye that cloud ! There toils the imprisoned gale;
E'en now it comes, with voice uplifted high ;
Resound the shores, harsh screams the rending sail,
And roars th' amazed wave, and bursts the thunder peal
Three days the tempest raged ; on Scotia's shore
Wreck piled on wreck, and corse o'er corse was thrown;
Her rugged clitfs were red with clotted gore ;
Her dark caves echoed back the expiring moan ;
And luckless maidens mourned thoir lovers gone ;
And friendless orphans cried in vain for bread ;
And widow'd mothers wandered forth alone; —
Restore, O wave, they cried, — restore our dead !
And then the breast they bar'd, and beat the unshelter'il botuL
Of thee, my Sire, what mortal tongue can tell I
No friendly bay thy shattered bark received ;
Ev'n when thy dust reposM in ocean cell.
Strange baseless tales of hope thy friends deceived ;
Which oft they doubted s:id, or gay believed.
At length, when deeper, darker waxed the gloom,
Hopeless they grieved, but 'twas in vain they grieved :
If Cod 1)0 truth, 'tis sure no voice of doom.
That bids the accepted soiU its robes of joy assume."
I had been sent, previous to my father's death, to a dame's
fichoul, where I was taught to pronounce my letters to such
effect in the old Scottish mode, that still, when I attempt spell-
ing a word aloud, which is not often, — for I find the process a
very perilous one, — the aa's and ee's, and vJis and vavs, leliira
upDi. me, and I have to translate them with no little hesita
tion, as I go along, into the more modish sounds. A knowl
edge of the letters themselves I had already acquired by study-
ing the sign-posts of the place, — rare works of art, that ex-
cited my utmost admiration, with jugs, and glasses, and bottles.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 27
and ships, and loaves of bread upon them, all of which could,
as the artists had intended, be actually recognized. During
my sixth year I spelt my way, under the dame, through the
Shorter Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New Testament,
and then entered upon her highest form, as a member of the
Bible class ; but all the while the process of acquiring learn-
ing had been a dark one, which I slowly mastered, in humble
confidence in the awful wisdom of the schoolmistress, not
Knowing whither it tended ; when at once my mind awoke t(
the meaning of the most delightful of all narratives, — th
story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made be-
fore ! I actually found out for myself, that the art of reading
is the art of finding stories in books ; and from that moment
reading became one of the most delightful of my amusements.
I began by getting into a corner on the dismissal of the school,
and there conning over to myself the new-found story of
Joseph ; nor did one perusal serve ; — the other Scripture stories
followed, — in especial, the story of Samson and the Philis-
tines, of David and Goliah, of the prophets Elijah and Elisha ;
and after these came the New Testament stories and parables.
Assisted by my uncles, too, I began to collect a library in a
box of birch-bark about nine inches square, which I found
quite large enough to contain a great many immortal works.
Jack the Giant-Killer, and JacK and the Bean-Stalk, and the
Yellow Dwarf, and Blue Beard, and Sinbad the Sailor, and
Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,
with several others of resembling character. Those intolerable
nuisances the useful-knowledge books had not yet arisen, like
tenebrious stars, on the educational horizon, to darken the
world, and shed their blighting influence on the opening in-
tellect of the " youthhood ;" and so, from my rudimental
Dooks, — books that made themselves truly such by their
thorough assimilation with the rudimental mind, — I passed
on, without being conscious of break or line of division, to
books on which the learned are content to write commentaries
and dissertations, but which I found to be quite as nice chil
dren's books as any of the others. Old Homer wrote adiw
•28 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
rably for 1 ttle folk, especially in the Odyssey ; a cop} of
which, — in the only true translation extant, — for, judging
from its surpassing interest, and the wrath of critics, such I
hold that of Pope to be, — I found in the house of a neighbor.
Next came the Iliad ; not, however, in a complete copy, but
represented by four of the six volumes of Bernard Lintot
With what power, and at how early an age, true genius im
presses ! I saw, even at this immature period, that no other
writer could cast a javelin with half the force of Homer. Tht
missiles went whizzing athwart his pages ; and I could see
the momentary gleam of the steel, ere it buried itself deep in
brass and bull-hide. I next succeeded in discovering for my-
self a child's book, of not less interest than even the Iliad,
which might, I w\as told, be read on Sabbaths, in a magnifi-
cent old edition of the " Pilgrim's Progress," printed on coarse
whity-brown paper, and charged with numerous wood-cuts,
each of which occupied an entire page, that, on principles of
economy, bore letter-press on the other side. And such de-
lightful prints as they were ! It must have been some such
volume that sat for its portrait to Wordsworth, and which he
so exquisitely describes as
"Profuse iu garniture of wooden cuts.
Strange and uncouth ; dire faces, fliiures dire,
Sliarp-knee'd, sliarp-elbow'd, and lean ancled too,
With long and ghastly shanks, — forms which, once seen.
Could never be forgotleu."
In process of time I had devoured, besides these genial works,
Robinson Crusoe, Gullivor's Travels, Ambrose on Angels the
"judgment chapter" in Howie's Scotch Worthies, Eyron'3
Narrative, and the adventures of Philip Quarll, with a good
nany other adventures and voyages, real and fictitious, part of
very miscellaneous collection of books made by my father.
t was a melancholy little library to which I had fallen heir
Most of the missing volumes had been with the master aboard
nis vessel when he perished. Of an early edition of Cook's
Voyages, all the volumes were now absent save the first ; and
a very tantalizing romance, in four volumes, — Mrs. P•^tclil^s
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 29
" Mysteries of Udolpho," — was represented by only the carliei
two. Small as the collection was, it contained some rare books,
— among the rest, a curious little volume, entitled " The Mir-
acles of Nature and Art," to which we find Dr. Johnson re-
ferring, in one of the dialogues chronicled l)y Boswell, as scarce
even in his day, and which had been published, he said, some
time in the seventeenth century by a bookseller whose shop
hung perched on Old London Bridge, between sky and water
It contained, too, the only copy I ever saw of the " Memoir.,
of a Protestant condemned to the Galleys of France for his Re-
ligion," — a work interesting from the circumstance that —
though it bore another name on its title-page — it had been
translated from the French for a few guineas by poor Gold-
smith, in his days of obscure literary drudgery, and exhibited
the peculiar excellencies of his style. The collection boasted,
besides, of a curious old book, illustrated by very uncouth
plates, that detailed the perils and suft'erings of an English
sailor who had spent the best years of his life as a slave in Mo
rocco. It had its volumes of sound theology, too, and of stiff
controversy, — Flavel's Works, and Henry's Commentary, and
Hutchinson on the Lesser Prophets, and a very old treatise on
the Revelations, with the title page away, and blind Jame-
son's volume on the Hierarchy, with first editions of Naphtali,
the Cloud of Witnesses, and the Hind Let Loose. But with
these solid authors I did not venture to grapple until long
after this time. Of the works of fact and incident which it
contained, those of the voyages were my especial favorites.
I perused with avidity the voyages of Anson, Drake, Raleigh,
Dampier, and Captain Woods Rogers ; and my mind became
so filled with conceptions of what was to be seen and done in
foreign parts, that I wished myself big enough to be a sailor,
that I might go and see coral islands and burning mountains,
and hunt wild beasts and fight battles.
1 have already made mention of my two maternal uncles ;
and referred, at least incidentally, to their mother, as the friend
and relative of my father's aged cousins, and, like her, a great-
grand-child of the last curate of Nigg. The curate's youngest
80 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
daughter had been courted and married by a somewhat wild
young farmer, of the clan Ross, but who was known, like the
celebrated Highland outlaw, from the color of his hair, as
Roy, or the red. Donald Roy was the best club-player in the
district ; and as King James's " Book of Sports" was not deem-
ed a very bad book in the semi-Celtic parish of Nigg, the
games in which Donald took part were usually played on the
Sabbath. About the time of the Revolution, however, he was
laid hold of by strong religious convictions, heralded, say the
traditions of the district, by events that approximated in cha-
racter to the supernatural ; and Donald became the subject of
a mighty change. There is a phase of the religious character,
which in the South of Scotland belongs to the first two ages of
Presbytery, but which disappeared ere its third establishment
under William of Nassau, that we find strikingly exemplified
in the Welches, Pedens, and Cargills of the times of the perse-
cution, and in which a sort of wild machinery of the supernatu-
ral was added to the commoner aspects of a living Christianity.
The men in whom it was exhibited were seers of visions and
dreamers of dreams ; and, standing on the very verge of the
natural world, they looked far into the world of spirits, and
had at times their strange glimpses of the distant and the fu-
ture. To the north of the Grampians, as if born out of due
Season, these seers pertain to a later age. They flourished
chiefly in the early part of the last century ; for it is a not un-
instructive fact, that in the religious history of Scotland, the
eighteenth century of the Highland and semi-Highland dis-
tricts of the north corresponds in many of its traits to the seven-
teenth century of the Saxon-peoplcd districts of the south ; and
Donald Roy was one of the most notable of the class. The
anecdotes regarding him which still float among the old recoi
lections of Ross-shire, if transferred to Peden or Welch, would
be found entirely in character with the strange stories that inlay
the biographies of these devoted men, and live so cnduringly
in the moiTiory of the Scottish people. Living, too, in an age
m which, like the Covenanters of a former century, the High-
lander still retained his weapons, and knew how to use them.
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 81
Donald had, like the Patons, Hackstons, and Balfours of the
Bonth, his dash of the warlike spirit ; and after assisting his
minister, previous to the rebellion of 1745, in what was known
as the great religious revival of Nigg, he had to assist him,
shortly after, in pursuing a band of armed Caterans, that, de-
scending from the hills, swept the parish of its cattle. And
coming up with the outlaws in the gorges of a wild Highland
len, no man of his party was more active in the fray that fol-
owed than old Donald, or exerted himself to better effect in
re-capturing the cattle. 1 need scarce add, that he was an at-
tached member of the Church of Scotland. But he v/as not
destined to die in her communion.
Donald's minister, John Balfour of Nigg, — a man whose
memory is still honored in the north, died in middle life, and
an unpopular presentee was obtruded on the people. The
policy of Robertson prevailed at the time ; Gillespie had been
deposed only four years previous, for refusing to assist in the
disputed settlement of Inverkeithing ; and four of the Nigg
Presbytery, overawed by the stringency of the precedent, re-
paired to the parish church to conduct the settlement of the
obnoxious licentiate, and introduce him to the parishoners.
They found, however, only an empty building ; and, notwith-
standing the ominous absence of the people, they were pro-
ceeding in shame and sorrow with their work, when a solitary
and venerable man, far advanced in life, appeared before them,
and, solemnly protesting against the utter mockery of such a
proceeding, impressively declared, " that if they settled a man
to the walls of that kirk, the blood of the parish of Nigg would
be required at their hands." Both Dr. Hetherington and Dr.
Merle D'Aubigne record the event ; but neither of these ao-
X)mplished historians seem to have been aware of the pecu-
liar emphasis which a scene that would have been striking in
any circumstances derived from the character of the protester,
—-old Donald Roy. The Presbytery, appalled, stopt short in
the middle of its work ; nor was it resumed till an after day,
when, at the command of the Moderate majority of the Church,
— a command not unaccompanied by significant reference to
32 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
the fate of Gillespie, — the forced settlement was consummated,
Donald, who carried the entire parish with him, continued to
cling by the National Church for nearly ten years after, much
befriended by one of the most eminent and influential divines
of the north, — Eraser of Alness, — the author of a volume on
Sanctification, still regarded as a standard work by Scottish
theologians. But as neither the people nor their leader ever
entered on any occasion the parish church, or heard the ob-
noxious presentee, the Presbytery at length refused to tolerate
the irregularity by extending to them, as before, the ordinary
Church privileges ; and so they were lost to the Establish-
ment, and became Seceders. And in the communion of that
portion of the Secession known as the Burghers, Donald died
several years after, at a patriarchal old age.
Among his other descendants, he had three grand-daughters,
who were lefl orphans at an early age by the death of both
their parents, and whom the old man, on their bereavement,
had brought to his dwelling to live with him. They had small
portions apiece, derived from his son-in-law, their father, which
did not grow smaller under the care of Donald ; and as each
of the tliree was married in succession out of his family, he
added to all his other kindnesses the gift of a gold ring. They
had been brought up under his eye sound in the faith ; and
Donald's ring had, in each case, a mystic meaning ; — they were
to regard it, he told them, as the wedding ring of their other
Husband, the Head of the Church, and to be faithful spouses
to Ilim in their several households. Nor did the injunction,
nor the significant symbol with which it was accompanied,
prove idle in the end. They all In'ought the savor of sincerf
piety into their families. The grand-daughter, with whom
the writer was more directly connected, had been married to
an honest and industrious but somewhat gay young trades*
man, but she proved, under God, the means of his conversion •
and their children, of whom eight grew up to be men and
women, were reared in decent frugality, aud tlie exeicise of
honest principles carefully instilled. Her husband's family
nad, like that of my paternal ancestors, been a seafiiring one.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 88
Ilis fatlier, after serving on shipboard, had passed the latter
part of his life as one of the armed boatmen that, during the
last century, guarded the coasts in behalf of the revenue ; and
his only brother, the boatman's son, an adventurous young
sailor, had engaged in Admiral Vernon's unfortunate expedi-
tion, and left his bones under the walls of Carthagena ; but he
himself pursued the peaceful occupation of a shoemaker, and
in carrying on his trade, usually employed a few journeymen.
and kept a few apprentices, hi course of time, the elder
daughters of the family married and got households of their
own ; but the two sons, my uncles, remained under the roof
of their parents, and at the time when my flxther perished they
were both in middle life ; and, deeming themselves called on
to take his place in the work of instruction and discipline, 1
owed to them much more of my real education than to any of
the teachers whose schools I afterwards attended. They botl
bore a marked individuality of character, and were much the
reverse of common-place or vulgar men.
My elder uncle, James, added to a clear head and much
native sagacity, a singularly retentive memory, and great thirst
of information. He was a harness-maker, and wrought for
the farmers of an extensive district of country ; and as he
never engaged either journeymen or apprentice, but executed
all his work with his own hands, his hours of labor, save that
he indulged in a brief pause as the twilight came on, and took
a mile's walk or so, were usually protracted from six o'clock
in the morning till ten at night. Such incessant occupa
tion, of course, left him little time for reading ; but he oftei
found some one to read beside him d\iring the day ; and ir
the winter evenings, his portable bench used to be brought
from his shop at the other end of the dwelling, into the fomily
sitting-room, and placed beside the circle round the hearth,
where his brother Alexander, my younger uncle, whose occu
pation left his evenings free, would read aloud from some inter
esting volume for the general benefit, — placing himself al
ways at the opposite side of the bench, so as to share in the
light of the worker. Occasionally the family circle would be
84 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
widened by the accession of from two to three intellip'ent
neighbors, who would drop in to listen ; and then the book,
after a space, would be laid aside, in order that its contents
might be discussed in conversation. In the summer months,
Uncle James always spent some time in the country, in look-
ing after and keeping in repair the harness of the farmers for
whom he wrought ; and during his journeys and twilight walks
on these occasions, there was not an old castle, or hill-fort, or
ancient encampment, or antique ecclesiastical edifice, within
tv.enty miles of the town, which he had not visited and ex
amined over and over again. lie \vas a keen, local antiquary ;
knew a good deal about the architectural styles of the various
ages, at a time when these subjects were little studied or
known, and possessed more traditionar}' lore, picked up chiefly
in his country journeys, than any man I ever knew. What
he once heard he never forgot ; and the knowledge which he
had acquired he could communicate pleasingly and succinctly,
in a style which, had he been a writer of books, instead of
merely a reader of them, would have had the merit of being
clear and terse, and more laden with meaning than words.
From his reputation for sagacity, his advice used to be much
sought after by the neighbors in every little difficulty that
came their way ; and the counsel given was alwa^'s shrewd and
honest. I never knew a man more entirely just in his deaU
ings than Uncle James, or who regarded every species of mean-
ness with a more thorough contempt. I soon learned to bring
my story-books to his workshop, and became, in a small way,
one of his readers — greatly more, however, as may be suppos-
ed, on my own account tiian his. My bof)ks were not yet of
the kind which he would have chosen for himself; but he took
an interest in nnj interest; and his explanations of all the han
words saved me the trouble of turning over a dictionary. An
when tired of reading, I never failed to find rare delight in big
ane('<lotes and old-world stories, many of wliieli were not to be
(bund in books, and all of which, without npparent effort on
his own part, he could render singularly amusing. Of these
narratives, the larger part died with him ; but a portion of
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 35
them I succeeded in preserving in a little traditionary work
published a few years after his death. I was much a favorite
with Uncle James — even more, I am disposed to think, on
my father's account, than on that of his sister, my mother.
My father and he had been close friends for years ; and in the
vigorous and energetic sailor, he had found his beau ideal of
a man.
My Uncle Alexander was of a different cast from his brother
b<; th in intellect and temperament ; but he was characterized
oy the same strict integrity ; and his religious feelings, though
quiet and unobtrusive, were perhaps more deep. James was
somewhat of a humorist, and fond of a good joke. Alexan-
der was grave and serious ; and never, save on one solitary
occasion, did I know him even attempt a jest. On hearing
an intelligent but somewhat eccentric neighbor observe that
" all flesh is grass," in a strictly physical sense, seeing that all
the flesh of the herbiverous animals is elaborated from vege-
tation, and all the flesh of the carnivorous animals from that
of the herbiverous ones, Uncle Sandy remarked that, knowing,
as he did, the pisciverous habits of the Cromarty folk, he
should surely make an exception in his generalization, by ad-
mitting that in at least one village, " all flesh is fish." My
uncle had acquired the trade of the cartwright, and was em-
ployed in a workshop at Glasgow at the time the first war of
the French Revolution broke out ; when, moved by some such
spirit as possessed his uncle — the victim of Admiral Vernon's
unlucky expedition — or of old Donald Roy, when he buckled
himself to his Highland broadsword, and set out in pursuit of
the Caterans — he entered the navy. And during the event-
ful period which intervened between the commencement of
the war and the peace of 1802, there was little either suflered
or achieved by his countrymen in which he had not a share.
He sailed with Nelson ; witnessed the mutiny at the Non- ;
fought under Admiral Duncan at Camperdown, and under Sir
John Borlase Warren off Loch Swilly ; assisted in capturing
the Generoux and Guillaum Tell, two French ships of the line;
wras one of the seamen who, in the Egyptian expedition, were
3
36 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
drafted out of Lord Keith's fleet to supply the lack of artillery
men in the army of Sir Ralph Abercromby ; had a share in
the dangers and glory of the lauding in Egypt ; and fought in
the battle of the loth March, and in that which deprived our
country of one of her most popular generals. He served, too,
at the siege of Alexandria. And then, as he succeeded in pro-
Buring his discharge during the short peace of 1802, he re-
turned home with a small sum of hardly-earned prize money,
neartily sick of war and bloodshed. I was asked, not long
ago, by one of his few surviving comrades, whether my uncle
had ever told me that their gun was the first landed in Egj pt,
and the first dragged up the sand-bank immediately over the
beach, and how hot it grew under their hands, as, with a rapid-
ity unsurpassed, along the line they poured out in thick suc-
cession its iron discharges upon the enemy. I had to reply
in the negative. All my uncle's narratives were narratives
of what he had seen — not of what he had done ; and, when
perusing, late in life, one of his fovorite works — " Dr. Keith's
Signs of the Times" — he came to the chapter in which that
excellent writer describes the time of hot naval warfare which
immediately followed the breaking out of war, as the period in
which the second vial was poured out on the sea, and in which
the waters '• became as the blood of a dead man, so that every
living soul died in the sea," I saw him bend his head in rever-
ence as he remarked, " Prophecy, I find, gives to all oui
glories but a single verse, and it is a verse of judgment."
Uncle Sandy, however, did not urge the peace principles which
he had acquired amid scenes of death and carnage, into any
extravagant consequences; and on the breaking out, in 1803,
of the second war of the llevolution, when Napole^" threatened
invasion from Brest to Boulogne, he at once shouldered his
musket as a volunteer. lie had not his brother's fluency of
Bpeech ; but his nari'atives of what he had seen wore singu-
larly truthful and graphic; and his descriptions of foreign
plants and animals, and of the aspect of the distant regions
wliich he had visited, had till the careful minuteness of thoso
of a Dampier. IIo had a decided turn for natural histc-ry.
OB, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 37
My collection contains a niurex, not unfrequent in the Medi-
terranean, which he found time enough to transfer, during
the heat of the landing in Egypt, from the beach to his pock-
et ; and the first ammonite I ever saw was a specimen, which
I still retain, that he brought home with him from one of the
liasic deposits of England.
Early on the Sabbath evenings I used regularly to attend
at ray uncles' with two of my maternal cousins, boys of about
my own age, and latterly with my two sisters, to be cate-
ehised, first on the Shorter Catechism, and then on the Moth-
er's Catechism of Willison. On Willison my uncles always
cross-examined us, to make sure that we understood the short
and simple questions ; but, apparently regarding the questions
of the Shorter Catechism as seed sown for a future day, they
were content with having them well fixed in our memories.
There was a Sabbath class taught in the parish church at the
time by one of the elders ; but Sabbath schools my uncles
regarded as merely compensatory institutions, highly credit-
able to the teachers, but very discreditable indeed to the pa-
rents and relatives of the taught ; and so they of course never
thought of sending us there. Later in the evening, after a
short twilight walk, for wdiich the sedentary occupation of ray
Uncle Jaraes forraed an apology, but in which ray Uncle Alex-
ander always shared, and which usually led them into solitary
woods, or along an unfrequented sea-shore, some of the old
divines were read ; and I used to take my place in the circle,
though, I am afraid, not to very much advantage. I occasion-
ally caught a fact, or had ray attention arrested for a raoraent
by a siniile or raetaphor ; but the trains of close argumeut,
uid the passages of dreary " application," were always lost.
38 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEBS :
CHAPTER III.
" At AVallace name what Scottish blood
But boils up ill a spriiig-lide Hood!
Oft have our fearless fathers strode
By Wallace side,
Still pressing onward, red wat shod,
Or glorious died."
Burns.
I FIRST became thoroughly a Scot some time in my tenth year;
and the consciousness of country has remained tolerably strong
within me ever since. My Uncle James had procured for me
from a neighbor the loan of a common stall-edition of Blind
Harry's " Wallace," as modernized by Hamilton ; but after
reading the first chapter, — a piece of dull genealogy, broken
into very rude rhyme, — I tossed the volume aside as imintor-
esting ; and only resumed it at the re«|uest of my uncle, who
urged that, simply for Ms amusement and gratification, I should
read some three or four chapters more. Accordingly, Ihc three
or four chapters more I did road ; — I read "how Wallace kill-
ed young Selbic the Constable's son ;" " how Wallace fished
in Irvine Water ;" and " how Wallace killed the Churl with hia
own stafl* in Ayr ;" and then Uncle James told mo, in the
quiet way in which he used to make a joke tell, that the book
seemed to be rather a rough sort of production, filled with
accounts of quarrels and bloodsliod, and that I might road no
more of it unless I felt inclined. IJut I now did feel inclined
very strongly, and read on with increasing astonishment and
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 39
delight. I was intoxicated with the fiery narratives of the
blind minstrel, — with his fierce breathings of hot, intolerant
patriotism, and his stories of astonishing prowess ; and, glory-
ing in being a Scot, and the countryman of Wallace and the
Graham, I longed for a war with the Southron, that the wrongs
and sufferings of these noble heroes might yet be avenged
"Vll I had previously heard and read of the marvels of foreign
parts, or the glories of modern battles, seemed tame and com-
"nonplace compared with the incidents in the life of Wallace
and I never after vexed my mother by wishing myself big
enough to be a sailor. My Uncle Sandy, who had some taste
for the refinements of poetry, would fain have led me on from
the exploits of Wallace to the " Life of the Bruce," which, in
the form of a not very vigorous imitation of Dryden's " Vir-
gil," by one Harvey, was bound up in the same volume, and
which my uncle deemed the better-written life of the two.
And so far as the mere amenities of style were concerned,
he was, I dare say, right. But I could not agree with him.
Harvey was by much too fine and too learned for me ; and it
was not until some years after, when I was fortunate enough
to pick up one of the later editions of Barbour's " Bruce," that
the Hero-King of Scotland assumed his right place in my
mind beside its Hero-Guardian. There are stages of develop-
ment in the immature youth of individuals, that seem to cor-
respond with stages of development in the immature youth of
nations ; and the recollections of this early time enable me, in
some measure, to understand how it was that, for hundreds
of years. Blind Harry's " Wallace," with its rude and naked
narrative, and its exaggerated incident, should have been, ao-
3ording to Lord Hailes, the Bible of the Scotch people.
I quitted the dame's school at the end of the fii'st twehx*.
month, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life, —
the art of holding converse with books ; and was transferred
straightforth to the grammar school of the parish, at which
there attended at the time about a hundred and twenty boys,
with a class of about thirty individuals more, much looked
d{>wn upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the
40 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
counting, seeing that it consisted of only lassies. And here^
too, the early individual development seems nicely correspond-
ent with an early national one. In his depreciatory estimate
of contemporary woman, the boy is always a true savage. The
old parish school of the place had been nobly situated in a snug
comer, between the parish churchyard and a thick wood ; and
from the interesting centre which it formed, the boys, when
tired of making dragon-horses of the erect head-stones, or of
leaping along the flat-laid memorials, from end to end of the
graveyard, " without touching grass," could repair to the tall
er trees, and rise in the world by climbing among them. As,
however, they used to encroach, on these latter occasions, upon
the laird's pleasure-grounds, the school had been removed ere
my time to the sea-shore ; where, though there were neither
tombstones nor trees, there were some balancing advantages,
of a kind which, perhaps, only boys of the old school could
have adequately appreciated. As the school-windows fronted
the opening of the Frith, not a vessel could enter the harbor
that we did not see ; and, improving through our opportuni-
ties, there was perhaps no educational institution in the king-
dom in which all sorts of barks and carvels, from the fishing
yawl to the frigate, could be more correctly drawn on the
slate, or where any defect in bulk or rigging, in some fliulty
delineation, was surer of being more justly and imsparingly
criticised. Further, the town, which drove a great trade in
salted pork at the time, had a killiiig-iilace not thirty yards
from the school-door, where from eighty to a hundred pigs
used sometimes to die for the general good in a single day ; and
it was a great matter to hear, at occasional intervals, the roar
of death outside rising high over tiie general murmur within ;
or to be told by some comrade, returned from his live miiniles'
leave of absence, that a hero of a ])ig had taken three blows of
the hatchet ere it fell, and that even after its subjection to the
sticking process, it had got hold of Jock Keddie's li.nid in its
mouth, and almost smashed his thumb. We learned, loo, to
know, from our signal opportunities of observation, not only
1 good deal about ]>ig anatomy, — especially ai>ont the detached
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 41
edible parts of the animal, such as the spleen and the pancreas,
and at least one other very palatable viscus besides, — but be
came knowing also about the take and the curing of herrings.
All the herring-bo;its during the fishing season passed our win
dows on their homeward way to the harbor ; and, from their
depth in the water, we became skilful enough to predicate the
number of crans aboard of each with wonderful judgment and
correctness. In days of good general fishings, too, when the
curing-yards proved too small to accommodate the quantifies
brought ashore, the fish used to be laid in glittermg heaps op-
posite the school-house door ; and an exciting scene, that com-
bined the bustle of the workshop with the confusion of the
crowded fair, would straightway spring up within twenty yards
of the farms at which we sat, greatly to our enjoyment, and,
of course, not a little to our instruction. We could see, sim-
ply by peering over book or slate, the curers going about rous-
ing their fish with salt, to counteract the effects of the dog-day
sun ; bevies of young women employed as gutters, and hor-
ridly incarnadined with blood and viscera, squatting around
the heaps, knife in hand, and plying with busy fingers their
well-paid labors, at the rate of a sixpence per hour ; relays
of heavily-laden fish-wives bringing ever and anon fresh heaps
of herrings in their creels ; and outside of all, the coopers
hammering as if for life and death, — now tightening hoops,
and now slackening them, and anon caulking with bullrush
the leaky seems. It is not every grammar school in which
such lessons are taught as those, in which all were initiated,
and in which all became in some degree accomplished, in the
grammar school of Cromarty !
The building in which w^e met was a low, long, straw
thatched cottage, open from gable to gable, with a mud floor
below, and an unlathed roof above ; and stretching along the
naked rafters, which, when the master chanced to be absent
for a few minutes, gave noble exercise in climbing, there used
frequently to lie a helm, or oar, or boathook, or even a foresail,
— the spoil of some hapless peat-boat from the opposite side
of the Frith. The Highland boatmen of Ross had carried on
42 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
a trade it peats for ages with the Saxons of the town ; and aa
every boat owed a long-derived perquisite of twenty peats to
the grammar school, and as payment was at times foolishly
refused, the party of boys commissioned by the master to ex-
act it almost always succeeded, either by force or stratagem, in
securing and bringing along with them, in behalf of the insti-
tution, some spar, or sail, or piece of rigging, which, until re-
deemed by special treaty, and the payment of the peats, was
stowed up over the rafters. These peat-exhibitions, which
were intensely popular in the school, gave noble exercise tc
the faculties. It was always a great matter to see, just as the
sehool met, some observant boy appear, cap in hand, before
the master, and intimate the fact of an arrival at the shore, by
the simple words, " Peat-boat, Sir." The master would then
proceed to name a party, more or less numerous, according to
the exigency ; but it seemed to be matter of pretty correct cal-
culation that, in the cases in which the peat claim was dis-
puted, it required about twenty boys to bring home the twenty
peats, or, lacking these, the compensatory sail or spar. Tliere
were certam ill-conditioned boatmen who almost always re-
sisted, and who delighted to tell us — invariably, too, in very
bad English — that our perquisite was properly the hangman's
perquisite, made over to us because we were like him ; not
Beeing — blockheads that they were ! — that the very admission
established in full the rectitude of our claim, and gave to us,
amid our dire perils and faithful contendings, the strengthen-
ing consciousness of a just quarrel. In dealing with these re-
cusants, we used ordinarily to divide our forces into two bodies,
the larger portion of the |»arty fdling their ])ockets with stones,
and ranging tluimselves on some point of vantage, such as the
pier-head; and the smaller stealing down as near the boat as
possible, and mixing themselves up with the purchasei's of the
peats. "VVe then, after due warning given, opened fire upon
the boatmen ; and, when the pebbles were h<)p|)ing about them
like hailstones, the boys below commonly suecei-tled in se-
curing, under cover of the fire, the desired boathook or oar.
And such were the ordinary circumstances and details of this
OR, THE STORY OF IVHT EDUCATION. 4h
piece of Spartan education ; of which a townsman has told mt
he was strongly reminded when boarding, on one occasion,
under cover of a well-sustained discharge of musketry, the
vessel of an enemy that had been stranded on the shores of
Berbice.
The parish schoolmaster was a scholar and an honest man,
and if a boy really wished to learn, he certainly could teach
him. He had attended the classes at Aberdeen duiing the
same sessions as the late Dr. Mearns, and in mathematics and
the languages had disputed the prize with the Doctor ; but he
had failed to get on equally well in the world ; and now, in
middle life, though a licentiate of the Church, he had settled
down to be what he subsequently remained, — the teacher of a
parish school. There were usually a few grown-up lads under
his tuition, — careful sailors, that had staid ashore during the
winter quarter to study navigation as a science, — or tall fel
lows happy in the patronage of the great, who, in the hope of
being made excisemen, had come to school to be initiated in
the mysteries of gauging, — or grown young men, who, on
second thoughts, and somewhat late in the day, had recog
nized the Church as their proper vocation ; and these used to
speak of the master's acquirements and teaching ability in the
very highest terms. He himself, too, could appeal to the fact
that no teacher in the north had ever sent more students to
college, and that his better scholars almost always got on well
m life. But then, ov the other hand, the pupils who wished to
do nothing, — a description of individuals that comprised fully
two-thirds of all the younger ones, — were not required to do
much more than they wished ; and parents and guardians
were loud in their complaints that he was no suitable school-
master for them-, though the boys themselves usually thought
him quite suitable enough.
He was in the habit of advising the parents or relations of
those he deemed his clever lads, to give them a classical edu
cation ; and meeting one day with Uncle James, he urged that
I should be put on Latin. I was a great reader, he said ; and
he found that when I missed a word in my English tasks, 1
44 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
almost always substituted a synonym in the place of it. Aui
no, as UnoJe James had arrived, on data of his own, at a simi
lar conclusion, I was transferred from the English to the Latin
form, and, with four other boys, fairly entered on the " Rudi-
ments." I labored with tolerable diligence for a day or two ;
but there was no one to tell me what the rules meant, or
whether they really meant anything ; and when I got on aa
far as penna^ a pen, and saw how the changes were rung on
one poor word, that did not seem to be of more importance
in the old language than in the modern one, I began miser
ably to flag, and to long for my English reading, with its
nice amusing stories, and its picture-like descriptions. The
Rudiments was by far the dullest book I had ever seen. It
embodied no thought that I could perceive, — it certainly con-
tained no narrative, — it was a perfect contrast to not only
the " Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace," but to
even the Voyages of Cook and Anson. None of my class-fel-
lows were by any means bright ; — they had been all set on
Latin without advice of the master; and yet, when he learn-
ed, which he soon did, to distinguish and call us up to our
tasks by the name of the " heavy class," I was, in most in-
stances, to be found at its nether end. Shortly after, however,
when we got a little farther on. it was seen that I had a de-
cided turn for translation. The master, good simple man that
he was, always read to us in English, as the school met, the
piece of Latin given us as our task for the day ; and as my
memory was strong enough to carry away the whole transla-
tion in its order, I used to give him back in the evening, word
for word, his own rendering, which satisfied him on most oc-
casions tolerably well. There were none of lis much looked
af^er ; and I soon learned to bring books of ainusenioiit to the
school with me, which, amid the Babel confusion of the place
I contrived to read undetected. Some of them, save in tht
language in which they were written, were almost identical
witli the books jiroper to the j)lace. 1 remember perusing }>y
stealtti in this way, Dryden's " Virgil," and the " Ovid" of
r)-"yden and his friends ; Mhile Ovid's own " Ovid," and Vir
OH, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 46
gil's own " Virgil-" lay beside me, sealed up in the fine old
tongue, which 1 was thus throwing away my only chance of
acquiring.
One morning, having the master's English rendering of the
day's task well fixed in my memory, and no book of amuse-
ment to read, I began gossiping with my nearest class-fellow,
a very tall boy, who ultimately shot up into a lad of six feet
four, and who on most occasions sat beside me, as lowest in
the form save one. I told him about the tall Wallace and his
exploits ; and so effectually succeeded in awakening his curios
ity, that I had to communicate to him, from beginning to end,
every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel. My story-
telling vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found, no
stopping ill my course. I had to tell all the stories I had ever
heard or read ; — all my father's adventures, so far as I knew
them, and all my Uncle Sandy"s, — with the story of Gulliver,
and Philip Quarll,and Robinson Crusoe, — of Sinbad,and Ulys-
ses, and Mrs. Ratclifie's heroine Emily, with, of course, the
love-passages left out ; and at length, after weeks and months
of narrative, I found my available stock of acquired fact and
fiction fairly exhausted. The demand on the part of my class
fellows was, however, as great and urgent as ever ; and, set-
ting myself, in the extremity of the case, to try my ability of
original production, I began to dole out to them by the houi
and the diet, long extempore biographies, which proved won»
derfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually war-
riors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers
in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe ; and they had not
unfrequenfcly to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abound-
ing in trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho.
And finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts,
and frightful encounters with magicians and savages, they al-
most invariably succeeded in disentombing hidden treasures to
an enormous amount, or in laying open gold mines, and then
passed a luxurious old age, like that of Sinbad the Sailor, at
peace with all mankind, in the midst of confectionary and
fruits. The master had a tolerably correct notion of what was
46 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
going on in the " heavy class ;" — the stretched-out necks, and
the heads clustered together, always told their own special
story when I was engaged in telling mine ; but, without hating
the child, he spared the rod, and simply did what he some-
times allowed himself to do, — bestowed a nickname uj)on me.
I was the Sennachie, he said ; and as the Sennachie I might
have been known so long as I remained under his charge, had
it not been that, priding himself upon his Gaelic, he used to
bestow upon the word the full Celtic pronunciation, which,
agreeing but ill with the Teutonic mouths of my school-fel
lows, militated against its use ; and so the name failed to take.
With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort of favorite
with the master ; and, when at the general English lesson, he
used to address to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no
other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground common to
us, on which the others had not entered. " That, Sir," he has
said, after the class had just perused, in the school collection,
a Tatler, or Speciator, — " That, Sir, is a good paper ; — it's an
Addison ;" or, " That's one of Steele's, Sir ;" and on finding in
my copy-book on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes,
which I had headed " Poem on Care," he brought it to his
desk, and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and
with his closed penknife, which served as a pointer, in the one
hand, and the copy-book brought down to the level of my
eyes in the other, began his criticism. " That's bad grammar,
Sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines ; "and
here's an ill-spelt word ; and there's another ; and you have
not at all attended to the punctuation ; — but the general sense
of the piece is good, — very good, indeed, Sir." And then he
added, with a grim smile, " Care, Sir, is, I dare say, as you re
mark, a very bad thing ; but you may safely bestow a littl
more of it on your spelling and your grammar."
The school, like almost all the other grammar-schools of the
period in Scotland, had its yearly cock-fight, preceded l)y two
holidays and a half, during wliich the boys occupied them
selves in collecting and bringing up their cocks. And such
ilways was the array of fighting birds mustered on the occa-
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 47
sion, that the day of the festival, from morning till night, used
to be spent in fighting out the battle. For weeks after it had
passed, the school-floor would continue to retain its deeply-
stained blotches of blood, and the boys would be full of ex-
citing narratives regarding the glories of gallant birds, who had
continued to fight until both their eyes had been picked out, or
who, in the moment of victory, had dropped dead in the middle
of the cock-pit. The yearly fight was the relic of a barbarous
age ; and, in at least one of its provisions, there seemed evi-
dence that it was that of an intolerant age also ; every pupil
at school, without exception, had his name entered on the
subscription-list as a cock-fighter, and was obliged to pay the
master at the rate of twopence per head, ostensibly for leave
to bring his birds to the pit ; but, amid the growing humani-
ties of a better time, though the twopence continued to be ex-
acted, it was no longer imperative to bring the birds ; and,
availing myself of the liberty, I never brought any. Nor, save
for a few minutes, on two several occasions, did I ever attend
the fight. Had ihe combat been one among the boys them-
selves, I would readily enough have done my part, by meeting
with any opponent of my years and standing ; but I could not
bear to look at the bleeding birds. And so I continued to pay
my yearly sixpence, as a holder of three cocks, — the lowest
sum deemed in any degree genteel, — but remained simply a
fictitious or paper cock-fighter, and contributed in no degree
to the success of the head-stock or leader, to whose party, in
the general division of the school, it was my lot to fall.
Neither, I must add, did I learn to take an interest in the
sacrificial orgies of the adjoining slaughter-house. A few of
the chosen schoolboys were permitted by the killers to exer
cise at times the privilege of knocking down a pig, and even,
on rare occasions, to essay the sticking ; but I turned with
horror from both processes ; and if I drew near at all, it was
only when some animal, scraped and cleaned, and suspended
from the beam, was in the course of being laid open by tha
butcher's knife, that I might mark the forms of the viscera
and the positions which they occupied. To my dislike of th.
48 MY SCHOOLS AISTD SCHOOLMASTERS'
annual cock-fight my uncles must have contributed. The
were loud in their denunciation of the enormity ; and on ou
occasion, when a neighljor was unlucky enough to remark
in extenuation, that the practice had been handed down t'
us by pious and excellent men, who seemed to see nothinj
wrong in it, I saw their habitual respect for the old divine
give way, for at least a moment. Uncle Sandy hesitatci
mder apparent excitement; but quick and fiery as light
ing, Uncle James came to his rescue. " Yes, excelleni
nen !" said my uncle, " but the excellent men of a rude and
-barbarous age ; and, in some parts of their character, tinged
by its barbarity. For the cock-fight which these excellent
men have bequeathed to us they ought to have been sent
to Bridewell for a week, and fed upon bread and water.'
Uncle James was, no doubt, over hasty, and felt so a minute
after ; but the practice of fixing the foundation of ethics on
a The]j themselves did it, much after the manner in which the
Schoolmen fixed the foundations of their nonsensical philo-
sophy on a " He himself said it,'''' is a practice which, though
not yet exploded in even very pure Churches, is always pro-
voking, and not quite free from peril to the worthies, whether
dead or alive, in whose precedents the moral right is made to
rest. In the class of minds represented among the people by
that of Uncle James, for instance, it would lie much easier to
bring down even the old divines, than to bring up cock-fight-
ing.
My native town had possessed, for at least an age or two
previous to that of my boyhood, its moiety of intelligent, book-
consulting mechanics and tradesfolk ; and as my acquaintance
gradually extended among their representatives and descend-
ants, I was permitted to rummage, in the pursuit of knowl-
edge, delighlfiil old chests and cupboards, filled with tattered
and dusty volumes. The moiety of my father's lilirary which
remained to me consisted of about sixty several works ; my
uncles possessed about a hundred and fifty more ; and there
was a literary cabinetnuiker m the neighborhood, who had
once actually composed a poem of thirty lines on the Hill of
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 49
Ct^marty, whose collection of books, chiefly poetical, amount,
ed to from about eighty to a hundred. I used to be often at
nights in the worlvshop of the cabinetmaker, and was some-
times privileged to hear him repeat his poem. There was not
much admiration of poets or poetry in the place ; and my
praise, though that of a very young critic, had always the
double merit of being both ample and sincere. I knew the
verv rocks and trees which his description embraced — had
oeard the birds to which he referred, and seen the flowers ;
and as the hill had been of old a frequent scene of execu-
tions, and had borne the gallows of the sheriffdom on its crest,
nothing could be more definite than the grave reference, in his
opening line, to
"The verdant rising of the Onlluw-biW."
And so I thought a very great deal of his poem, and what I
thought I said ; and he, on the other hand, evidently regarded
me as a lad of extraordinary taste and discernment for my
years. There was another mechanic in the neighborhood, —
a house-carpenter, who, though not a poet, was deeply read
in books of all kinds, from the plays of Farquhar to the ser-
mons of Flavel ; and as both his father and grandfather, — the
latter, by the way, a Porteous-mob man, and the former a per-
sonal friend of poor Fergusson, the poet, — had also been read-
ers and collectors of books, he possessed a whole pressful of
tattered, hard-working volumes, some of them very curious
ones ; and to me he liberally extended, what literary men
always value, " the ftdl freedom of the press." But of all my
occasional benefactors in this way, by far the greatest was
poor old Francic, the retired clerk and supercargo.
Francie was naturally a man of fair talent and active curios
ity. Nor was he by any means deficient in acquirement.
He wrote and figured well, and knew a good deal about a
Jeast the theory of business ; and when articled in eai'ly life
to a Cromarty merchant and shopkeeper, it was with tolerably
fair prospects of getting on in the world. He had, however
h certa'Q infirmity of brain which rendered both talent and
50 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
acquirement of but little avail, and that began to manifest
itself very early. While yet an apprentice, on ascertaining
that the way was clear, he used, though grown a tall lad, to bolt
out from behind the counter into the middle of a green directly
opposite, and there, joining in the sports of some group of
youngsters, which the place rarely wanted, he would play out
half a game at marbles, or honey -pots, or hy-spy, and when he
saw his master or a customer approaching, bolt back again
The thing was not deemed seemly ; but Francie, when spoken
to on the subject, could speak as sensibly as any young person
of his years. He needed relaxation, he used to say, though
he never suffered it to interfere with his proper business ; and
where was safer relaxation to be found than among innocent
children ? This, of course, was eminently rational and virtu-
ous. And so, when his term of apprenticeship had expired,
Francie was despatched, not without hope of success, to New-
foundland, — where he had relations extensively engaged in the
fishing trade, — to serve as one of their clerks. He was found
to be a competent clerk ; but unluckily there was but little
known of the interior of the island at the time, and some of
the places most distant from St. John's, such as the Bay and
River of Exploits, bore tempting names ; and so, after Francie
had made many inquiries of the older inhabitants regarding
what was to be seen amid the scraggy brushwood and broken
rocks of the inner country, a morning came in which he was
reported missing at the office ; and little else could be learned
respecting him, than that at early dawn he had been seen setting
out for the woods, provided with staff' and knapsack. He
returned in about a week, worn out and half-starved. He had
not been so successful as lie had anticijiated, he said, in pro-
viding himself by the way with food, and so he had to turn
back ere he could reach the point on which lie had previously
letermined ; but he was sure he would be happier in his next
journey, it was palpably unsafe to suffer him to remain ex-
posed to the temptation of an unexplori-d country ; and as his
friend^; and superiors at St. John's had just laden a vessel with
fish for the taLan market during Lent, Francie was despatch
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 51
ed with her as supercargo, to look after the sales, m a land of
which every footbreadth had been familiar to men for thou-
sands of years, and in which it was supposed he would have
no inducement to wander. Francie, however, had read much
about Italy ; and finding, on landing at Leghorn, that he was
within a short distance of Pisa, he left ship and cargo to take
care of themselves, and set out on foot to see the famous hang-
ing tower, and the great marble cathedral. And tower and
cathedral he did see : but it was meanwhile found that he was
not quite suited for a supercargo, and he had shortly after to
return to Scotland, where his friends succeeded in establishing
him in the capacity of clerk and overseer upon a small prop-
erty in Forfiirshire, which was farmed by the proprietor on
what was then the newly-introduced modern system. He was
acquainted, however, with the classical description of Glammis
Castle, in the letters of the poet Gray ; and after visiting the
castle, he set out to examine the ancient encampment at Ar-
doch, — the Lindum of the Romans. Finally, all hopes of
getting him settled at a distance being given up by his friends,
he had to fall back upon Cromarty, where he was yet once
more appointed to a clerkship. The establishment with which
he was now connected was a large hempen manufactory ; and
it was his chief employment to register the quantities of hemp
given out to the spinners, and the number of hanks of yarn
into which they had converted it, when given in. He soon,
however, began to take long walks ; and the old women, with
their yarn, would be often found accumulated, ere his return,
by tens and dozens at the office-door. At length, after taking
a very long walk indeed, for it stretched from near the open-
ing to the head of the Cromarty Frith, a distance of about
twenty miles, and included in its survey the antique tower of
KinkcU and the old Castle of Craighouse, he was relieved froni
the duties of his clerkship, and left to pursue his researches
undisturbed, on a small annuity, the gift of his friends. He
was considerably advanced in life ere I knew him, profoundly
grave, and very taciturn, and, though he never discussed poli-
tics, a mighty reader of the newspapers. " Oh ' this is ter-
52 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
rible," I have heard him exclaim, when on one occasion >»
snow storm had blocked up both the coast and the Highland
roads for a week together, and arrested the northward course
of the mals, — "It is terrible to be left in utter ignorance of
the public business of the country !"
Francie, whom every one called Mr. , to his face, and
always Francie when his back was turned, chiefly because i.
was known that he was punctilious on the point, and did not
like the more familiar term, used in the winter evenings to be
a regular member of the circle that met beside my Uncle
James's work-table. And, chiefly through the influence, in the
first instance, of my uncles, I was perniitted to visit him in his
own room, — a privilege enjoyed by scarce any one else, — and
even invited to borrow his books. His room — a dark and mel-
ancholy chamber, gray with dust — always contained a number
of curious but not very rare things, which he had picked up
in his walks, — prettily colored fungi, — vegetable monstrosi-
ties of the commoner kind, such as " fause craws' nests," and
flattened twigs of pine, — and with these, as the rejjresentatives
of another department of natural science, fragments of semi-
transparent quartz or of glittering feldspar, and sheets of mica
a little above the ordinary size. But the charm of the apart-
ment lay in its books. Francie was a book-fancier, and
lacked only the necessary wealth to be in the possession of a
very pretty collection. As it was, he had some curious vol-
umes; among others, a first-edition copy of the "Nineteen
Years' Travels of William Lithgow," with an ancient wood-
cut, representing the said William in the background, with
his head brushing the skies, and, f;ir in front, two of the tombs
which covered the heroes of Ilium, barely tall enough to roach
halfway to his knee, and of the length, in projjortion to the
size of the traveller, of ordinary octavo volumes. lie had
black-letter books, too, on astrology, and on the i)]anetary
properties of vegetables ; and an ancient hook on medicine,
that recorainendcd as a cure for the toothache a bit of llie jaw
of a suicide, well triturated ; and, as an inlJillihle remedy for the
falling-sickness, an ounce or two of the brains of a young man.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 53
carefully dried over the fire. Better, however, than these, for
at least my purposes, he had a tolerably complete collection
of the British essayists, from Addison to Mackenzie, with the
" Essays " and " Citizen of the World " of Goldsmith ; several
interesting works of travels and voyages, translated from the
French ; and translations from the German, of Lavater, Zim-
merman, and Klopstock. He had a good, many \">f the minor
poets too ; and I was enabled to cultivate, mainty from his
collection, a tolerably adequate acquaintance with the wits of
the reign of Queen Anne. Poor Francie was at bottom a
kindly and honest man ; but the more intimately one knew
him, the more did the weakness and brokenness of his intellect
appear. His mind was a labyrinth without a clue, in whose
recesses there lay stored up a vast amount of book-knowl-
edge, that could never be found when v/anted, and was of no
sort of use to himself or any one else. I got sufficiently into
his confidence to be informed, under the seal of strict secrecy,
that he contemplated producing a great literary work, w^hose
special character he had not quite determined, but which was
to be begun a few years hence. And when death found him,
at an age which did not fall short of the allotted three score
and ten, the great unknown work was still an undefined idea,
and had still to be begun.
There were several other branches of my education going
on at this time, outside the pale of the school, in which, though
I succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. The shores
of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of
the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the
ages of the boulder clay ; and I soon learned to take a deep inter-
est in sauntering over the v^arious pebble-beds when shaken
up by recent storms, and in learning to distinguish their nu
merous components. But I was sadly in want of a vocabulary ;
and as, according to Cowper, " the growth of what is excellent
IS slow," it was not until long after that I bethought me of the
obvious enough expedient of representing the various species
of simple rocks by certain numerals, and the compound onea
by the numerals representative of each separate component
54 Mr SCHOOLS and schoolmasters;
ranged, as in vulgar fiactions, along a medial line, with the
figures representative of the prevailing materials of the mass
above, and those representative of the materials in less pro-
portions below. Though, however, wholly detieient in the signs
proper to represent what I knew, I soon acquired a consider-
able quickness of eye in distinguishing the various kinds of
rock, and tolerably definite conceptions of the generic character
of the porphyries, granites, gneisses, quartz-rocks, clay-slates,
and mica-schists, which everywhere strewed the beach. In the
rocks of mechanical origin I was at the time much less inter-
ested ; but in individual, as in general history, mineralogy
almost always precedes geology. I was fortunate enough to
discover, one happy morning, among the lumber and debris of
old John Feddes dark room, an antique-fashioned hammer,
which had belonged, my mother told me, to old John himself
more than a hundred years before. It was an uncouth sort of
implement, with a handle of strong black oak, and a short,
compact head, square on the one face and oblong on the other.
And though it dealt rather an obtuse blow, the temper was
excellent, and the haft firmly set ; and I went about with it,
breaking into all manner of stones, with great perseverance
and success. I found, in a large-grained granite, a few sheets
of beautiful black mica, that when split exceedingly thin, and
pasted between slips of mica of the ordinary kind, made ad-
mirably-colored eye-glasses, that converted the landscapes
ai'ound into richly-toned drawings in sepia ; and numerous
crystals of garnet embedded in mica-schist, that were, I was
sure, identical with the stones set in a little gold brooch, the
property of my mother. To this last surmise, however,
some of the neighbors to whom I showed my prize demurred.
The stones in my mother's brooch were precious stones, they
said ; whereas what I had found, was merely a " stone upon
thf; shore." My friend the cabinetmaker went so far as to say
that the specimen was but a mass of plum-pudding stiiue, and
its dark colored enclosures simply the currants; but then, on
the other hand, Uncle Sandy took my view of the matter :
the stone was not plum-pudding stone, he said : he had often
OR, THE STOKY OF MV EDUCATION. 55
Been plum-pudding stone in England, had knew it to be a sort
of rough conglomerate of various components ; whereas my
stone was composed of a finely-grained silvery substance, and
the crystals which it contained were, he was sure, gems like
those in the brooch, and, so far as he could judge, real gar-
nets. This was a great decision ; and, much encouraged in
consequence, I soon ascertained that garnets are by no means
rare among the pebbles of the Cromarty shore. Nay, so mix.
ed up are they with its sands even, — a consequence of the
abundance of the mineral among the primary rocks of Ross,
— that after a heavy surf has beaten the exposed beach of the
neighboring hill, there may be found on it patches of commi-
nuted garnet, from one to three square yards in extent, that
resemble, at a little distance, pieces of crimson carpeting, and
nearer at hand sheets of crimson bead-work, and of which al-
most every point and particle is a gem. From some unex-
plained circumstance, connected apparently with the specific
gravity of the substance, it separates in this style from the
general mass, on coasts much beaten by the waves ; but the
garnets of these curious pavements, though so exceedingly
abundant, are in every instance exceedingly minute. I never
detected in them a fragment greatly larger than a pin-head ;
but it was always with much delight that I used to fling my
self down on the shore beside some newly-discovered patch,
and bethink me, as I passed my fingers along the larger grains,
of the heaps of gems in Aladdin's cavern, or of Sinbad's val
ley of diamonds.
The Hill of Cromarty formed at this time at once my true
school and favorite play-ground ; and if my master did wink
at times harder than master ought, when I was playing truant
among its woods or on its shores, it was, I believe, whether he
thought so or no, all for the best. My Uncle Sandy had, as 1
Have already said, been bred a cartwright ; but finding, on his
return, after his seven years' service aboard man-of-war, that
the place had cartwrights enough for all the employment, he
applied himself to the humble but not unremunerative pro-
fession of a sawyer, and used often \o pitch his saw-pit, in the
66 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
more genial seasons of the year, among the woods of the hill
I remember, he never failed setting it down in some pretty
spot, sheltered from the prevailing winds under the lee of
some fern-covered rising ground, or some bosky thicket, and
always in the near neighborhood of a spring ; and it used to
be one of my most delightful exercises to find out for myself
among the thick woods, in some holiday journey of explora-
tion, the place of a newly-formed pit. With the saw-pit £19
my base-line of operations, and secure always of a share in
Uncle Sandy's dinner, I used to make excursions of discovery
on every side, — now among the thicker tracks of wood, which
bore among the town-boys, from the twilight gloom that ever
rested in their recesses, the name of" the dungeons ;" and anon
to the precipitous sea-shore, with its wild cliffs and caverns.
The Hill of Cromarty is one of a chain belonging to the great
Ben Nevis line of elevation ; and, though it occurs in a sand-
stone district, is itself a huge primary mass, upheaved of old
from the abyss, and composed chiefly of granitic gneiss and a
red splintery hornstone. It contains also numerous veins and
beds of hornbl end-rock and chlorite-schist, and of a peculiar-
looking granite, of which the quartz is white as milk, and the
feldspar red as blood. When still wet by the receding tide,
these veins and beds seem as if highly polished, and present
a beautiful aspect ; and it was always with great delight that
I used to pick my way among them, hammer in hand, and
fill my pockets with specimens.
There was one locality which I in especial loved. No path
runs the way. On the one side an aln-upt iron-tinged pro-
montory, so remarkable for its human-like profile, that it seema
part of a half-buried sphyLX, protrudes into the deep greca
water. On the other, — less prominent, for even at full tide
.,he traveller can wind between its base and the sea, — there
rises a shattered and ruinous precipice, soiimed with bloodrcd
ironstone, that retains on its surface the briglit inelaliic gleam,
and amid whi-se piles of loose and fractured rock one may still
detect fragments of stalactite. The stalactite is all that remains
of a spar^ii:u8 cavern, Thich once hollowed the precipice, but
OR, THE STORY OF MT EDUCATION. 57
which, more than a hundred years before, had tumbled down
during a thunder-storm, when filled with a flock of sheep, and
penned up the poor creatures forever. The space between
these headlands forms an irregular crescent of great height,
covered with wood a-top, and amid whose lichened crags, and
on whose steep slopes, the hawthorn, and bramble, and A^ild-
rasp, and rock-strawberry, take root, with many a scraggy
shrub and sweet wild flower besides ; while along its basxj
lie huge blocks of green hornblend, on a rude pavement of
granitic gneiss, traversed at one point, for many rods, by a
broad vein of milk-white quartz. The quartz vein formed my
central point of attraction in this wild paradise. The white
stone, thickly traversed by threads of purple and red, is a
beautiful though unworkable rock ; and I soon ascertained that
it is flanked by a vein of feldspar broader than itself, of a
brick-red tint, and the red stone flanked, in turn, by a drab-
colored vein of the same mineral, in which there oocurs in
great abundance masses of a homogeneous mica, — mica not
existing in lamina, but, if I may use the term, as a sort of mi-
caceous felt. It would almost seem as if some gigantic exper-
imenter of the old world had set himself to separate into their
simple mineral components the granitic rocks of the hill, and
that the three parallel veins were the results of his labor.
Such, however, was not the sort of idea which they at this time
suggested to me. I had read in Sir Walter Raieigh's voyage
to Guinea, the poetic description of that upper country in which
the knight's exploration of the river Corale terminated, and
where, amid lovely prospects of rich valleys, avid wooded hills,
and winding waters, almost every rock bore on its surface the
yellow gleam of gold. True, according to the voyager, the
precious metal was itself absent. But Sir Walter, on after-
Awards showing " some of the stones to a Spaniard of the Ca-
raccas, was told by him they were el madre del ora, that is,
the mother of gold, and that the mine itself was farther in the
ground." And though the quartz vein of the Cromarty Tlill
contained no metal more precious than iron, and but little
even of that, it was, I felt sure the " mother ' of something
58 MY SCHOOLS AOT) SCHOOLMASTERS;
rery fine. As for silver, I was pretty certain I had fc und the
" mother" of it, if not indeed the precious metal itself, in a
cherty boulder, inclosing numerous cubes of rich galena ; and
occasional masses of iron pyrites gave, as I thought, large
promise of gold. But though sometimes asked, in humble
irony, by the farm servants who came to load their carts with
sea-weed along the Ci'omarty beach, whether I was " getting
siller in the stanes," I was so unlucky as never to be able to
answer their question in the affirmative.
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 59
CHAPTER IV.
"Strange marble stones, here larger and there leas,
And of full various forms, which still increase
In height and bulk by a continual drop,
Which upon each distilling from the top,
And falling still exactly on the crown,
Tliere break themselves to mists, which, trickling down,
Crust into stone, and (but with leisure) swell
The sides, and still advance the miracle."
Charles Cottox.
It is low water in the Frith of Cromarty during stream tides,
between six and seven o'clock in the evening ; and my Uncle
Sandy, in returning from his work at the close of the day,
used not unfrequently, when, according to the phrase of the
place, " there was a tide in the water," to strike down the hill
side, and spend a quiet hour in the ebb. I delighted to accom
pany him on these occasions. There are Professors of Natu-
ral History that know less of living nature than was known
by Uncle Sandy ; and I deemed it no small matter to have all
the various productions of the sea with which he was acquaint-
ed pointed out to me in these walks, and to be put in possess-
ion of his many curious anecdotes regarding them.
He was a skilful crab and lobster fisher, and knew every
hole and crannie, along several miles of rocky shore, in which
the creatures were accustomed to shelter, with not a few of
their own peculiarities of character. Contrary to the view
taken by some of our naturalists, such as Agassiz, who held
4
(JO MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
that the crab — a genus comparatively recent in its appearance
in creation — is less embryotic in its character, and higher in
its standing, than the more ancient lobster, my uncle regarded
the lobster as a more intelligent animal than the crab. The
hole in which the lobster lodges has almost always two open
ings, he has said, through one of which it sometimes contrives
to escape when the other is stormed by the fisher ; whereas the
crab is usually content, like the " rat devoid of soul," with a
lole of only one opening ; and, besides, gets so angry in most
>ases with his assailant, as to become more bent on assault
than escape, and so loses himself through sheer loss of temper.
And yet the crab has, he used to add. some points of intelli-
gence about hinx too. When, as sometimes happened, he got
hold, in his dark narrow recess in the rock, of some luckless
iigit, my uncle showed me how that after the first tremendous
equeeze he began always to experiment upon what ho had got,
by alternately slackening and straitening his grasp, as if to as-
certain whether it had life in it, or was merely a piece of dead
matter; and that the only way to escape him, on these trying
occasions, was to let the finger lie passively between his nip-
pers, as if it were a bit of stick or tangle ; when, apparently
deeming it such, he would be sui*e to let it go ; whereas, on
the least attempt to withdraw it, he would at once straiten hia
gripe, and not again relax it for mayhap half an liour. In
'dealing with the lobster, on the other hand, the fisher had to
beware that he did not depend too much on the hold he had
got of the creature, if it was merely a hold of one of the great
claws. For a moment it would remain passive in his grasp ;
he would then be sensible of a slight tremor in the captured
limb, and mayliap hear a slight crackle; and, presto^ the cap
tive would straightway be oif like a dart tiwough tne deep,
water hole, and only the limb remain in the fisher's hand. My
uncle has, however, told me, that lobsters do not always lose
their limbs with the necessary judgment. They throw them
)ir when suddenly frightened, without first waiting to consider
whether tlu; sacrifieii of a pair of legs is the best mode of ob-
viating the danger. On firing a mu^ket immediately over a
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 61
lobster just captured, he has seen it throw oft' both its great
claws in the sudden extremity of its terror, just as a panic-
struck soldier sometimes throws away his weapons. Such, in
kind, were the anecdotes of Uncle Sandy. He instructed nie,
to), how to find, amid thickets of laminaria and fuei, the nest
of the lump-fish, and taught me to look well in its immediate
ueighborh )od for the male and female fish, especially for the
male ; and showed me further, that the hard-shelled spawn of
this creature may, when well washed, be eaten raw, and forms
at least as palatable a viand in that state as the imported ca-
viare of Russia and the Caspian. There were instances in
which the common crow acted as a sort of jackall to us in our
lump-fish explorations. We would see him busied at the side
of some fuci-covered pool, screaming and cawing as if engagejl
in combating an enemy ; and, on going up to the place, we
used to find the lump-fish he had killed fresh and entire, but
divested of the eyes, which we found, as a matter of course,
the assailant, in order to make sure of victory, had taken the
precaution of picking out at an early stage of the contest.
Nor was it with merely the edible that we busied ourselves
on these journeys. The brilliant metallic plumage of the sea-
mouse [Aphrodita), steeped as in the dyes of the rainbow, ex-
cited our admiration time after time ; and still higher wondei
used to be awakened by a much rarer annelid, brown, and
slender as a piece of rope-yarn, and from thirty to forty feet
in length, which no one save my uncle had ever found along
the Cromarty shores, and which, when broken in two, as some-
times happened in the measuring, divided its vitality so equally
between the pieces, that each was fitted, we could not doubt,
though unable to repeat in the c^ise the experiment of Spal-
lanzani to set up as an independent existence, and carry on
business for itself. The annelids, too, that form for them
selves tubular dwellings built up of large grains of sand {am
phitrites), always excited our interest. Two hand-shaped tufts
of golden-hued sctaj, — furnished, however, with greatly more
than the typical number of fingers, — rise from the shoulders
62 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
of these creatures, and must, I suspect, be used as hands in thi
process of building ; at least the hands of the most practised
builder could not set stones with nicer skill than is exhibited
by these worms in the setting of the grains which compose
their cylindrical dwellings,— dwellings that, from their form and
structure, seem suited to remind the antiquary of the round
towers of Ireland, and, from the style of their masonry, of old
Cyclopean walls. Even the mason- wasps and bees are greatly
inferior workmen to these mason am2:)hitrites. I was introduced
also, in cur ebb excursions, to the cuttle-fish and the sea-hare,
and shown how the one, when pursued by an enemy, dis-
charges a cloud of ink to conceal its retreat, and that the other
darkens the water around it with a lovely purple pigment,
which my uncle was pretty sure would make a rich dye, like
that extracted of old by the Tyrians from a ■\^'helk which he
had often seen on the beach near Alexandria. I learned, too,
to cultivate an acquaintance with some two or three species of
doris, that carry their arboraceous, tree-like lungs on their
backs, as Macduff's soldiers carried the boughs of Birnam
wood to the Hill of Dunsinane ; and I soon acquired a sort of
affection for certain shells, which bore, as I supposed, a more
exotic aspect than their neighbors. Among these were, Tro-
chus Zizyphinus^ with its flame-like marlciugs of crimson, on
a ground of paley -brown ; Patella pelluckla, with its lustrous
rays of vivid blue on its dark epidermis, that resemble the
sparks of a firework breaking against a cloud ; and above all,
Cijprcca Europea, a not rare shell flirther to the north, but so
littk- abundant in the Frith of Cromarty, as to render the live
animal, when once or twice in a season I used to find it cree.i>
ing on the laminaria at the extreme outer edge of the tide-
line, with its wide orange mantle flowing ]il)erally around it
somewhat of a prize, hi short, the tract of sea-bottom laid
dry by the ebb fbrnu^d an admirable school, and Uncle Sandy
an excellent teacher, under whom 1 was not in the least dis.
posed to trifle ; and when, long after I learned to detect old.
narine bottoms far out of sight of the sea, — now ajuid the an
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 63
cient forest-covered Silurians of central England, and anon
opening to the light on some hill-side i.mong the Mountain
Limestones of oui own country, — I have felt how very much
I owed to his instructions.
His facts wanted a vocabulary adequately fitted to represent
them ; but though they " lacked a commodity of good names,"
they were all founded on careful observation, and possessed
that first element of respectability, — perfect originality. They
were all acquired by himself. I owed more, however, to the
habit of observation which he assisted me in forming, than
even to his facts themselves ; and yet some of these were of
high value. He has shown me, for instance, that an immense
granitic boulder in the neighborhood of the town, known
for ages as the Clach Malloch, or Cursed Stone, stands so
exactly in the line of low water, that the larger stream-tides
of March and September lay dry its inner side, but never its
outer one ; — round the outer side there are always from two to
four inches of water ; and such had been the case for at least a
hundred years before, in his father's and grandfather's days,
— evidence enough of itself, I have heard him say, that the rel-
ative levels of sea and land were not altering ; though during
the lapsed century the waves had so largely encroached on the
low flat shores, that elderly men of his acquaintance, long
since passed away, had actually held the j)lough when young
where they had held the rudder when old. He used, too, to
point out to me the eftect of certain winds upon the tides. A
strong hasty gale from the east, if coincident with a spring-
tide, sent up the waves high upon the beach, and cut away
whole roods of the soil ; but the gales that usually kept the
laiger tides from falling during ebb were prolonged gales from
the west. A series of these, even when not very high, left not
unfrequently from one to two feet water round the Clach Mal-
loch, during stream-tides, that would otherwise have laid its
bott im bare ; a proof, he used to say, that the German Ocean,
from its want of breadth, could not I e heaped up against our
coasts ^o the same extent, by the vio ence of a very powerful
64 IVIY SCHOOLS A^B SCHOOLMASTERS;
east wind, as the Atlantic by the force of a comparatively mod
erate westerly one. It is not improbable that the philosophy
of the Drift Curren*, and of the apparently re-actionary Gulf
Stream, may be embodied in this simple remark.
The woods on the lower slopes of the hill, when there waa
no access to the zones uncovered by the ebb, furnished me
with employment of another kind. I learned to look with in-
terest on the workings of certain insects, and to understand
some of at least their simpler instincts. The large Diadem
Spider, which spins so strong a web, that, in pressing my way
through the furze thickets, I could hear its white silken cords
crack as they yielded before me, and which I found skilled, like
an ancient magician, in the strange art of rendering itself in-
visible in the clearest light, was an especial favorite ; though
its great size, and the wild stories I had read about the bite of
its cogener the tarantula, made me cultivate its acquaintance
somewhat at a distance. Often, however, have I stood beside
its large web, when the ci'cature occupied its place in the
centre, and, touching it with a withered grass stalk, I have
seen it sullenly swing on the lines " with its hands," and then
shake them with a motion so rapid, that, — like Carathis, the
mother of the Caliph Vathek, who, when her hour of doom
came, " glanced oil' in a rapid whirl, which rendered her invis-
ible," — the eye failed to see either web or insect for minutes
together. Nothing a{)peals more powerfully to the youth-
ful fancy than those coats, rings, and amulets of eastern
lore, that conferred on their possessors the gift of invisibil-
ity ; and I deemed it a great matter to have discovered foi
myself, in living nature, a creature actually possessed of an
amulet of this kind, that, when danger threatened, could rush
mto invisibility. I h-arncd, too, to take an especial interest in
what, though they belong to a ditfen'nt family, are known as
the Water Spiders ; and have watched iheni speeding by llts
and starts, like skaters on ice, across the surface of some
Woodland spring or streamlet, — fearless walkers on the water,
that, with true fixith in the integrity of the implanted instinct
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 6Jr
never made a shipwreck in the eddy or sank in the pool. It is
to these little creatures that Wordsworth refers in one of his
sonnets on sleep : —
"O sleep, Ihou art to me
A fly that up and down liiinselldoth shove
Upon a fretful rivulet; now above,
Now on the water, vexed with mockery."
As shown, however, to the poet himself on one oCvasion, some
what to his discomfort, by assuredly no mean authority, — Mr
James Wilson, — the " vexed" " fly," though one of the hemip
terous insects, never uses its wings, and so never gets " above'
the water. Among my other favorites were the splendid dra
gon-flies, the crimson-speckled Burnet moths, and the small
azure butterflies, that, when fluttering among delicate hair-
bells and crimson-tipped daisies, used to suggest to me, long
ere I became acquainted with the pretty figure of Moore,* or
even ere the figure had been produced, the idea of flowers that
had taken to flying. The wild honey bees, too, in their several
species, had peculiar charms for me. There were the buff-
colored carders, that erected over their honey-jars domes of
moss ; the lapidary red-tipped bees, that built amid the re-
cesses of ancient cairns, and in old dry stone-walls, and were
so invincibly brave in defending their homesteads, that they
never gave up the quarrel till they died ; and, above all, the
yellow-zoned humble bees, that lodged deep in the ground
along the dry sides of grassy banks, and were usually wealthier
in honey than any of their cogeners, and existed in larger com
munities. But the herd-boys of the parish, and the foxes of
its woods and brakes, shared in my interest in the wild honey
bees, and, in the pursuit of something else than knowledge,
were ruthless robbers of their nests. I often observed, that the
fox, with all his reputed shrewdness, is not particularly know-
• "The beautiful blue damsel fly,
That fluttered round the jessamine Stems,
Like winged flowers or flying geraa,"
PA.RADI8B IND niuPsRl.
H6 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
ing on the subject of bees. He makes as dead a set on a
wasp's nest as on that of the carder or humble bee, and gets,
I doubt not, heartily stung for his pains ; for though, as shown
by the marks of his teeth, left on fragments of the paper combs
scattered about, he attempts eating the young w^asps in the
chrysalis state, the undevoured remains seem to argue that he
is but little pleased with them as food. There were occasions,
however, in which even the herd-boys met with only disap-
pointment in their bee-hunting excursions , and in one notable
instance, the result of the adventure used to be spoken of in
school and elsewhere, under our breath and in secret, as some-
thing very horrible. A party of boys had stormed a humble
bees' nest on the side of the old chapel-brae, and, digging in-
wards along the narrow winding earth passage, they at length
came to a grinning human skulL, and saw the bees issuing
thick from out a round hole at its base, — the fo7-a7nen magnum.
The wise little workers ha& actually formed their nest within
the hollow of the head, once occupied by the busy brain ; and
their spoilers, more scrupulous than Samson of old, who seems
to have enjoyed the meat brought forth out of the eater, and
the sweetness extracted from the strong, left in very great
consternation their honey all to themselves.
One of my discoveries of this early period would have been
deemed a not unimjiortant one by the geologist. Among the
woods of the hill, a short lialf-mile fi-om the town, there is a
morass of comparatively small extent, but considerable depth,
which had been laid open by the bursting of a waterspout on
the uplands, and in which the dark peaty chasm remained un-
closed, though the event had happened ere my birth, until Iliad
become old and curious enough thoroughly to ex}ilore it. It
was a black miry ravine, some ten or twelve feet in dejtlh. The
ijogs around waved thick with silvery willows of small size;
but, sticking out from the black sides of the ravine itself, and
in some instances stretched across it from side to side, lay the
decayed remains of huge giants of the vegetable world, that had
flourished and died long nges ere, in at least our northern i)art
of the island, the course of history had begun. There wero
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 67
oaks of pnormous gii'th, into whose coal-black substance one
could dig as easily with a pickaxe as one digs into a bank of
clay ; and at least one noble elm, which ran across the little
stream that trickhnl, rather than flowed, along the bottom of
the hollow, and vvliich was in such a state of keeping, that
I have scooped out of its trunk, with the unassisted hand, a
way for the water. I have found in the ravine — which 1
learned very much to like as a scene of exploration, though
I never failed to (juit it sadly bemired — handfuls of hazel-
nuts, of the ordinary size, but black as jet, with the cups of
acorns, and with twigs of birch that still retained almost un-
changed their srilvery outer crust of bark, but whose ligneous
interior existed as a mere pulp. I have even laid open, in
layers of a sort of unctuous clay, resembling fuller's earth,
leaves of oak, birch, and hazel, that had fluttered in the wind
thousands of years before ; and there was one happy day in
which I succeeded in digging from out the very bottom of
the excavation a huge fragment of an extraordinary-looking
deer's horn. It was a broad, massive, strange-looking piece of
bone, evidently old-fiishioned in its type ; and so I bi'ought it
home in triumph to Uncle James, as the antiquary of the fam-
ily, assured that he could tell me all al)out it. Uncle James
paused in the middle of his work ; and, taking the horn in his
hand, surveyed it leisurely on every side. " That is the horn,
boy," he at length said, " of no deer that now lives in this coun-
try. We have the red deer, and the fallow deer, and the roe ;
and none of them have horns at all like that. I never saw an
elk ; but I am pretty sure this broad, plank-like horn can be
none other than the horn of an elk." My uncle set aside liia
work ; and, taking the horn in his hand, went out to the shop
of a cabinetmaker in the neighborhood, where there used to
woi'k from five to six journeymen. They all gathered round
him to examine it, and agreed in the decision that it was an
entii'ely different sort of horn from any borne by the existing
deer of Scothind, and that his surmise regard.ng it was prob-
ably just. And, apparently to enhance the marvel, a neigh-
bor, who was lounging in the shop at the time, remarked, in
88 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL MASTEES ;
a tone of sober gravity, that it had lain in the Moss of th«
Willows " for perhaps half a century." There was positive
anger in the tone of my uncle's reply. " Haifa century, Sir ! !"
he exclaimed ; " was the elk a native of Scotland half a cen-
tur}- ago ? There is no notice of the elk, Sir, in British his-
tory. That horn must have lain in the IMoss of the Willows
for thousands of years ! " Ah ha, James, ah ha," ejaculated
the neighbor, with a sceptical shake of the head ; but as
neither he nor any one else dared meet my uncle on historical
ground, the controversy took end with the ejaculation. I
soon added to the horn of the elk that of a roe, and part of
that of a red deer, found in the same ravine ; and the neigh-
bors, impressed by Uncle James's view, used to bring strangers
to look at them. At length, unhappily, a relation settled in
the south, who had shown me kindness, took a fancy to them ;
and, smit by the charms of a gorgeous paint-box which he had
just sent me, I made them over to him entire. They found
their way to London, and were ultimately lodged in the col-
lection of some obscure virtuoso, whose locality or name I
have been unable to trace.
The Cromarty Sutors have their two lines of caves, — an an-
cient line hollowed by the waves man}"^ centuries ago, when the
sea stood in relation to the land, from fifteen to thirty feet
higher along our shores than it does now ; and a modern line,
which the surf is still engaged in scooping out. Many of the
older caves are lined with stalactites, deposited by springs tliat,
filtering througl'. the cracks and fissures of the gneiss, find lime
enough in tlieir passage to acquire what is known as & petrify-
ing, though, in reality, only an encrusting quality. And these
stalactites, under the name of " white stones made by the
watrr," formed of old — as in that Cave of Slains specially men
tinned by liuchaiian and the Chroniclers, and in those caverns
ol the Peak so quaintly descrilied by Cotton — tmeof the grand
marvels of the place. Almost all the old gazetteers sufiicicnt-
ly copious in tlnir details to mention Cromarty at all, refer f/O
its " Dro[)ping /ave" as a marvellous marble-prodticing cav-
ern ; and this - Di ^pping Cave" is but t)ne of many that look
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 69
r)ut upon the sea from the precipices of the southern Sutor, in
whose dark recesses the drops ever tinkle, and the stony ceil-
ings ever grow. The wonder could not have been deemed a
great or very rare one by a man like the late Sir George Mac-
kenzie of Coul, well known from his travels in Iceland, and
his experiments on the inflammability of the diamond ; but it
so happened, that Sir George, curious to see what sort of stones
to which the old gazetteers referred, made application to the
minister of the parish for a set of specimens ; and the minister
Btraightway deputed the commission, which he believed to be
not a difficult one, to one of his poorer parishoners, an old
nailer, as a means of putting a few shillings in his way.
It so happened, however, that the nailer had lost his wife
by a sad accident, only a few weeks before ; and the story
went abroad that the poor woman was, as the townspeople
expressed it, "coming back." She had been very suddenly
hurried out of the world. When going down the quay, after
nightfall one evening, with a parcel of clean linen for a sailor,
her relative, she had missed footing on the pier edge, and,
half-brained, half-drowned, had been found in the morning,
stone dead, at the bottom of the harbor. And now, as if
pressed by some unsettled business, she used to be seen, it was
said, hovering after nightfall about her old dwelling, or saun-
tering along the neighboring street ; nay, there were occa-
sions, according to the general report, in which she had even
exchanged words with some of the neighbors, little to their
satisfaction. The words, however, seemed in every instance
to have wonderfully little to do with the affairs of another
world. I remember seeing the wife of a neighbor rush intt
ray mo hers one evening about this time, speechless with tei
ror, and declare, after an awful pause, during which she had
lair, half fainting in a chair, that she had just seen Christy.
She had been engaged, as the night was falling, but ere dark-
cess had quite set in, in piling up a load of brushwood for
fuel outside her door, when up started the spectre on the other
side of the heap attired in the ordinary work-day garb of the
70 Mr SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
deceased, and, in a light and hurried tone, asked, as Christy
might have done ere the fatal accident, for a share of the
brushwood. " Give me some of that Aa^," said the ghost ;
" yon have plenty, — I have none." It was not known whether
or no the nailer had seen the apparition ; but it was pretty
certain he believed in it ; and as the '• Dropping Cave" is both
dark and solitary, and had forty years ago a bad name to boot,
—for the mermaid had been observed disporting in front of it
even at mid-day, and lights seen and screams heard from it
at nights, — it must have been a rather formidable place to a
mar living in the momentary expectation of a visit from a
dead wife. So far as could be ascertained, — for the nailer
himself was rather close in the matter, — he had not entered
the cave at all. He seemed, judging from the marks of scrap-
ing left along the sides for about two or three feet from the
narrow opening, to have taken his stand outside, where the
light was good, and the way of retreat clear, and to have raked
outwards to him, as far as he could reach, all that stuck to
the walls, including ropy slime and mouldy damp, but not one
particle of stalactite. It was of course seen that his specimens
would not suit Sir George ; and the minister, in the extremity
of the case, applied to my uncles, though with some little un-
williuirness, as it was known that no remuneration for their
trouble could be offered to them. My uncles were, however,
delighted with the commission, — it was all for the benefit of
science; and, providing themselves with torches and a hammer,
they set out for the caves. And I, of course, accompanied
them, — a very happy boy, — armed, like themselves, with ham-
mer and torch, and prepared devoutedly to labor in behalf of
science and Sir George.
I had never before seen the caves by torch-light ; and thougl
what I now witnessed did not quite come up to what I had
read n.'ganling the Grotto of AMti|)aros, or even the wonders
of the Peak, it was unquestionably both strange and fuie. The
celebrated Dropping Cave proved inferior — as is not uut're
quently the case with the celebrated — to a cave almost en
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlf. 71
tirely unknown, which opened among the rocks a little further
to the east ; and yet even it had its interest. It widened, as
one entered, into a twilight chamber, green with velvety mosses,
that love the damp and the shade ; and terminated in a range
of crystalline wells, fed by the perpetual dropping, and hollowed
in what seemed an altar-piece of the deposited marble. And
above, and along the sides, there depended many a draped fold,
and hung many a translucent icicle. The other cave, how-
ever, we found to be of much greater extent, and of more va-
ried character. It is one of three caves of the old coast line,
known as the Doocot or Pigeon Caves, which open upon a
piece of rocky beach, overhung by a rudely semicircular range
of gloomy precipices. The points of the semicircle project on
either side into deep water, — into at least water so much deeper
than the fall of ordinary neaps, that it is only during the ebb
of stream tides that the j)lace is accessible by land ; and in each
of these bold promontories, — the terminal horns of the cres-
cent, — there is a cave of the present coast-line, deeply hollow-
ed, in which the oea stands from ten to twelve feet in depth
when the tide is at full, and in which the surf thunders, when
gales blow hard from the stormy north-east, with the roar of
whole parks of artillery. The cave in the western promon-
tory, which bears among the townsfolk the name of the " Puir
Wife's Meal Kist," has its roof drilled by two small perfora-
tions, — the largest of them not a great deal wider than the
blow-hole of a porpoise, — that open externally among the cliffs
above ; and when, during storms from the sea, the huge waves
come rolling ashore like green moving walls, there are cer-
tain times of the tide in which they shut up the mouth of the
cave, and so compress the air within that it rushes upwards
through the openings, roaring in its escape as if tun whales
were blowing at once, and rises from amid the crags overhead
in two white jets of vapor, distinctly visible, to the height of
ft om sixty to eighty feet. If there be critics who have deemed
it one of the extravagancies of Goethe that he should have
given life and motion, as in his famous witch-scene in " Faust,"
to the llartz crags, they would do well to visit this bold head.
72 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
land during some winter tempest from the east, and find his
desci'Iption perfectly sober and true: —
" See the giant craes, ah ho !
How they snort aud how they blow."
Within, at the bottom of the crescent, and where the tide
never reaches when at the fullest, we found the large pigeon
<ave which we had come to explore, hollowed for about a hun-
ired and fifty feet in the line of a fiiult. There runs across
the opening the broken remains of a wall erected by some
monopolizing proprietor of the neighboring lands, with tha
intention of appropriating to himself the pigeons of the cav-
ern ; but his day, even at this time, had been long gone by,
and the wall had sunk into a ruin. As we advanced, the cave
caught the echoes of our footsteps, and a flock of pigeons,
startled from their nests, came whizzing out, almost brushing
us with their wings. The damp floor sounded hollow to our
tread ; we saw the green mossy sides, which close in the un-
certain light, more than twenty feet overhead, furrowed by
ridges of stalactites, that became whiter and purer as they re-
tired from the vegetable influences ; and marked that the last
plant which appeared as we wended our way inward was a
minute green moss, about half an inch in length, which slant-
ed outwards on the prominences of the sides, and overlay myr-
iads of similar sprigs of moss, long before converted into stone,
but which, faithful in death to the ruling law of their lives,
still pointed, like the others, to the free air and the light.
And then, in the deeper recesses of the cave, where the floor
becomes covered with uneven sheets of stalagmite, and where
long spear-like icicles and drapery-like foldings, pure as the
marble of the sculptor, descend from above, or hung pendent
over the sides, we found in abundance magnificent sjiecimens
for Sir George. The entire expedition was one of wondrous
interest ; and I returned next day to school, big with descrip-
tion and narrative, to excite, by truths more marvellous than
fiction, the curiosity of my class-fellows.
I had previously introduced thorn to the marvels of the hill ;
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 73
and during our Saturday half-holidays, some of them had ac-
companied me in my excursions to it. But it had failed, some-
how, to catch their fency. It was too solitary, and too far
from home, and as a scene of amusement, not at all equal
to the town-links, where they could play at " shinty," and
" French and English," almost within haM of their parents'
homesteads. The very tract along its flat, mossy summit, over
Afhich, according to tradition, Wallace had once driven before
im in headlong rout a strong body of English, and whic
was actually mottled "vvith sepulchral tumuli, still visible amid
the heath, foiled in any marked degree to engage them ; and
though they liked well enough to hear about the caves, they
seemed to have no very great desire to see them. There
was, however, one little fellow, who sat at the Latin forn:i, —
the member of a class lower and brighter than the heavy one,
though it was not particularly bright neither, — who differed in
this respect from all the others. Tliough he was my junior by
about a twelvemonth, and shorter by about half a head, he
was a diligent boy in even the Grammar School, in which boys
were so rarely diligent, and, for his years, a thoroughly sen
sible one, without a grain of the dreamer in his composition.
I succeeded, however, notwithstanding his sobri«ty, in infect-
ing him thoroughly with my peculiar tastes, and learned to
love him very much, partly because he doubled my amuse-
ments by sharing in them, and partly, I dare say, — on the prin-
ciple on which Mahomet preferred his old wife to his young
one, — because " he believed in me." Devoted to him as Ca
h'ban in the Tempest to his friend Trinculo, —
"I showed him the best springs, I plucked him berries,
And I with my long nails did dig him pig-nuts."
His curiosity on this occasion was largely excited by my de
scription of the Doocot Cave ; and, setting out one morning
to explore its wonders, armed with John Feddes's hammer, iu
the beneiits of which my friend was permitted liberally to
share, we failed, for that day at least, in finding our way back.
It was on a pleasant spring morning that, with my little
74 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
curious friend beside me, I stood on the beach opposite the
eastern promontory, that, with its stern granitic wall, bars ao
cess for ten days out of every fourteen to the wonders of the
Doocot ; and saw it stretciing provokingly out into the green
water. It was hard to be disappointed and the cave so near.
The tide was low neap, and if we wanted a passage dry-shod,
it behoved us to wait for at least a week ; but neither of us
understood the philosophy of neap-tides at the period. I was
quite sure I had got round at low water with my uncles not; f
great many days before, and we both inferred, tiiat if we but
succeeded in getting round now, it would be quite a pleasure
to wait among the caves inside until such time as the fall of
the tide should lay bare a passage for our return. A narrow
and broken shelf runs along the promontory, on which, by the
assistance of the naked toe and the toe-nail, it is just possible
to creep. We succeeded in scrambling up to it ; and then,
crawling outwards on all fours, — the precipice, as we proceed-
ed, beetling more and more formidable from above, and the
water becoming greener and deeper below, — we reached the
outer point of the promontory ; and then doubling the cape
on a still narrowing margin, — the water, by a reverse process,
becoming sh&llower and less green as we advanced inwards, —
we found the ledge terminating just where, after clearing the
sea, it overhung the gravelly beach at an elevation of nearly
ten feet. Adown we both dropped, proud of our success ; up
splashed the rattling gravel as we fell ; and for at least the
whole coming week — though we were unaware of the extent
of our good luck at the time — the marvels of the Doocot Cave
mitrht be retrarded as solely and exclusivelv our own. For one
short seven days, — to borrow emi)hasis from the phraseology of
Carlyle, — " they were our own, and no other man's."
The first few hours were hours of sheer enjoyment. T\\e
.arger cave proved a mine of marvels and we found a great
deal additional to wonder at on the slopes bonealh the preci-
pices, and along the piece of rocky sea-beach in front. Wo
succeeded in diseovering for ourselves, in creeping, dwarf
bushes, that toM nt' the blighting influence of the sea-spray ;
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 75
the pale-yellow honeysuckle, that we had never seen before,
save in gardens and shrubberies ; and on a deeply shaded slope
that leaned against one of the steeper precipices, we detected
the sweet-scented woodrufl' of the flower -plot and parterre,
with its pretty verticillate leaves, that become the more odor-
iferous the more they are crushed, and its white delicate flow-
ers. There, too, immediately in the opening of the deeper
cave, where a small stream came pattering in detached drops
from the over-beetling precipice above, like the first drops of
a heavy thunder-shower, we found the hot, bitter scurvy grass,
with its minute cruciform flowers, which the great Captain
Cook had used in his voyages ; above all, there were the caves
with their pigeons, — white, variegated, and blue, — and their
mysterious and gloomy depths, in which plants hardened into
stone, and water became marble, hi a short time we had brok-
en ofl' with our hammer whole pocketfuls of stalactites and
petrified moss. There were little pools at the side of the cave,
where we could see the work of congelation going on, as at the
commencement of an October frost, when the cold north wind
ruffles, and but barely ruffles, the surface of some mountain
lochan or sluggish moorland stream, and shows the newly-
formed needles of ice projecting mole-like from the shores into
the water. So rapid was the course of deposition, that there
were cases in which the sides of the hollows seemed growing
almost in proportion as the water rose in them ; the springs,
lipping over, deposited their minute crystals on the edges ; and
the reservoirs deepened and became more capacious as their
mounds were built up by this curious masonry. The long
telescopic prospect of the sj^arkling sea, as viewed from' the
mner extremity of the cavern, while all around was dark as
midnight, — the sudden gleam of the sea-gull, seen for a mo-
ment from the recess, as it flitted past in the sunshine, — the
black heaving bulk of the grampus, as it threw up its slender
jets of spray, and then, turning downwards, displayed its glossy
back and vast angular fin, — even the pigeons, as they shot
whizzing by, one moment scarce visible in the gloom, the next
radiaut in the light, — all acquired a new interest, from the p©
76 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
cul'iarity f the setting in which we saw them. They formed
a series of sun-gilt vignettes, framed in jet ; and it was long
ere we tired of seeing and admiring in them much of the
strange and the beautiful. It did seem rather ominous, how
ever, and perhaps somewhat supernatural to boot, that abou
an hour after noon, the tide, while there was yet a full fathom
of water beneath the brow of the promontory, ceased to fall,
and then, after a quarter of an hour's space, began actually to
creep upwards on the beach. But just hoping that there might
be some mistake in the matter, which the evening tide would
scarce fail to rectify, we continued to amuse ourselves, and to
hope on. Hour after hour passed, lengthening as the shadows
lengthened, and yet the tide still rose. The sun had sunk be-
hind the precipices, and all was gloom along their bases, and
double gloom in their caves ; but their rugged brows still
cnught the red glare of evening. The flush rose higher and
higher, chased by the shadows ; and then, after lingering for
a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed
away, and the whole became sombre and gray. The sea-gull
sprang upwards from whei-e he had floated on the ripple, and
hied him slowly aAvay to his lodge in his deep-sea stack ; the
dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent
stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice ; the pig-
eons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and the
opposite land, and disappeared amid the gloom of their caves ;
every creature that had wings made use of them in speeding
homewards ; but neither my companion nor myself had any ;
and there was no possibility of getting home without them.
We made desperate efforts to scale the precipices, and on two
several occasions succeeded in reaching mid-way shelves among
the crags, where the sparrowhawk and the raven build ; but
though we liad climbed well enough to render our return a
matter of bare possibility, there was no possibility whatever of
getting fiirther up ; the cliffs had never been scaled before,
and they were not destined to be scaled now. And so, as
f.he twilight deepened, and the precarious footing became every
moment more doubtful and precarious still, we had just tr
OE. THE STORY OF MY El5UGATI0N. 77
give up in despair. "Wouldn't care for myself," said the
poor little fellow, my companion, bursting into tears, "if it
were not for my mother ; but what will my mother say 1"
" Wouldn't care neither," said I, with a heavy heart ; " but
it's just back water, and we'll get out at twall." We retreated
together into one of the shallower and drier caves, and, clear-
ing a little spot of its rough stones, and then groping along the
rocks for the dry grass that in the spring season hangs from
them in withered tufts, we formed for ourselves a most uucom
fortable bed, and lay down in one another's arras. For the
last few hours mountainous piles of clouds had been rising
dark and stormy in the sea-mouth : they had flared porten-
tously in the setting sun, and had worn, with the decline of
evening, almost every meteoric tint of anger, from fiery red to
a sombre thundrous brown, and from sombre brown to doleful
black. And we could now at least hear what they portended,
though we could no longer see. The rising wind began to
howl mournfully amid the cliffs, and the sea, hitherto so si-
lent, to beat heavily against the shore, and to boom, like dis-
tress-guns, from the recesses of the two deep-sea caves. We
could hear, too, the beating rain, now heavier, now lighter, as
the gusts swelled or sank ; and the intermittent patter of the
streamlet over the deeper cave, now driving against the preci
pices, now descending heavily on the stones.
My companion had only the real evils of the case to deal
with, and so, the hardness of our bed and the coldness of the
night considered, he slept tolerably well ; but I was unlucky
enough to have evils greatly worse than the real ones to annoy
me. The corpse of a drowned seaman had been found on the
beach ibout a month previous, some forty yaids from where
we lay. The hands and feet, miserably contracted, and corru-
gated into deep folds at every joint, yet swollen to twice their
proper size, had been bleached as white as pieces of alumed
sheep-skin ; and where the head should have been, there ex
isted oily a sad mass of rubbish. I had examined the body
as voung peoj^le are apt to do, a great deal too curiously for
iny peace ; and, though I had never done the poor nameless
78 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
seaman any harm, I could not have suffered more from hiiE
during that melancholy night, had I been his murderer.
Sleeping or waking, he was continually before me. Every
time I dropped into a doze, he would come stalking up the
beach from the spot where he had lain, with his stift' white fin-
gers, that stuck out like eagles' toes, and his pale, broken pulj)
of a head, and attempt striking me ; and then I would awaken
with a start, cling to my companion, and remember that the
drowned sailor had lain festering among the identical bunches
of searweed that still rotted on the beach not a stone-cast
away. The near neighborhood of a score of living bandits
would have inspired less horror than the recollection of that
one dead seaman.
Towards midnight the sky cleared and the wind fell, and
the moon, in her last quarter, rose red as a mass of heated iron
out of the sea. We crept down, in the uncertain light, over the
rough slippery crags, to ascertain whether the tide had not
fallen sufficiently far to yield us a passage ; but we found the
waves chafing among the rocks just where the tide-line had
rested twelve hours before, and a full fathom of sea enclasping
the base of the promontory. A glimmering idea of the real
nature of our situation at length crossed my mind. It was not
imprisonment for a tide to which we had consigned ourselves ;
it was imprisonment for a week. There was little comfort
in the thought, arising, as it did, amid the chills and terrors of
a dreary midnight ; and I looked wistfully on the sea as our
only path of escape. There was a vessel crossing the wake of
the moon at the time, scarce half a mile from the shore; and,
assisted by my companion, I began to shout at the top of my
lungs, in the hope of being heard l)y the sailors. We saw her
dim bulk falling slowly athwart the red glittering belt of light
that had rendered her visible, and then disappearing in '.he
murky blackness ; and just as we lost sight of her forever, wo
could hear an indistinct sound mingling with the dash of the
waves, — the shout, in rej)ly, of the startled liehnsnian. The
vessel, as we afterwards Icapiied, was a large stone-lighter,
deeply laden, and unfurnished with a boat ; nor were her crev
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 79
at all sure that it would have been safe to attend to the mid-
night voice from amid the rocks, even had they the means of
communication with the shore. We waited on and on, how-
ever, now shouting by turns, and now shouting together ; but
there was no second reply ; and at length, losing hope, wo
groped our way bacli to our comfortless bed, just as the tide
had again turned on the beach, and the waves began to roll
upv ards higher and higher at every dash
As the moon rose and brightened, the dead seamar. became
less troublesome ; and I had succeeded in dropping as soundly
asleep as my companion, when we were both aroused by a loud
shout. We started up, and again crept downwards among
the crags to the shore ; and as we reached the sea, the shout
was repeated. It was that of at least a dozen harsh voices
united. There was a brief pause, followed by another shout ;
and then two boats, strongly manned, shot round the western
promontory, and the men, resting on their oars, turned towards
the rock, and shouted yet again. The whole town had been
alarmed by the intelligence that two little boys had straggled
away in the morning to the rocks of the southern Sutor, and
had not found their way back. The precipices had been a
scene of frightful accidents from time immemorial, and it was
at once inferred that one other sad accident had been added to
the number. True, there were cases remembered of people
having been tide-bound in the Doocot Caves, and not much
the worse in consequence ; but as the caves were inaccessible
during neaps, we could not, it was said, possibly be in them*
and the sole remaining ground of hope was, that, as had hap-
pened once before, only one of the two had been killed, and
that the survivor was lingering among the rocks, afraid to come
home. And in this belief, when the moon rose and the surf
fell, the two boats had been fitted out. It was late in the morn
ing ere we reached Cromarty, but a crowd on the beach await
ed our arrival ; and there were anxious-looking lights glancing
in the windows, thick and manifold ; nay, such was the inter-
est elicited, that some enormously bad verse, in which the
tvriter described the incident a few days after, became popular
80 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ,
enough to be handed about in manuscript, and read at tea-
parties by the elite of the town. Poor old Miss Bond, who
kept the town boarding-school, got the piece nicely dressed up,
somewhat upon the principle on which Macpherson translated
Ossian ; and at her first school-examination — proud and happy
day foi the author ! — it was recited with vast applause, by one
of her prettiest young ladies, before the assembled taste and
fashi' 1 of Cromartv
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 8l
CHAPTER V.
"The wise
8l.aok their wl)ite aged heads o'er me, and M-d,
Of such materials wretched men were made."
Byron.
The report went abroad about this time, not without some
foundation, that Miss Bond purposed patronizing me. The
copy of my verses which had fallen into her liands — a genuine
holograph — bore atop a magnificent view of the Doocot, in
which horrid crags of burnt umber were perforated by yawn-
ing caverns of Indian-ink, and crested by a dense pine forest
of sap-green ; while vast waves, blue on the one side and green
on the other, and bearing blotches of white lead atop, rolled
frightfully beneath. And Miss Bond had concluded, it was
said, that such a genius as that evinced by the sketch and the
" poem " for those sister arts of painting and poesy in which
she herself excelled, should not be left to waste itself uncared
for in the desert wilderness. She had published, shortly be-
fore, a work, in two slim volumes, entitled, " Letters of a Vib
lage Governess," — a curious kind of medley, little amenable to
the ordinary rules, but a genial book, notwithstanding, with
nore heart than head about it ; and not a few of the incidents
which it related had the merit of being true. It was an un-
lucky merit for poor Miss Bond. She dated her book from
Fortr.ose, where she taught what was designated in the Al-
manac as the boarding-schocl of the place, but which, accord-
82 MY SCHOOLS AJiD SCHOOLMASTERS;
ing to Miss Bond's own description, was the school of the
" village governess." And as her tales were found to be a
kind of mosaics composed of droll bits of foct picked up in fhe
neighborhood, Fortrose soon became considerably too hot for
her. She had drawn, under the over-transparent guise of the
niggardly Mrs. Flint, the skin-flint wife of a " paper minister,"
who had ruined at one fell blow her best silk dress, and a
dozen of good eggs to boot, by putting the eggs in her pocket
when going out to a party, and then stumbling over a stone.
A.nd, of course, Mrs. Skinflint and the Rev. Mr. Skinflint, with
all their blood-relations, could not be other than greatly grati-
fied to find the story furbished up in the printed form, and
set in fun. There were other stories as imprudent and as
amusing, — of young ladies caught eavesdropping at theii
neighbors' windows ; and of gentlemen, ill at ease in their
families, sitting soaking among vulgar companions in the public
nouse ; and so the authoress, shortly after the appearance of
her work, ceased to be the village governess of Fortrose, and
became the village governess of Cromarty.
It was on this occasion that I saw, for the first time, with
mingled admiration and awe, a human creature, — not dead
and gone, and merely a printed name, — that had actually
published a book. Poor Miss Bond was a kindly sort of
person, fond of children, and mightily beloved by them in
turn ; and, though keenly alive to the ludicrous, without a
grain of malice in her. I remember how, about this time,
when, assisted by some three or four boys more, I had suc-
ceeded in building a huge house, full four feet long and three
feet high, that contained us all, and a fire, and a great deal of
smoke to hoot, Miss Bond, the authoress, came, and looked in
upon us, first through the little door, and then down throng}
the chimney, and gave us kind words, and seemed to enjoy
our enjoyment very much ; and how we all deemed her visit
one of the grt-atest events that could possibly have taken piace
She had been intimate with the parents of Sir Walter Scott;
<r.d, on the appearance of Sir Walter's first pul)lication, the
• idinstrelsey of the Scottish Border," she had taken a fit of
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 85
enthusiasm, and written to him ; and, when ii the cold par-
oxysm, and inclined to think she had done something foolish,
had received from Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, a character-
istically warm-hearted reply. She experienced much kind-
ness at his hands ever after ; and when she herself became an
author, she dedicated her book to him. He now and then
procured boarders for her ; and when, after leaving Cromarty
for Edinburgh, she opened a school in the latter place, and got
on with but indifferent success. Sir Walter — though struggling
with his own difficulties at the time — sent her an enclosure of
ten pounds, to scare, as he said in his note, " the wolf from
the door." But Miss Bond, like the original of his own
Jeanie Deans, was a " proud bodie ;" and the ten pounds
were returned, with an intimation to the effect that the wolf
had not yet come to the door. Poor lady ! I suspect he came
to the door at last. Like many other writers of books, her
voyage through life skirted, for the greater part of the way,
the bleak lee shore of necessity ; and it cost her not a little
skilful steering at times to give the strand a respectable offing.
And in her solitary old age, she seemed to have got fairly
aground. There was an attempt made by some of her former
pupils to raise money enough to purchase for her a small annu
ity ; but when the design was in progress, I heard of her death.
She illustrated in her life the remark recorded by herself in her
" Letters," as made by an humble friend : — " It's no an easy
thing, Mem, for a woman to go through the world without a
head^"" i. e., single and unprotected.
From some unexplained cause. Miss Bond's patronage never
reached me. I am sure the good lady intended giving me
lessons in both drawing and composition ; for she had said it,
and her heart was a kind one ; but then her time was too much
occupied to admit of her devoting an occasional hour to myself
alone ; and as for introducing me to her young-lady classes, iu
my rough garments, ever greatly improved the wrong way by
my explorations in the ebb and the peat-moss, and frayed, at
times, beyond even my mother's ability of repair, by warping
to the tops of great trees, and by my feats as a cragsman, —
6
84 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASIEllS ;
that would have been a piece of Jack-Cadeism, on which, theA
or now, no village governess could have ventured. And so I
was left tc get on in verse and picture-making quite in the wild
way, without care or culture.
My schoolfellows liked my stories well enough, — better, at
. east on most occasions, than they did the lessons of the mas-
ter ; but, beyond the common ground of enjoyment which these
extempore compositions furnished to both the " sennachie," and
his auditors, our tracts of amusement lay widely apart. I dis-
liked, as I have said, the yearly cock-fight — found no pleasure
in cat-killing, or in teasing at nights, or on the street, the
cross-tempered, halfwitted eccentrics of the village, — usually
kept aloof from the ordinary play-grounds, and very rarely
mingled in the old hereditary games. On the other hand, with
the exception of my little friend of the cave, who, even after
that disastrous incident, evinced a tendency to trust and follow
me as implicitly as before, my schoolmates cared as little for
my amusements as I did for theirs ; and, having the majority
on their side, they of course voted mine to be the foolish ones.
And certainly a run of ill-luck followed me in my sports about
this time, that did give some show of reason to their decision.
In the course of my book-hunting, I had fallen in with two
old-fashioned military treatises, part of the small library of a
retired officer, lately deceased, of which the one entitled the
" Military Medley," discussed the whole art of marshalling
troops, and contained numerous plans, neatly colored, of bat-
talions drawn up in all possible forms, to meet all possible exi-
gencies ; while the other, which also abounded in prints, treated
of the noble science of fortification according to the system of
Vauban. I pored over both works with much perseverance ;
and, regarding them as admirable toy-books, set myself to con-
struct, on a very small scale, some of the toys with which they
specially dealt. The sea-shore in the iinniediate neighbor-
hood of the town appeared to my inexperienced eye an excel-
lent field for the carrying on of a campaign. The sea-sand
I found quite coherent enough, wlu'n still moistened by tha
waters of the receding tide, to stand up in the form of towers
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 86
and bastions, and long lines of rampart ; and there was one of
the commonest of the Littorinidoe, — Littorina littoralis, that in
one of its varieties is of a rich yellow color, and in another of
a bluish-green tint, — which supplied me with soldiers enough
to execute all the evolutions figured and described in the
" Medley." The warmly-hued yellow shells represented Brit-
ons in their scarlet, — the more dingy ones, the French in their
uniforms of dirty blue ; well-selected specimens of Purpura
lapillus, just tipped on their backs with a speck of paint, blue
or red, from my box, made capital dragoons ; while a few
dozens of the slender pyramidal shells of Turritella communis
formed complete parks of artillery. With such unlimited
stores of the materiel of war at my command, I was enabled,
more fortunate than Uncle Toby of old, to fight battles and
conduct retreats, assault and defend, build up fortifications and
then batter them down again, at no expense at all ; and the
only drawback on such a vast amount of advantage that I
could at first perceive, consisted in the circumstance, that the
shore was exceedingly open to observation, and that my new
amusements, when surveyed at a little distance, did greatly
resemble those of the very young children of the place, who
used to repair to the same arenaceous banks and shingle-beds,
to bake dirt-pies in the sand, or range lines of shells on little
shelves of stone, imitative of the crockery cupboard at home.
Not only my school-fellows, but also some of their parents,
evidently arrived at the conclusion that the two sets of amuse-
ments — mine and those of the little children — were identical ;
for the elder folk said, that " in their time, poor Francie had
been just such another boy, and every one saw what he had
come to ;" while the younger, more energetic in their mani-
festations, and more intolerant of folly, have even paused ia
their games of marbles, or ceased spinning their tops, to hoo*
at me from a safe distance. But the campaign went on ; and
I solaced myself by reflecting, that neither the big folk nor the
little folk could bring a battalion of troops across a bridge
of boats in the face of an enemy, or knew that a regular for.
tificat'OD could be constructed on only a regular polygon.
86 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS ^
I at length discovered, however, that as a sea-shore is alway&
a sloping plane, and the Cromarty beach, in particular, a plane
of a rather steep slope, it afforded no proper site for a fortress
fitted to stand a protracted siege, seeing that, fortify the place
as I might, it could be easily commanded by batteries raised
on the highei side. And so, fixing upon a grassy knoll among
the woods, in the immediate neighborhood of a scaur of boul-
der clay, capped by a thick stratum of sand, as a much better
scene of operations, I took possession of the knoll somewhat
irregularly ; and carrying to it large quantities of sand from
the scaur, converted it into the site of a magnificent strong-
hold. First, I erected an ancient castle, consisting of four
towers built on a rectangular base, and connected by straight
curtains embrasured a-top. I then surrounded the castle by
out-works in the modern style, consisting of greatly lower
curtains than the ancient ones, flanked by numerous bastions,
and bristling with cannon of huge calibre, made of the joint-
ed stalks of the hemlock ; while in advance of these I laid
down ravelins, horn-works, and tenailles. I was vastly de-
lighted with my work ; it would, I was sure, be no easy mat-
ter to reduce such a fortress ; but observing an eminence in
the immediate neighborhood, which could, I thought, be occu-
pied by a rather annoying battery, I was deliberating how I
might best take possession of it by a redoubt, when out start-
ed from behind a tree, the fiictor of the property on which I
was trespassing, and rated me soundly for spoiling the grass
in a manner so wantonly mischievous, Horn-work and half^
moon, tower and bastion, proved of no manner of efiect in re-
pelling an attack of a kind so little anticipated. I did think
that the factor, who was not only an intelligent man, but had
also seen much service in his day on the town links, as the
holder of a commission in the Cromarty volunteers, might have
perceived that I was laboring on scientific principles, and sc
deem mc worthy of some tolerance on that aooouiit ; but I sup
pose ho did not; though, to be sure, his scold died out good
naturedly enough in the end, and I saw him laugh as he turn
vd away. But so it was, that in the extremity of my moi
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION'. 87
titication, I gave up generalship and bastion-building for the
time ; chough, alas, my next amusement must have worn in
the eyes of my youthful compeers as suspicious an aspect as
either.
My friend of the cave had lent me what I had never seen
l)efore, — a fine qirarto edition of Anson's Voyages, containing
the original prints (my father's copy had only the maps) ;
among the others, Mr. Brett's elaborate delineation of that
strangest of a essels, a proa of the Ladrone Islands. I was much
struck by the singularity of the construction of a bark that,
while its head and stern were exactly alike, had sides that to-
tally differed from each other, and that, with the wind upon
the beam, outsailed, it was said, all other vessels in the world ;
and having the com'.nand of the little shop in which my Uncle
Sandy made occasional carts and wheelbarrows when unem-
ployed abroad, I set myself to construct a miniature proa, on
the model given in the print, and succeeded in fabricating a
very extraordinary proa indeed. While its lee side was per
pendicular as a wall, its windward one, to which there was an
outrigger attached, resembled that of a flat-bottomed boat ;
head and stern were exactly alike, so as to fit each for per-
forming in turn the part of either ; a movable yard, which
supported the sail, had to be shifted towards the end convert-
ed into the stern for the time, at each tack ; while the sail it-
self—a most uncouth-looking thing — formed a scalene trian-
gle. Such was the vessel — some eighteen inches long or so
— with which I startled from their propriety the mimic navi-
gators of a horse-pond in the neighborhood, — all very master-
ly critics in all sorts of barks and barges known on the Sc(>t>-
tish coast. According to Campbell,
(( 'n
'Twas a thing beyond
Uescription wretched; such a wherry,
Perhaps, iio'cr ventured on a pond,
Or crossed a ferry."
And well did my fellows appreciate its extreme ludicrousness.
It was certainly rash to " venture" it on this especial " pond j'
88 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
for, greatly to the damage of the rigging, it was fairly pelted
oft', and I was sent to test elsewhere its sailing qualities, which
were, as I ascertained, not very remarkable after all. And
thus, after a manner so unworthy, were my essays in strategy
and bark-building received by a censorious age, that judged
ere it knew. Were 1 sentimental, which luckily I am not, I
might well exclaim, in the very vein of Rousseau, Alas ! it
has been ever the misfortune of my life that, save by a few
friends, I have never been understood !
I was evidently out-Francieing Francie ; and the parents of
my young friend, who saw that I had acquired considerable in-
fluence over him, and were afraid lest I should make another
Francie of him, had become naturally enough desirous to
break off" our intimacy, when there occurred an unlucky acci-
dent, which served materially to assist them in the design.
My friend's father was the master of a large trading smack,
which in war times carried a few twelve-pounders, and was
furnished with a small magazine of powder and shot ; and my
friend having secured for himself from the general stock,
through the connivance of the ship-boy, an entire cannon car-
tridge, containing some two or three pounds of gunpowder, 1
was, of course, let into the secret, and invited to share in the
sport and the spoil. We had a glorious day together in his
mother's garden ; never before did such magnificent volcanoes
break forth out of mole-hills, or were plots of daisies and vio-
lets so ruthlessly scorched and torn by the explosion of deep-
laid mines ; and though a few mishaps did happen to over-
forward fingers, and to eye-brows that were in the way, our
amusements passed off" iiinoculously on the whole, and even-
ing saw nearly the half of our precious store unexhausted.
It was garnered up by my friend in an unsuspected corner of
the garret in which he slept, and would have been safe, had he
lOt been seized, when going to bed, with a yearning desire to
survey his treasure by candle-light ; when an unlucky sjjark
from the flame fX|>loded the whole. He was so sadly ])urnt
about the face and eyes as to be blind for several days after ;
but, amid smoke and confusion, he gallantly bolted his garret
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 89
door, and, while the inmates of the household, startled by the
shock and the noise, came rushing up stairs, sturdily refused
to let any of them in. Volumes of gunpowder reek issued
from every crack and cranny, and his mother and sisters were
pi-odigiously alarmed. At length, however, he capitulated, —
terms unknown ; and I next morning heard with horror and
dismay of the accident. It had been matter of agreement be-
tween us on the previous day, mainly in order to screen the
fine fellow of a ship-boy, that I should be regarded as th
owner of the powder ; but here was a consequence on which
I had not calculated ; and the strong desire to see my poor
friend was dashed by the dread of being held responsible by
his parents and sisters for the accident. And so, more than a
week elapsed ere I could muster up courage enough to visit
him. I was coldly received by his mother, and, what vexed
me to the heart, coldly received by himself; and suspecting
that he- had been making an ungenerous use of our late treaty,
I took leave in high dudgeon, and came away. My suspi-
cions, however, wronged him ; he had stoutly denied, as I af-
terwards learned, that I had any share in the powder ; but his
friends deeming the opportunity a good one for breaking with
me, had compelled him, very unwillingly, and after much re
sistance, to give me up. And from this period more than
two years elapsed, though our hearts beat quick and high
every time we accidentally met, ere we exchanged a single
word. On one occasion, however, shortly after the accident,
we did exchange letters. I wrote to him from the school-form,
when, of course, I ought to have been engaged with my
tasks, a stately epistle, in the style of the billets in the
" Female Quixo te," which began, I remember, as follows : —
" 1 once thought I had a friend whom I could rely upon ; but
experience tells me he was only nominal. For, had he bee« a
real friend, no accident could have interfered with, or arbi-
trary command annihilated his affection," &c., &c. As I was
rather an indiflereut scribe at the time, one of the lads known
as the " copperplate writers" of the class, -made for me a fair
copy of my lucubration, full of all manner of elegant dashes.
90 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
and n which the spelling of every word was scrupulously test
ed hy the dictionary. And in due course I received a care-
fully engrossed note in reply, of which the manual portion
was performed by my old companion, but the composition, aa
he afterwards told me, elaborated by some one else. He as-
sured me he was still my friend, but that there was " certain
circumstances" which would prevent us from meeting for the
future on our old terms. We were, however, destined to
meet pretty often in the future, notwithstanding ; and narrow
ly missed going to the bottom together many years after, in ,
the Floating Manse, grown infirm in her nether parts at the
time, when he was the outed minister of Small Isles, and 1
editor of the Witness newspaper.
I had a maternal aunt long settled in the Highlands of
Sutherland, who was so much older than her sister, my moth-
er, that when nursing her oldest boy, she had, when on a visit
to the low country, assisted also in nursing her. The boy had
shot up into a very clever lad, who, having gone to seek his
fortune in the south, rose, through the several degrees of clerk-
ship in a mercantile firm, to be the head of a commercial house
of his own, which, though ultimately unsuccessful, seemed for
some four or five years to be in a fair way of thriving. For
about three of these, the portion of the profit which fell to my
cousin's share did not tall short of fifteen hundred pounds per
annum ; aud on visiting his parents in their nighiand home in
the heyday of his prosperity, after an absence of years, it was
found that he had a great many friends in his native district
on whom he had not calculated, and of a class that had not
been greatly in the hal)it of visiting his mother's cottage, but
who now came to lunch, and dine, and take their wine with
hiin, and who seemed to value and admire him very much.
My a nit, who was little accustomed to receive high company,
and found lierself, like Martha of old, "cumbered about much
serving,' urgently Insought my mother, who was young and
active at the time, to visit and assist her; and, infuiitely to my
delight, 1 was included in the invitation. The place was not
iDUcli above thirty miles from Cromarty ; but tb<^n it was in
OR, THE STORY OP MY EDUCATION. 91
the true Highlands, which ! had never before seen, sa\e on
the distant horizon ; and, to a boy who had to walk all the
way. even thirty miles, in an age when railways were not, and
ere even mail gigs had penetrated so far, represented a jour-
ney of no inconsiderable distance. My mother, though rathci
a delicate-looking woman, walked remarkable well ; and early
on the evening of the second day, we reached together my
aunt's cottage, in the ancient Barony of Gruids. It was a
low, long, dingy edifice of turf, four or five rooms in length,
but only one in height, that, lying along a gentle acclivity,
somewhat resembled at a distance a huge black snail creeping
up the bill. As the lower apartment was occupied by my
uncle's half-dozen milk-cows, the declination of the floor, con-
sequent on the nature of the site, proved of signal importance
from the free drainage which it secured ; the second apart-
ment, reckoning upwards, which was of considerable size,
formed the sitting-room of the family, and had, in the old
Highland style, its fire full in the middle of the floor, without
back or sides ; so that, like a bonfire kindled in the open air,
all the inmates could sit around it in a wide circle, — the wo-
men invariably ranged on the one side, and the men on the
other : the apartment beyond was partitioned into small and
very dark bed rooms : while, further oji still, there was a closet
with a little window in it, Avhich was assigned to my mother
and me; and beyond all lay what was emphatically "the
room," as it was built of stone, and had both window and
chimney, with chairs, and table, and chest of drawers, a large
box-bed, and a small but well-filled bookcase. And "the
room" was, of course, tor the time, my cousin the merchant's
apartment, his dormitory at night, and the hospitable refeo
tory in which he entertained his friends by day.
My aunt's family was one of solid worth. Her husband,—
a compactly-built, stout-limbed, elderly Highlander, rather be-
low the middle size, of grave and somewhat melancholy aspect,
but in reality of a temperament rather cheerful than otherwise,
had been somewhat wild in his young days. He had been
a good shot and a skilful angler, and had danced at bridala
92 MT SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS;
and, as was common in the Highlands at the time, at lyke-
wakes ; nay, on one occasion he had succeeded in inducing a
new- nade widow to take the floor in a Strathspey, beside her
husband's corpse, when every one else had failed to bring her
up, by roguishly remarking, in her hearing, that whoever else
might have refused to dance at poor Donald's death-wake, he
little thought it would have been her. But a great change had
passed over him, and he was now a staid, thoughtful, God-
fearing man, much respected in the Barony for honest worth
and quiet, unobtrusive consistency of character. His wife
had been brought, at an early age, under the influence of
Donald Roy's ring, and had, like her mother, been the means
of introducing the vitalities of religion into her household
They had two other sons besides the merchant, — both well-
built, robust men, somewhat taller than their fither, and of
such character, that one of my Cromarty cousins, in making
out his way, by dint of frequent and sedulous inquiry, to their
dwelling:, found the general verdict of the district embodied
in the very bad English of a poor old woman, who, after doing
her best to direct him, certified her knowledge of the house-
hold by remarking, " It's a goot mistress ; — it's a goot maistcr ;
— it's a goot, goot two lads." The elder of the two brothers
superintended, and partly wrought, his fa*^her's little farm ; for
the father himself found employment enough in acting as a
sort of humble factor for the proprietor of the Barony, who
lived at a distance, and had no dwelling upon the land. The
younger was a mason and slater, and was usually employed,
in the working seasons, at a distance ; but in winter, and ou
this occasion, for a few weeks during the visit of his brother
the merchant, he resided with his father. Both were men of
marked individuality of character. The elder, Hugh, was an
ingenious, self-taught nicchanie, who used, in the long wintci
evenings, to fiisliion a number of curious little artieles by the
6reside, — among the rest. Highland snuff'-niuUs, with which he
supplied all his friends; and he was at this time engaged in
building fur his father a Highland barn, and, to vary the work,
Ikbricating for hin. a Highland plough. The younger, George,
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 93
who had wrought for a few vears at. his trade in the south of
Scotland, was a great reader, wrote very tolerable prose, and
verse which, f not poetry, to which he made no pretensions,
was at least quaintly-turned rhyme. He had, besides, a com-
petent knowledge of geometry, and was skilled in architec-
tural drawing; and — strange accomplishment for a Celt — ha
was an adept in the noble science of self-defence. But George
never sought out quarrels ; and such was his amount of bone
and muscle, and such the expression of manly resolution
stamped on his countenance, that they never came in his way
unsought.
At the close of the day, when the members of the house
hold had assembled in a wide circle round the fire, my uncle
" took the Book," and I witnessed, for the first time, family
worship conducted in Gaelic. There was, I found, an interest-
mg peculiarity in one portion of the services which he con-
ducted. He was, as I have said, an elderly man, and had
worshipped in his family ere Dr. Stewart's Gaelic Translation
of the Scriptures had been introduced into the country ; and
as he possessed in those days only the English Bible, while
his domestics understood only Gaelic, he had to acquire the
art, not uncommon in Sutherland at the time, of translating the
English chapter for them, as he read, into their native tongue ;
and this he had learned to do with such ready fluency, that no
one could have guessed it to be other than a Gaelic work from
which he was reading. Nor had the introduction of Dr.
Stewart's Translation rendered the practice obsolete in his
household. His Gaelic was Sutherlandshire Gaelic, whereas
that of Dr. Stewart was Argyleshire Gaelic. His family un-
derstood his rendering better, in consequence, than that of the
Doctor ; and so he continued to translate from his English
Bible ad aperturam Hbri, many years after the Gaelic edition
lad been spread over the country. The concluding evening
prayer was one of great solemnity and unction. I was im-
acquainted with the language in which it was couched ; but
it was impossible to avoid being struck, notwithstanding, with
'ts wrestlmg earnestness and fervor. The man who poured
94 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
it fortn evidently believed there was an unseen ear open to itj
and an all-seeing presence in the place, before whom every se.
cret thought lay exposed. The entire scene was a deeply im-
pressive one ; and when I saw, in witnessing the celebration
of High Mass in a Popish cathedral many years after, the altai
suddenly enveloped in a dim and picturesque obscurity, amid
which the curling smoke of the incense ascended, and heard
the musically-modulated prayer sounding in the distance from
within the screen, my thoughts reverted to the rude Highland
cottage, where, amid solemnities not theatric, the red umbry
light of the fire fell with uncertain glimmer upon dark walls,
and bare black rafters, and kneeling forms, and a pale ex-
panse of dense smoke, that, filling the upper portion of the
roof, overhung the floor like a ceiling, and there arose amid
the gloom the sounds of prayer truly God-directed, and poured
out from the depths of the heart ; and I felt that the stoled priest
of the cathedral was merely an artist, though a skilful one, but
that in the '• priest and father " of the cottage there were the
truth and reality from which the artist drew. No bolt was
drawn across the outer door as we retired for the night. The
philosophic Biot, when employed with his experiments on the
seconds pcnduhmi, resided for several months in one of the
smaller Shetland islands; and, fresh from the troubles of
France, — his imagination bearing about with it, if I may so
speak, the stains of the guillotine, — the state of trustful secu-
rity in which he found the simple inhabitants filled him with
astonishment. " Here, during the twenty -five years in which
Europe has been devouring herself," he exclaimed, " the door
of the house I inhal)it has remained open day and night." The
interior of Sutherland was at the time of my visit in a oimi-
lar condition. The door of my uncle's cottage, unfurnished
with lock or l)ar, opened, like that of the hermit in the ballad,
with a latch; l»ut, unlike that of the hermit, it was not bo-
cause there were no stores within to demand the care of the
master, but because at that comparatively recent period the
crime of theft was unknown in the district.
1 rose early next morning, when the dew was yet heavy on
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 96
grass and lichen, curious to explore a locality so ne\^ to me.
The ti-act, though a primary one, forms one of the tamer gneiss
districts of Scotland; and I found the nearer hills compara-
tively low and confluent, and the broad valley in which lay
my uncle's cottage, flat, open, and unpromising. Still there
were a few points to engage me ; and the more I attracted
myself to them, the more did their interest grow. The western
slopes of the valley are mottled by grassy tomhans, — the mo
raines of some ancient glacier, around and over which ther
rose, at this period, a low widely-spreading wood of birch,
hazel, and mountain ash, — of hazel, with its nuts fast filling
at the time, and of mountain ash, with its berries glowing
bright in orange and scarlet. In looking adown the hollow, a
group of the green tomhans might be seen relieved against the
blue hills of Ross ; in looking upwards, a solitary birch-cover-
ed hillock of a similar origin, but larger proportions, stood
strongly out against the calm waters of Loch Shin and the pur-
ple peaks of the distant Ben- Hope. In the bottom of the valley,
close beside my uncle's cottage, I marked several low swellings
of the rock beneath, rising above the general level ; and, ranged
•ilong these, there w^-re groupes of what seemed to be huge
Doulder stones, save that they were less rounded and water-
worn than ordinary boulders, and were, what groupes of boul-
ders rarely are, all of one quality. And on examination I as-
certained that some of their number, which stood up like
broken obelisks, tall, and comparatively narrow of base, and
all hoary with moss and lichen, were actually still connected
with the mass of rock below. They were the wasted upper
portions of vast dikes and veins of a gray, large-grained sienite,
that traverse the fundamental gneiss of the valley, and which
[ found veined, in turn, by threads and seams of a white
quartz, abounding in drusy cavities, thickly lined along their
sides with sprig crystals. Never had I seen such lovely crys-
tals on the shores of Cromarty, or anywhere else. They were
clear and transparent as the purest spring water, furnished
each with six sides, and sharpened atop into six facets. Bor-
rowing one of Gsusin George's hammers, I soon filled a little
96 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
box with these gems, -which even my mother and aunt were
content to admire, as what of old used, they said, to be tailed
Bristol diamonds, and set in silvei" brooches and sleeve-buttons.
Further, within less than a hundred yards of the cottage, 1
found a lively little stream, brown, but clear as a cairngorm
of the purest water, and abounding, as I soon ascertained, in
trout, lively and little like itself, and gaily speckled with
XJarlet. It winded through a flat, dank meadow, never dis-
urbed by the plough ; for it had been a burying-ground of old,
and flat undressed stones lay thick amid the rank grass. And
in the lower corner, where the old turf-wall had sunk into an
inconspicuous mound, there stood a mighty tree, all solitary,
for its fellows had long before disappeared, and so hollow
hearted in its corrupt old age, that, though it still threw out
every season a mighty expanse of foliage, I was able to creep
into a little chamber in its trunk, from which I could look out
through circular openings Avhere boughs once had been, and
listen, when a sudden shower came sweeping down the glen,
to the pattering of the rain-drops amid the leaves. The valley
of the Gruids was perhaps not one of the finest or most beau-
tiful of Highland valleys, but it was a very admirable place
after all ; and amid its woods, and its rocks, and its tomhans,
and at the side of its little trouting stream, the weeks passed
delightfully away.
My cousin William, the merchant, had, as I have said,
many guests ; but they were all too grand to take any notice
of me. There was, however, one delightful man, who was
said to know a groat deal al)Out rocks and stones, that, having
heard of my fine large crystals, desired to see both tliem and
the boy who had found them ; and I was admitted to hear
him talk about granites, and marbles, and metallic veins, and
the gems that lie hid among the mountains in nooks and craii
nics. I am afraid I would not now deem him a very acooni.
pli.shcd mineral agist: I remember enough of his conversation
to conclude that he knew but little, and that little not very
correctly ; but not before Werner or Hutton could I have
bowed down w'th a profound reverence. He spoke of the
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 97
marbles of Assynt, — of the petrifactions of Helmsdale and
Brora, — of shells and plants embedded in solid rocks, and of
forest trees converted into stone ; and my cars drank in knowl-
edge eagerly, as those of the Queen of Sheba of old when she
listened to Solomon. But all too soon did the conversation
change. My cousin was mighty in Gaelic etymology, and so
was the mineralogist ; and while my cousin held that the name
of the Barony of Gruids was derived from the great hollow
tree, the mineralogist was quite as certain that it was derived
from its sienite, or, as he termed it, its granite^ which re-
sembled, he remarked, from the whiteness of its feldspar, a
piece of curd. Gruids, said the one, means the place of the
great tree ; Gruids, said the other, means the place of the cur-
dled stone. I do not remember how they settled the contro-
versy ; but it terminated, by an easy transition, in a discussion
respecting the authenticity of Ossian, — a subject on which they
were both perfectly agreed. There could exist no manner of
doubt regarding the fact that the poems given to the world by
Macpherson had been sung in the Highlands by Ossian, the
son of Fingal, more than fourteen hundred years before. My
cousin was a devoted member of the Highland Society ; and
the Highland Society, in these days, was very much engaged
in ascertaining the right cut of the philabeg, and in determin-
ing the chronology and true seqrence of events in the Ossianic
age.
Happiness perfect and entire is, it is said, not to be enjoyed
m this sublunary state ; and even in the Gruids, where there
was so much to be seen, heard, and found out, and where I was
separated by more than thirty miles from my Latin, — for I had
brought none of it from home with me, — this same Ossianic
controversy rose like a Highland fog on my horizon, to chill
and darken my hours of enjoyment. My cousin possessed
everything that had been written on the subject, including a
considerable amount of manuscript of his own composition ;
and as Uncle James had inspired him with the belief that I
could master anything to which in good earnest I set my mind,
he had determined that it should be no fault of his if I did
^98 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
not become mighty in the controversy regarding the authen-
ticity of Ossian. This was awful. I liked Blair's Disserta-
tion well enough, nor did I greatly quarrel with that of
Karnes ; and as for Sir Walter's critique in the Edinburgh^
on the opposite side, I thought it not only thoroughly sensible,
but, as it furnished me with arguments against the others,
deeply interesting to boot. But there succeeded a vast
)cean of dissertation, emitted by Highland gentlemen am
their friends, as the dragon in the Apocalypse emitted tht
great flood which the earth swallowed up ; and, when once
fairly embarked upon it I could see no shore and find no bot-
tom. And so at length, though very unwillingly, — for my
cousin was very kind, — 1 fairly mutinied and struck work,
iust as he had began to propose that, after mastering the au-
thenticity controversy, I should set myself to acquire Gaelic,
in order that I might be able to read Ossian in the original.
My cousin was not well pleased ; but I did not choose to ag-
gravate the case by giving expression to the suspicion which,
instead of lessening, has rather grown upon me since, that as
I possessed sA\ English copy of the poems, I had read the true
Ossian in the original already. With Cousin George, how-
ever, who, though strong on the authenticity side, liked «
joke rather better than he did Ossian, I was more free ; and
to him I ventured to designate his brother's fine Gaelic copy,
of the poems, with a superb head of the ancient bard afiixed,
as " The Poems of Ossian in Gaelic, translated from the orig-
inal English by their author." George looked grim, and
oalled me infidel, and then laughed, and said he would tell
his brother. But he didn't; and as 1 really likid the poems,
especially " Temora!'' and some of the smaller pieces, and could
read them with inore real pleasure than the greater part of the
Highlanders who believed in them, I did not wholly losecred:
with my cousin the merchant. He even promised to present
me with a linely-bound edition of the " Ek-gant Extracts," in
throe bulky octavo volumes, whenever I should have gained
my first prize at College; but I unluckily failed to qualify
myself for the gift ; and ray copy of the " Extracts" I had to
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 99
Durcl aie for myself ten years after, at a book-stall, when
working in the neighborhood of Edinburgh as a journeyman
mason.
It is not every day one meets with so genuine a Highlander
as my cousin the merchant ; and, though he failed to inspire
me with all his own Ossiianic faitii and zeal, there were some of
the little old Celtic practices which he resuscitated />ro tempore
in his father's household, that I learned to like very much.
He restored the genuine Highland breakfast ; and, after hours
spent in busy exploration outside, I found I could as thorough-
ly admire the groaning table, with its cheese, and its trout, and
its cold meat, as even the immortal Lexicographer himself.
Some of the dishes, too, which he received were at least curi-
ous. There was a supply of gradden-mcal prepared, — i. e.
grain dried in a pot over the fire, and then coarsely ground in
a handmill, — which made cakes that, when they had hunger
for their sauce, could be eaten ; and on more than one occa^
sion I shared in a not unpalatable sort of blood-pudding, en-
riched with butter, and well seasoned with pepper and salt,
the main ingredient of which was derived, through a judicious
use of the lancet, from the yeld cattle of the farm. The prac-
tice was an ancient, and by no means unphilosophical one. In
summer and early autumn there is plenty of grass in the High-
lands ; but, of old at least, there used to be very little grain in
it before the beginning of October and as the cattle could, iu
consequence, provide themselves with a competent supply of
blood from the grass, when their masters, who could not eat
grass, and had little else that they could eat, were able to ac-
quire very little, it was opportunely discovered that by making
a divis-ion in this way of the all-essential fluid, accumulated as
a common stock, the circumstances of the cattle and their
owners could be in some degree equalized. With these pecu
Uarly Highland dishes there mingled others not less genuine,
— now and then a salmon fi-om the river, and a haunch of
venison from the hill-side, — which I relished better still ; and
if all Higlilanders live but as well in the present day as I did
IOC MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS;
during my stay with my aunt and cousins, they would be
rather unreasonable were they greatly to complain.
There were some of the other Highland restorations effected
by my cousin that pleased me much. He occasionall}'^ gather-
ed at night around the central Ha' fire a circle of the elderly
men of the neighborhood, to repeat long-derived narratives
of the old clan feuds of the district, and wild Fingalian legends ;
and though, of course, ignorant of the language in which the
stories were conveyed, by taking my seat beside Cousin George,
and getting him to translate for me in an under tone, as the
narratives went on, I contrived to carry away with me at least
as much of the clan stories and the legends as I ever after
found use for. The clan stories were waxing at the time
rather dim and uncertain in Sutherland. The county, through
the influence of its good Earls and its godly Lords Reay, had
been early converted to Protestantism ; and its people had in
consequence ceased to take liberties with the throats and cattle
of their neighbors, about a hundred years earlier than in
any other part of the Scotch Highlands. And as for the Fin-
galian legends, they were, I found, very wild legends indeed.
Some of them immortalized wonderful hunters, who had ex-
cited the love of Fingal's lady, and whom her angry and jeal-
ous husband had sent out to hunt monstrous wild boars with
poisonous bristles on their backs, — sc(?lire in this way of get-
ting rid of them. And some of them embalmed the misdeeds
of spiritless diminutive Fions, not very much above fifteen
feet in height, who, unlike their more active companions, could
notlcapacross the Cromarty or Dornoch Friths on their spears,
and who, as was natural, were despised l)y the women of the
tribe very much. The pieces of (ino sentinuMit and brilliant
descri[)tion discovered by Macpherson seemed never to have
found their way into this northern district. But, told in fluent
Gaelic, in the great " Ha'," the wild legends served every ne-
cessary purpose equally well. TIk^ " Ha'" in the autumn
nights, as the days shortened and ihe frosts set in, was a geniaJ
placi3 ; and so attached was my cousin to its distiuctivo priit
OK. THE STOEY OF MY EDUCATION. 101
ciple, — the fire in the midst, — as handed down from the " days
of other years," that in the plan of a new two-storied house
for his father, wliich he had procured from a liondon archi
tect, one of the nether rooms was actually designed in the cir-
cular form ; and a hearth like a millstone, placed in the centre,
represented the place of the fire. But there was, as I re-
marked to Cousin George, no corresponding central hole in the
room above, through which to let up the smoke ; and 1 ques
tioned whether a nicely-plastered apartment, round as a band
box, with a fire in the middle, like the sun in the centre of
an Orrery, would have been quite like anything ever seen in
the Highlands before. The plan, however, was not destined
to encounter criticism, or give trouble in the execution of it.
On Sabbaths my cousin and his two brothers attended the
parish church, attired in the full Highland dress ; and three
handsome, well-formed men they were ; but my aunt, though
mayhap not quite without the mother's pride, did not greatly
relish the exhibition ; and often er than once I heard her say
so to her sister my mother ; though she, smitten by the gallant
appearance of her nephews, seemed inclined rather to take the
opposite side. My uncle, on the other hand, said nothing
either for or against the display. He had been a keen High
lander in his younger days ; and when the inhibition against
wearing tartan and the philabeg had been virtually removed,
in consideration of the achievements of the " hardy and daunt
less men" who, according to Chatham, conquered for England
" in every quarter of the globe," he had celebrated the event
m a merry-making, at which the dance was kept up from
night till morning ; but though he retained, I suspect, his
old partialities, he was now a soldered man ; and when I ven-
tured to ask him, on one occasion, why he too did not get a
Sunday kilt, which, by the way, he would " have set'' notwith-
standing his years, as well as any of his sons, he merely re-
plied with a quiet " No, no ; there's no fool like an old fool.'
102 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEfiS :
CHAPTER VI
"When they tawe the clark>ome nicht,
They sal them dowiie and cryed."
Babes in the Wood.
1 SPENT the holidays of two other autumns in this delightful
Highland valley. On the second, as on the first occasion, I
had accompanied my mother, specially invited ; but the third
journey Mas an unsanctioned undertaking of my own and a
Cromarty cousin, my contemporary, to whom, as he had never
travelled the way, 1 had to act as protector and guide. I
reached my aunt's cottage witliout mishap or adventure of any
kind; but found, that during the twelvemonth that had just
elapsed, great change h.ad taken place in the circumstances of
the household. My cousin George who had married in the
interim, had gone to reside in a cottage of his own ; and I soon
ascertained that my cousin William, who had been for several
months resident with his father, had not nearly so many visit('rs
as before ; nor did presents of salmon and haunches of veni-
son come at all so often the way. Immediately after the final
iiscomfitin'e of Napoleon, an extensive course of speculation
u which he had ventured to engage had turned out so ill, that,
nstead of making him a fortune, as at first seemed probable,
t had landed him in the Oazette ; and he was now tiding over
he dinii-ulties of a time of settlemeiil, six hun'lred miles from
be scei\e of disaster, in the hope of being soon enabled to be-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 103
gin the world anew. He bore his losses with quiet magna
nimity ; and I learned to know and like him better during hi?
period of eclipse than in the previous time, when summer
friends had fluttered around him by scores. He was a gener-
ous, warm-hearted man, who felt, with the force of an im-
planted instinct not vouchsafed to all, that it is more blessed
to give than to receive ; and it was doubtless a wise provisio)i
of nature, and worthy, in this point of view, the special atten-
tion of moralists and philosophers, that his old associates, the
'rand gentlemen, did not now often come his way ; seeing that
his inability any longer to give would have cost him, in the
circumstances, great pain.
I was much with my cousin George in his new dwelling
It was one of the most delightful of Highland cottages, and
George was happy in it, far above the average lot of humanity,
with his young wife. He had dared, in opposition to the gen-
eral voice of the district, to build it half-way up the slope oi'
a beautiful Tomhan, that, waving with birch from base to
summit, rose regular as a pyramid from the bottom of the val-
ley, and commanded a wide view of Loch Shin on the one
hand, with the moors and mountains that lie beyond ; and
overlooked, on the other, with all the richer portions of the
Barony of Gruids, the church and picturesque hamlet of
Lairg. Half-hidden by the graceful birchen trees that sprang
up thick around, with their silvery boles and light foliage, it
was rather a nest than a house ; and George, emancipated, b}'
his reading, and his residence for a time in the south, from
at least the wilder beliefs of the locality, failed to suffer, aa
had been predicted, for his temerity ; as the " good people,"
who, much to their credit, had made choice of the place for
themselves long before, never, to his knowledge, paid him a
visit. He had brought his share of the family library witli
tiim ; and it was a large share. He had mathematical instru
nients, too, and a color-box, and the tools of his profession ,
in especial, large hammers fitted to break great stones ; and J
was generously made free of them all, — books, instruments
color-box, and hammers. His cottage, too, commanded, froin
104 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
its situation, a delightful vaiiet} of most interesting objects It
had all the advantages of my uncle's domicile, and a great many
more.
The nearer shores of Loch Shin were scarce half a mile
away ; and there was a low long promontory which shot out
into the, lake, that was covered at that time by an ancient wood
of doddered time-worn trees, and bore amid its outer solitudes,
where the waters circled round its terminal apex, one of those
towers of hoary eld, memorials, mayhap, of the primeval stone-
period in our island, to which the circular erections of Glenelg
and Dornadilla belong. It was formed of undressed stones of
vast size, uncemented by mortar ; and through the thick walls
ran winding passages, — the only covered portions of the build-
ing, for the inner area had never been furnished with a roof, —
in which, when a sudden shower descended, the loiterer amid
the ruins could find shelter. It was a fascinating place to a
curious boy. Some of the old trees had become mere whitened
skeletons, that stretched forth their blasted arms to the sky,
and had so slight a hold of the soil, that I have overthrown
them with a delightful crash, by merely running against them ;
the heath rose thick beneath, and it was a source of fearful joy
to know that it harbored snakes full three feet long; and
though the loch itself is by no means one of our finer High-
land lochs, it furnished, to at least my eye at this time, a de-
lightful prospect in still October mornings, when the light gos-
samer went sailing about in white filmy threads, and birch and
hazel, glorified by decay, served to embroider with gold the
brown hill-sides which, standing up on cither hand in their
long vista of more than twenty miles, form the barriers of the
lake ; and when the suu, still struggling with a blue diluted haze,
ell delicately on the smooth surface, or twinkled for a moment
m the silvery coats of the little trout, as they sprang a few
inches into the air, and then broke the water into a series of
concentric rings in tlieir descent. When I last passed the
way, both the old wood and the old tower were gone ; and for
the latter, which, though much a ruin, might have survived
for ages, I found only a loig extent of dry-stone dike, and
OB, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 105
the wide ring formed by the old foundutic n-stones, which had
proved too massive to be removed. A greatly more entire
erection of the same age and style, known of old as Dunalis-
cag, — which stood on the Eoss-shire side of the Dornoch
Frith, and within whose walls, forming, as it did, a sort of
half-way stage, I used, on these Sutherlandshire journeys, to
eat ray piece of cake with a double relish, — I found, on last
passing the way, similarly represented. Its gray venerable
walls, and dark winding passages of many steps, — even the
huge pear-shaped linte', which had stretched over its little
door, and which, according to tradition, a great Fingaliau lady
had once thrown across the Dornoch Frith from off" the pomt
of her spindle, — had all disappeared, and I saw instead, only a
dry-stone wall. The men of the present generation do certain-
ly live in a most enlightened age, — an age in which every trace
of the barbarism of our early ancestors is fast disappearing ;
and were we but more zealous in immortalizing the public
benefactors who efface such dark memorials of the past as
the tower of Dunaliscag and the promontory of Loch Shin, it
would be, doubtless, an encouragement to others to speed us
yet further on in the march of improvement. It seems scarce
fair that the enlightened destroyers of Arthur's Oven, or of the
bas-relief known as Robin of Redesdale, or of the Town-cross
of Edinburgh, should enjoy all the celebrity attendant on such
acts, while the equally deserving iconoclasts of Dunaliscag
and the tower of Loch Shin should be suffered to die without
their fame.
I remember spending one singularly delightful morning with
Cousin George beside the ancient tower. He pointed out to
me, amid the heath, several plants to which the old High
landers used to attach occult virtues, — plants that disenchant
ed bewitched cattle, not by their administration as medicines
to the sick animals, but by bringing them in contact, as charms,
with the injured milk ; and plants which were used as phil-
ters either for procuring love or exciting hatred. It was, he
showed me, the root of a species of orchis that was employed
vn making the philters. While most of the radical fibres of
106 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS;
the plant retain the ordinary cylindrical form, two of their
number are usually found developed into starchy tubercles ;
but, belonging apparently to difterent seasons, one of the two
is of a dark color, and of such gravity that it sinks in water ;
while the other is light-colored, and floats. And a powder
made of the light-colored tubercle formed the mail ingre-
dient, said my cousin, in the love philter; while a powder
made of the dark-colored one excited, it was held, only an-
tipathy and dislike. And then George would speculate on
the origin of a belief which could, as h' said, neither be sug
gested by reason nor tested by experience. Living, however,
among a people with whom beliefs of this kind were still vital
and influential, he did not wholly escape their influence ; and
I saw him in one instance administer to an ailing cow a little
live trout, simply because the traditions of the district assured
him that a trout swallowed alive by the creature was the only
specific in the case. Some of his Highland stories were very
curious. He communicated to me, for example, beside the
broken tower, a tradition illustrative of the Celtic theory of
dreaming, of which I have since often thought. Two young
men had been spending the early portion of a warm summer
day in exactly such a scene as that in which he communicated
the anecdote. There v.as an ancient ruin beside them, sepa-
rated, however, from the mossy bank on which they sat, by a
slender runnel, across which there lay, immediately over a
miniature cascade, a few withered grass stalks. Overcome
by the heat of the day, one of the young men fell asleep ; his
companion watched drowsily beside him ; when all at once the
watcher was aroused to attention by seeing a little indistinct
form, scarce larger than a luimhle-ljee, issue from the mouth of
the sleeping man, and, leaj>iiig upon the moss, move down
wards to the runnel, which it crossed along the withered gras;
stalks, and then disappeared amid the interstices of the ruin.
Alarmed l>> what he saw, the watcher hastily shook his com-
panion by the shoulder, and awoke him ; thougii, with all his
haste, the little cloud-like creature, still more rajtid in its move-
oieuts, issued from the interstice into which it had gone, and,
OK. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 107
flying across the runnel, instead of creeping along the grass
stalks and over the sward, as before, it re-entered the mouth
of the sleeper, just as he was in the act of awakening. " What
is the matter with you V said the watcher, greatly alarmed.
" What ails you ?" " Nothing ails me," replied the other ;
*' but you have robbed me of a most delightful dream. I
dreamed I was walking through a fine, rich country, and came
at length to the shores of a noble river ; and, just where th
elf ar water went thundering down a precipice, there was
bridge all of silver, which I crossed ; and then, entering a
noble palace on the opposite side, I saw great heaps of gold
and jewels ; and I was just going to load myself with treas-
ure, when you rudely awoke me, and I lost all." I know not
what the asserters of the clairvoyant faculty may think of the
story ; but I rather believe I have occasionally seen them
make use of anecdotes that did not rest on evidence a great
deal more solid than the Highland legend, and that illustrated
not much more clearly the philosophy of the phenomena with
which they profess to deal.
Of all my cousins. Cousin George was the one whose pur-
suits most nearly resembled my own, and in whose society I
most delighted to share. He did sometimes borrow a day
from his work, even after his marriage ; but then, according
to the poet, it was
"The love he bore to science was iu fault."
The borrowed day was always spent in transferring to papei
some architectural design, or in working out some matheinat-
ical problem, or in rendering some piece of Gaelic verse into
English, or some piece of English prose into Gaelic ; and as
he was a steady, careful man, the appropriated day was never
seriously missed. The winter, too, was all his own, for in
those northern districts, masons are never employed from a
little after Hallow-day, till the second, or even third month of
spring, — a circumstance which I carefully noted at this time
in its bearing on the amusements of my cousin, and which
afterwards weighed not a little with me when I came to make
108 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
choice of a profession for myself And George's winters we^-e
always ingeniously spent. He had a great command of Gaelic
and a very tolerable command of English ; and so a transla-
tion of Bunyan's " Visions of Heaven and Hell," which he
published several years subsequent to this period, was not
only well received by his country folk of Sutherland and Ross,
but was said by competent judges to be really a not inadequate
rendering of the meaning and spirit of the noble old tinkei
of Elstow. I of course could be no authority respecting the
merits of a translation, the language of which I did not under-
stand ; but living much amid the literature of a time wlicn
almost every volume, whether the Virgil of a Dry den or the
Meditations of a Hervey, was heralded by its sets of compli-
mentary verses, and having a deep interest in whatever Cousin
George undertook and performed, I addressed to him in the
old style, a few introductory stanzas, which, to indulge me in
the inexpressible luxury of seeing myself in print for the first
time, he benevolently threw into type. They survive to re-
mind me that my cousiin's belief in Ossian did exert some little
influence over my phraseology when I addressed myself to
him, and that, with the rashness natural to immature youth,
I had at this time the temerity to term myself " poet.'
Ves, oft I've said, as oft I've seen
The men who dwell its hills iimoug,
Tliat Morveii's land has ever been
A land of valor, worth, and song.
But Ignorance, of darkness diro,
Has o'er that land a inaiillo spread ;
And all untun'd and rude the lyre
That sounds beneath its gloomy shade.
With niiiso of culm, ntUirinK wing,
O, be il tliine, my friend, lo show
The tXiltic swain how Saxons sing
Of Hell's diro gloom and Ueuvoii's glow
So shall the mcod of fame bo thine,
The KlisU'iiini,' bay-wroath K^ecn and gay J
Thy /Kiri, too, Ihouxh wi'ak his line,
Shall frame for thoo th' tpproving lay.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 109
Longing for some profession in which his proper work would
give exercise to the faculties which he most delighted to cul-
tivate, my cousin resolved on becoming candidate for a Gaelic
Society school, — a poor enough sort of office then, as now ;
but which, by investing a little money in cattle, by tilling a
little croft, and by now and then emitting from the press a
Gaelic translation, might, he thought, be rendered sufficiently
remunerative to supply the very moderate wants of himself
and his little fomily. And so he set out for Edinburgh, amply
furnished with testimonials that meant more in his case than
testimonials usually mean, to stand an examination before a
Committee of the Gaelic School Society. Unluckily for his
success, however, instead of bringing with him his ordinary
Sabbath-day suit of dark brown and blue, (the kilt had been
assumed for but a few weeks, to please his brother William,)
he had provided himself with a suit of tartan, as at once cheap
and respectable, and appeared before the Committee, — if not
in the garb, in at least the many-colored hues of his clan, — a
robust, manly Highlander, apparently as well suited to enact
the part of color-serjeant to the Forty-Second, as to teach
children their letters, A grave member of the Society, at
that time high in repute for sanctity of character, but who
afterwards becoming righteous overmuch, was loosened from
his charge, and straightway, spurning the ground, rose into an
Irvingite angel, came at once to the conclusion that no such
type of man, encased in clan-tartan, could possibly have the
root of the matter in him ; and so he determined that Cousin
George should be cast in the examination. But then, as it
could not be alleged with any decency that my cousin was
inadmissible on the score of his having too much tartan, it was
agreed that he should be declared inadmissible on the score
of his having too little Gaelic, And, of course, at this resul*
the examinators arrived ; and George, ultimately to his advan
tage, was cast accordingly, I still remember the astonish
ment evinced by a worthy catechist of the north, — himself a
Gaelic teacher, — on being told how my cousin had fared.
" George Munro not allowed to pass," he said, " for want of
no MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS:
right Gaelic ! Why, he has more right Gaelic to his own self
than all the Society's teachers in this corner of Scotland put
together. They are the curiousest pe(>ple, some of these good
gentlemen of the Edinburgh Committees, that I ever heard of,
they're just like our country lawyers." It would, however,
be far from fair to regard this transaction, which took place, I
may mention, so late as the year 1829, as a specimen of the
actings of either civic societies or country lawyers. George's
chief examinator on the occasion was the minister of the
(raelic chapel of the place, at that time one of the Society's
(.)ommittee for the year ; and, not being a remarkably scru-
pulous man, he seems to have stretched a point or two, in com-
pliance with the pious wishes and occult judgment of the
Society's Secretary. But the anecdote is not without its lesson.
When devout Walter Taits set themselves ingeniously to ma-
noeuvre with the purest of intentions, and for what they deem
the best of purposes, — when, founding their real grounds of
objection on one set of appearances, they found their ostensi-
ble grounds of objection on another and entirely different set
— they are always exposed to the signal danger of — getting
indevout Duncan M'Caigs to assist them. Only two years
from the period of my cousin's examination before the Soci-
ety, his reverend examinator received at the bar of the High
Court of Justiciary, in the character of a thief convicted of
eleven several acts of stealing, sentence of transportation for
fourteen years.
I had several interesting excursions with my cousin William.
We found ourselves one evening — on our way home from
a mineral spring which he had discovered among the hills —
in a little lonely valley, which opened transversely into that
of the Gruids, and which, though its sides were mottled with
green furrow-marked patches, had n(^t at the time its single
human habitation. At the upper end, however, there stood
the ruins of a narrow two-storied liousc, with one of its
gables still entire frcm foundation-stone to the shattered
chimney -tops, but with the other gable, and the larger part
:)f the front wall, laid prostrate along the sward. My cousin.
OR, THE STORY OF MT EDUCATION. Ill
after bidding me remark the completeness of the solitude, and
that the eye could not command from the site of the ruin a
single spot where man had ever dwelt, told me that it had
been the scene of the strict seclusion, amounting almost to
imprisonment, about eighty years before, of a lady of high
birth, over whom, in early youth, there had settled a sad cloud
of infamy. She had borne a child to one of the menials of her
father's house, which, with the assistance of her paramour, she
had murdered ; and being too high for the law to reach ii
these northern parts, at a time when the hereditary jurisdic-
tion still existed entire, and her father was the sole magistrate,
possessed of the power of life and death in the district, she
was sent by her family to wear out life in this lonely retreat,
in which she.remained secluded from the world for more than
half a centui-y. And then, long after the abolition of the local
jurisdictions, and when her father and brother, with the entire
generation that knew of her crime, had passed away, she was
permitted to take up her abode in one of the sea-port towns
of the north, where she was still remembered at this time as a
crazy old lady, invariably silent and sullen, that used to be
seen in the twilight flitting about the more retired lanes and
closes, like an unhappy ghost. The story, as told me in that
solitary valley, just as the sun was sinking over the hill be-
yond, powerfully impressed my fancy. Crabbe would have
delighted to tell it ; and I now relate it, as it lies fast wedged
in my memory, mainly for the peculiar light which it casts on
the times of the hereditary jurisdictions. It forms an example
of one of the judicial banishments of an age that used, in
ordinary cases, to save itself all sorts of trouble of the kind,
by hanging its victims. I may add, that I saw a good deal of
the neighborhood at this time in the company of my cousin,
and gleaned, from my visits to shieling and cottage, most of
my conceptions of the state of the Northern Highlands, em the
clearance system had depopulated the interior of the country,
and precipitated its poverty-stricken population upon the coasts.
There wa-;, however, one of my excursions with Cousin
W ill iam. that turned out rather unfortunately. The river Shin
112 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
has its bold salmon-leap, which even yet, after several nun.
dred pounds worth of gunpowder have been expended in slop-
mg its angle of ascent, to flicilitate the passage of the fish, is
a fine picturesque object, but which at this time, when it pre-
sented all its original abruptness, was a finer object still.
Though distant about three miles from my uncle's cottage, we
could distinctly hear its roarings from beside his door, when
October nights were frosty and still ; and as we had been told
many strange stories regarding it, — stories about bold fishers
who had threaded their dangerous way between the over-
hanging rock and the water, and who, striking outwards, had
speared salmon through the foam of the cataract as they
leaped, — stories, too, of skilful • sportsmen, who, taking their
stand in the thick wood beyond, had shot the rising animals, as
one shoots a bird flying, — both my Cromarty cousin and my
self were extremely desirous to visit the scene of such feats am
marvels ; and Cousin William obligingly agreed to act as
our guide and instructor by the way. He did look some-
what askance at our naked feet ; and we heard him remark,
in an under tone, to his mother, that when he and his brothers
were boys, she never suffered them to visit her Cromarty rela-
tions unshod ; but neither Cousin Walter nor myself had the
magnanimity to say, that our mothers had also taken care to
see us shod ; but that, deeming it lighter and cooler to walk
barefoot, the good women had no sooner turned their backs
than we both agreed to fling our shoes into a corner, and set
out on our journey without them. The walk to the salmon-
leap was a thoroiiglily delightful one. We ])assed through
the W()("^ ui Achanic, famous for their nuts; startled, as we
went, a herd of roe-deer ; and found the leap itself far exceed-
ing all anticipation. The Shin becomes savagely wild in
its lower reaches. Ivugged ])reci|)iccs of gneiss, with scattered
bushes fast anchored in the crevices, overhang the stream,
which Ixiils in many a dark pool, and foams over many a steep
rapid ;;iii<l iniinediately beneath, where it threw itself head-
long, at this time, over tljc leap, — tor it now merely rushes ni
Bnow adown a stecf slope, — there was a cauldron, so awfiill)
OR, THE SI DRY OF MY EDUCATION. lift
dark and profound, that, according to the accounts of the dis
trict, it had no bottom ; and so vexed was it by a frightful
whirlpool, that no one ever fairly caught in its eddies had suo
ceeded, it was said, in regaining the shore. We saw, as we
stood amidst the scraggy trees of an overhanging wood, the sal-
mon leaping up by scores, most of them, however, to fall back
again into the pool, — for only a very few stray fish that at-
tempted the cataract at its edges seemed to succeed in forcing
their upward way ; we saw, too, on a shelf of the precipitous
but wooded bank, the rude hut, formed of undressed logs,
where a solitary watcher used to take his stand, to protect
them from the spear and fowling-piece of the poacher, and
which, in stormy nights, when the cry of the kelpie mingled
with the roar of the flood, must have been a sublime lodge in
the wilderness, in which a poet might have delighted to dwell.
I was excited by the scene ; and, when heedlessly leaping from
a tall lichened stone into the long heath below, my right foot
came so heavily in contact with a sharp-edged fragment of rock
concealed in the moss, that I almost screamed aloud with pain.
I, however, suppressed the shriek, and, sitting down and set-
ting my teeth close, bore the pang, until it gradually moder
ated, and my foot, to the ankle, seemed as if almost divested
of feeling. In our return, I halted as I walked, and lagged
consideral)ly behind my companions ; and during the whole
evening the injured foot seemed as if dead, save that it glowed
v-ith an intense heat. I was, however, at ease enough to write
a sublime piece of blank verse on the cataract ; and, proud
of my production, I attempted reading it to Cousin William.
But William had taken lessons in recitation under the great
Mr. Thelwall, politician and elocutionist ; and deeming it prop-
er to set me right in all the words which I mispronounced, —
three out of every four at least, and not unfrequently the fourth
word also, — the reading of the piece proved greatly stiffer and
Blower work than the writing of it ; and, somew^hat to my mor-
tification, my cousin declined giving mc any definite judgment
on its merits, even when I had done. He insisted, hoAvever.
on the signal' advantages of reading well. He had an ao-
1 14 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
quaintance, he said, a poet, who had taken lessons under Mi
Thelwall, and who, though his verses, when he published, me\
with no great success, was so indebted to his admirable elocu
tion, as to be invariably successful when he read them to his
friends.
Next morning my injured foot was stiff and sore ; and, after
a few days of suffering, it suppurated and discharged great
quantities of blood and matter. It was, however, fast getting
well again, when, tired of inaction, and stirred up by my cousin
Walter, who wearied sadly of the Highlands, I set out with
him, contrary to all advice, on my homeward journey, and,
for the first six or eight miles, got on tolerably well. i\Iy
cousin, a stout, active lad, carried the bag of Highland luxu-
ries — cheese, and butter, and a full peck of nuts — with which
we had been laden by my aunt ; and, by way of'nndemnity for
taking both my share of the burden and his own, he demand •
ed of me some of my long extempore stories, which, shortly
after leaving my aunt's cottage, I accordingly began. My
stories, when I had Cousin Walter for my companion, were
usually co-extensive with the journey to be performed : they
became ten, fifteen, or twenty miles long, agreeably to the
measure of the I'oad, and the determination of the mile-stones ;
and what was at present required was a story of about thirty
miles in length, whose one end would touch the Barony of
Gruids, and the other the Cromarty Ferry. At the end, how-
ever, of the first six or eight miles, my story broke suddenly
down, and my foot, after becoming very painful, began to
bleed. The day, too, had grown raw and unpleasant, and
after twelve o'clock there came on a thick wetting drizzle. 1
limped on silently in the rear, leavnig at every few paces a
blotch of blood upon the road, until, in the parish of Edderton,
we both remembered that there was a short cut through the
hills, which two of our older cousins had taken during the
previous year, when on a similar journey ; and as Walter
deemed himself ('i|ual to anything which his elder cousins
(iould perform, and as I was exceedingly desirous to get home
fts soon as possible, and by the shortest way, we both struck
OR, THE STORY OF IVrv EDUCATION, 116
up the hill-side, and soon found ourselves in a dreary waste,
without trace of human habitation,
Walter, however, pushed on bravely and in the right direc-
. tion : and, though my head was now becoming light, and my
sight dim, I succeeded in struggling after him, until, just as
the night was falling, we reached a heathy ridge which com-
mands the northern sea-board of the Cromarty Frith, and saw
the cultivated country and the sands of Nigg lying only a few
miles below. The sands are dangerous at certain hours of
the tide, and accidents frequently happen in the fords ; but
then there could, we thought, be no fear of us ; for though
Walter could not swim, I could ; and as I was to lead the
way, he of course would be safe, by simply avoiding the places
where I lost footing. The night fell rather thick than dark,
for there was a moon overhead, though it could not be seen
through the cloud ; but though Walter steered well, the down-
ward way was exceedingly rough and broken, and we had
wandered from the path, I retain a faint but painful recollec-
tion of a scraggy moor, and of dark patches of planting,
through which I had to grope onwards, stumbling as I went ;
and then that I began to feel as if I were merely dreaming,
and that the dream was a very horrible one, from which I could
not awaken. And finally, on reaching a little cleared spot on
the edge of the cultivated country, I dropped down as sudden-
ly as if struck by a bullet, and, after an ineffectual attempt to
rise, fell fast asleep, Walter was much frightened ; but he
succeeded in carrying me to a little rick of dried grass which
stood up in the middle of the clearing ; and after covering
me well up with the grass, he laid himself down beside me
Anxiety, however, kept him awake ; and he was frightened ,
as he lay, to hear the sounds of psalm-singing, in the old Gae-
lic style coming apparently from a neighboring clump of
wood, Walter believed in the fairies ; and, though psalmody
was not one of the reputed accomplishments of the "good
people" in the low country, he did not know but that in the
Highlands the case might be different. Some considerable
time after the singing had ceased, there was a slow, heavy step
116 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
heard approaching the rick ; an exclamation in Gaelic follow
ed ; and then a ro agh, hard hand grasped Walter by the nak-
ed heel. He started up, and found himself confronted by an
old, gi-ay-headed man, the inmate of a cottage which, hidden
in the neighboring clump, had escaped his notice.
The old man, in the belief that we were gipsies, was at first
disposed to be angry at the liberty we had taken with his hay-
rick ; but Walter's simple story mollified him at once, and he
expressed deep regret that " poor boys, who had met with an ao.
cident," should have laid them down in such a night, under the
open sky, and a house so near. " It was putting disgrace," he
said, " on a Christian land." I was assisted into his cottage,
whose only other inmate, an aged woman, the old Highlander's
wife, received us with great kindness and sympathy ; and on
Walter's declaring our names and lineage, the hospitable re-
grets and regards of both host and hostess waxed stronger and
louder still. They knew our maternal grandfather and grand-
mother, and remembered old Donald Roy ; and when my
cousin named my father, there was a strongly-expressed burst
of sorrow and commiseration, that the son of a man whom they
had seen so " well to do in the world" should be in circum-
stances so deplorably destitute. I was too ill to take much
note of what passed. I only remember, that of the food wliich
they placed before me I could partake of only a few spoonfuls
of milk ; and that the old woman, as she washed my feet, fell
a crying over me. I was, however, so greatly recruited by a
night's rest in their best bed, as to be fit in the morning to be
removed, in the old man's riiii(j-ciir\, to the house of a relation
ill the parish of Nigg, from which, after a second day's rest, 1
was C(jnveyed in another cart to the Cromarty Ferry. And
thus terminated the last of my boyish visits to the Highlands.
Both my grandfather and grandmother had come of long-
lived races, and death did not often knock at the tiiiiiily door.
But till- time when tiie latter "should cross tlie river," thou<rh
she was some six or eight years younger than her husband,
Ciimc first ; and so, according to Bunyan, she " called for her
children, and told ihem that her hour had come." She was
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 117
a quiet, retiring woman, and though intimately acquainted
with her Bible, not in the least fitted to make a female Pro-
fessor of Theology : she could live her religion better than talk
it ; but she now eai*nestly recommended to her family the great
interests once more ; and, as its various members gathered
round her bed, she besought one of her daughters to read to
her, in their hearing, that eighth chapter of the Romans, which
declares that there is " now no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit." She repeated, in a sinking voice, the concluding verses,
— " For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor an-
gels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord." And, resting in confidence on the
hope which the passage so powerfully expresses, she slept her
last sleep, in simple trust that all would be well with her in
the morning of the general awakening. I retain her wedding
ring, the gift of Donald Roy. It is a sorely wasted fragment
worn through on one of the sides, for she had toiled long and
hard in her household, and the breach in the circlet, with its
general thinness, testify to the fact ; but its gold is still bright
and pure ; and, though not much of a relic-monger, I would
hesitate to exchange it for the Holy Coat of Treves, or for
wagon-loads of the wood of the " true cross."
My grandmother's term of life had exceeded by several
twelvemonths the full threescore and ten ; but when, only a
few years after. Death next visited the circle, it was on its
youngest members that his hand was laid. A deadly fever
swept over the place, and my two sisters, — the one in her
tenth, the other in her twelfth year, — sank under it within a
few days of each other. Jean, the elder, who resided with mj
mcles, was a prc^tty little girl, of fine intellect, and a great
reader ; Catherine, the younger, was lively and aflectionate,
and a general favorite ; and their loss plunged the family in
deep gloom. My uncles made little show of grief, but they
feh strongly : my mother for weeks and months wept for hei
118 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES *,
children like Rachel of old, and refused to be comforted, be
cause they were not ; but my grandfather, now in his eighty
fifth year, seemed to be rendered wholly bankrupt in heart by
their loss. As is perhaps not uncommon in such cases, his
warmer affections strode across the generation of gi own-up
men and women, — his sons and daughters, — and luxuriated
among the children of their descendants. The boys, his grand-
sons, were too wild for him ; but the two little girls — gentle
and affectionate — had seized on his whole heart ; and now that
they were gone, it seemed as if he had nothing in the world
left to care for. He had been, up till this time, notwithstand-
ing his great age, a hale and active man. In 1803, when France
threatened invasion, he was, though on the verge of seventy,
one of the first men of the place to apply for arms as a vol-
unteer ; but he now drooped and gradually sank, and longed
for the rest of the grave. " It is God's will," I heard him say
about this time to a neighbor who congratulated him on his
long term of life and unbroken health, — " It is God's will,
but not my desire." And in rather more than a twelvemonth
after the death of my sisters, he was seized by almost his only
illness, — for, for nearly seventy years he had not been con-
fined to bed for a single day, — and was carried off in less than
a week. During the last few days, the fever under which he
sank mounted to his brain ; and he talked in unbroken nar-
rative of the events of his past life. He began with his ear-
liest recollections ; described the battle of Culloden as he had
witnessed it from the Hill of Cromarty, and the appearance
of Duke William and the royal army as seen during a subse-
quent visit to Inverness ; i-an over the after events of his career,
— his marriage, his interviews with Donald Roy, his business
transactions with neighboring proprietors, long dead at the
time ; and finally, after reaching, in his oral history, his term
of middle life, lie struck off into another tract, and began lay
ing down, with singiilar coherency, the statements of doctrine
in a theological work of the old school, which he had been re-
cently perusing. And finally, his mind clearing as his end
approached, he died in good hope. It is not uninteresting to
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 119
lOOK back on two such generations of Scotchmen as those tc
which my uncles and my grandfather belonged. The}' differed
very considerably in some respects. My grandfather, with
naost vf his contemporaries of the same class, had a good deal
of the Tory in his composition. He stood by George III. in
the early policy of his reign, and by his adviser Lord Bute ;
reprobated Wilkes and Junius ; and gravely questioned wheth-
er Washington and his coadjutors, the American Republicans
were other than bold rebels. My uncles, on the contrary,
were staunch Whigs, who looked upon Washington as perhaps
the best and greatest man of modern times, — stood firm by the
policy of Fox, as opposed to that of Pitt, — and held that the
war with France, which immediately succeeded the First Rev
olution, was, however thoroughly it changed its character
afterwards, one of unjustifiable aggression. But however
greatly my uncles and grandfather may have differed on these
points, they were equally honest men.
The rising generation can perhaps form no very adequate
conception of thtj number and singular interest of the links
which serve to connect the recollections of a man who has
seen his fiftieth birth-day, with what to them must appear a
remote past. I have seen at least two men who fought at Cul-
loden, — one on the side of the King, the other on that of the
Prince, — and, with these, not a few who witnessed the battle
from a distance. I have conversed with an aged woman that
had conversed, in turn, with an aged man who had attained
to mature manhood when the persecutions of Charles and
James were at their height, and remembered the general re-
gret excited by the death of Renwick. My eldest maternal
aunt — the mother of Cousin George — remembered old John
Feddes, — turned of ninety at the time ; and John's buccaneer-
ing expedition could not have dated later than the year 16S7.
I have known many who remembered the abolition of the hered-
itary jurisdictions ; and have listened to stories of executiona
which took place on the gallows-hills of burghs and sheriff,
doras, and of witch-burnings perpetrated on tow n Links and
baronial Laws. And I have felt a strange interest in tliese
1 20 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS J
glimpses of a past so unlike the preseut, when thus pieseLtea
to the mind as personal reminiscences^ or as well-attested tradi-
tions, removed from the original witnesses by but a single stage.
All, for instance, which I have yet read of witch-burnings has
failed to impress me so strongly as the recollections of an old
lady who in 1722 was carried in her nurse's arms, — for she was
almost an infant at the time, — to witness a witch-execution in
the neighborhood of Dernoch, — the last which took place in
5cotland. The lady well remembered the awe-struck yet ex.
cited crowd th<~ lighting of the fire, and the miserable appear,
ance of the poor fatuous creature whom it was kindled to con-
sume, and who seemed to be so little aware of her situation,
that she held out her thin shrivelled hands to warm them at
the blaze. But what most impressed the narrator, — for it
must liave been a frightful incident in a sad spectacle, — was
the circumstance that, when the charred remains of the vic-
tim were sputtering and boiling amid the intense heat of the
flames, a cross gust of wind suddenly blew the smoke athwart
the spectators, and she felt in her attendant's arms as if in
danger of being sulibcated by tlie horrible stench. I have
heard described, too, by a man whose father had witnessed the
scene, an execution which took place, after a brief and inade-
quate trial, on the burgh-gallows of Tain. The supposed cul-
pr.t, a Strathcarron Highlander, had been found lurking about
the place, noting, as was supposed, where the burghers kept
their cattle, and was hung as a spy ; but they all, after the
execution, came to deem him innocent, from the circumstance
that, when his dead body was dangling in the wind, a white
pigeon had come flying the way, and, as it passed over, hall-
encircled the giljbet.
One of the two Ciillodcn soldiers whom I remember was
an old forester, who lived in ;i iiicturesquc cottage among the
woods of the Cromarty Hill ; ;iihl in Iiis last illness, my uncles,
whom I had ;il\vays leave Id accompany, used not mifrcquent-
ly to visit him. He had lived at liic time Iiis full century, and
"* few months more; and I still vividly remember the large
gaunt lace that used to stare from the bed as they entered, and
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 121
tht nuge, horny hand. He had been settled in life, previous
to the year 1745, as the head gardener of a northern proprietor,
and little dreamed of being engaged in war ; but the reljelllon
broke out ; and as his master, a staunch Whig, had volunteered
to serve in behalf of his principles in the royal army, his gar-
dener, a " mighty man of his hands," went with him. As
his memory for the later events of his life was gone at this
time, its preceding forty years seemed a blank, fi-om which not
a single recollection could be drawn ; but well did he remem-
ber the battle, and more vividly still, the succeeding atrocities
of the troops of Cumberland. He had accompanied the army,
afler its victory at Culloden, to the Cftmp at Fort-Augustus,
and there witnessed scenes of cruelty and spoliation of which
the recollection, after the lapse of seventy years, and in his ex-
treme old age, had still power enough to set his Scotch blood
aboil. While scores of cottages were flaming in the distance,
and blood not unfrequently hissing on the embers, the men and
women of the army used to be engaged in racing in sacks, or
upon Highland ponies ; and when the ponies were in request,
the women, who must have sat for their portraits in Hogarth's
" March to Finchley," took their seats astride like the men.
Gold circulated and liquor flowed in abundance ;. in a few
weeks there were about twenty thousand head of cattle brought
in by marauding parties of the soldiery from the crushed and
impoverished Highlanders ; and groupes of drovers from York
shire and the south of Scotland, — coarse vulgar men, — used to
come every day to share in the spoil, by making purchases at
greatly less than half-price.
My grandfather's recollections of Culloden were merely those
of an observant boy of fourteen, who had witnessed the battle
from a distance. The day, he has told me, was drizzly and
tliick ; and on reaching the brow of the Hill of Cromarty,
where he found many of his townsfolk already assembled, he
could scarce see the opposite land. But the fog gradually
cleared away ; first one hill-top came into view, and then an-
other ; till at length the long range of coast, from the open-
uig of the great Caledonian valley to the promontory of Burgh
122 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS; .
head, was dimly visible through the haze. A little after noon
there suddenly rose a round white cloud from the Moor of
Culloden. and then a second round white cloud beside it.
And then the two clouds mingled together, and went rolling
slantways on the wind towards the west ; and he could hear
the rattle of the smaller fire-arms mingling with the roar of the
artillery. And then, in what seemed an exceedingly brief
space of time, the cloud dissipated and disappeared, the boom
of the greatet guns ceased, and a sharp intermittent patter of
musketry passed on towards Inverness. But the battle was
presented to the imagination, in these old personal narratives,
in many a diverse form. I have been told by an ancient
woman, who, on the day of the fight, was engaged in tending
some sheep on a solitary common near Munlochy,' separated
from the Moor of Culloden by the Frith, and screened by a
lofty hill, that she sat listening in terror to the boom of the
cannon ; but that she was even still more scared by the con-
tinuous howling of her dog, who sat upright on his haunches
all the time the firing lasted, with his neck stretched out to-
wards the battle, and " looking as if he saw a spirit.'' Such
are some of the recollections which link the memories of a man
who has lived his half-century to those of the preceding age,
and which serve to remind him how one generation of men
after another break and disappear on the shores of the eternal
world, as wave atler wave breaks in foam upon the beach,
when storms a.'e rising, and the ground-swell sets in beavilj
from "ihe sea.
OB. THE STORY OP MY EDUCATION. 123
CHAPTER Vil.
" WUoso elfln prowess scaled the orchara v»aH."
hosKRs.
Some of the wealthier tradesmen of the town, dissatisfiert
with the small progress which their boys were making under
the parish schoolmaster, clubbed together and got a schoolmaster
of their own ; but, though a rather clever young man, he proved
an unsteady one, and regular in his irregularities, got diurnally
drunk, on receiving the instalments of his salary at term-days,
as long as his money lasted. Getting rid of him, they pro-
cured another, — a licentiate of the Churdh, — who for some
time promised well. He seemed steady and thoughtful, and
withal a painstaking teacher; but coming in contact with
some zealous Baptists, they succeeded in conjuring up such a
cloud of doubt around him regarding the propriety of infant
baptism, that both his bodily and mental health became affect-
ed by his perplexities, and he had to resign his charge. And
then, after a pause, during which the boys enjoyed a delight-
fully long vacation, they got yet a third schoolmaster, also a
licentiate, and a person of a high, if not very consistent relig-
ious profession, who was always getting into pecuniary difR.
culties, and always courting, though with but little success,
wealthy ladies who, according to the poet, had " acres of
charms." To the subscription school I was transferred, at the
instance of Uncle James, who remained quite sure, notwith-
124 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEflS :
Standing the experience of the past, that I was? destined to be
a scholar. And, invariably fortunate in my opportunities of
amusement, the transference took place only a few weeks ere
the better schoolmaster, losing health and heart in a labyrinth
of perplexity, resigned his charge. 1 had little inuie than
time enough to look about me on the new forms, and to re-
new, on a firmer foundation than ever, my friendship with my
old associate of the cave, — who had been for the two previous
years an inmate of the subscription school, and was now less
under maternal control than before, — when on came the long
vacation ; and for four happy months I had nothing to do.
My amusements had undergone very little change : I was
even fonder of the shores and woods than ever, and better ac-
quainted with the rocks and caves. A very considerable
change, however, had taken place in the amusements of the
school-fellows my contemporaries, who were now from two to
three years older than when I had been associated with them
in the parish school. Hy-spy had lost its charms ; nor was
there much of its old interest for them in French and Ens-
lish ; whereas my rock excursions they came to regard as
very interesting indeed. With the exception of my friend of
the cave, they cared little about rocks or stones ; but they all
liked brambles, and sloes, and craws-apples, tolerably well,
and took great delight in assisting me to kindle tires in the
caverns of the old coast line, at which we used to ])roil shell-
fish and crabs, taken among the crags and boulders of the ebb
below, and roast potatoes, transferred from the fields of the hill
above. There was one cave, an especial favorite with us,
in which our fires used to blaze day after day for weeks to-
gether. It is deeply hollowed in (he base of a steep ivy-
mantled precipice of granitic gneiss, a full hundred feet in
height; and bears on its smoothed sides and roof, and along
its uneven bottom, — fretted into pot-like cavities, witli large
round pebbles in them, — nnecjuivocal evidence tlial the ex-
cavating agent to whii-h it owed its existence had Itecii the
wild surf of tliis exposed shore. Hut for more than two thou-
sand years wave nad never reached it : the last general elevu.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION 125
lion of the land had raised it beyond the reach of the highest,
stream-tides ; and when my gang and I took possession of its
twilight recesses, its stony sides ^re crusted with mosses and
liverworts ; and a crop of pale, attenuated, sickly-looking weeds,
on which the sun had never looked in his strength, sprang
thickly up over its floor. In the remote past it had been used
as a sort of garner and thrashing-place by a farmer of the
parish, named Marcus, who had succeeded in rearing crops of
oere and o<its on two sloping plots at the foot of the cliffs in
its immediate neighborhood ; and it was known, from this
circumstance, to my uncles and the older inhabitants of the
town, as Marcus' Cave. My companions, however, had been
chiefly drawn to it by a much more recent association. A
poor Highland pensioner, — a sorely dilapidated relic of the
French-American War, who had fought under General Wolfe
in his day, — had taken a great fancy to the cave, and would
fain have made it his home. He was ill at ease in his flimily ;
— his wife was a termagant, and his daughter disreputable ;
and, desirous to quit their society altogether, and live as a her
mit among the rocks, he had made application to the gentle-
man who tenanted the farm above, to be permitted to fit up
the cave for himself as a dwelling. So bad was his English,
however, that the gentleman failed to understand him ; and
his request was, as he believed, rejected, while it was in reality
only not understood. Among the younger folk, the cave came
to be known, from the incident, as " Rory Shingles' Cave ;"
and my companions were delighted to believe that they were
living in it as Rory would have lived had his petition been
granted. In the wild half-savage life which we led, we did
contrive to provide for ourselves remarkably well. The rocky
shores supplied us with limpets, periwinkles, and crabs, and
now and then a lump-fish ; the rugged slopes under the pre-
cipices, with hips, sloes, and brambles ; the broken fragments
of wreck along the beach, and the wood above, furnished abun-
dance of fuel ; and as there were fields not half a mile away, 1
fear the more solid part of our diet consisted often of potatoes
which M'e had not planted, and of peas and beans which wp
126 MY SCHOOLS A^■D SCHOOLMASTERS:
had not sown. One of our number contrived to brinj^ awaj
a pot unobserved fi-om his home ; another succeeded in pi'ovid-
iiig us with a pitcher : ther^vas a good spring not two hun-
dred yards from the cave mouth, which supplied us with water ;
and, thus possessed of not merely all that nature requires, but
of a good deal more, we contrived to tare sumptuously every
day. It has been often remarked, that civilized man, when
placed in cii'cumstances at all favorable, soon learns to as
sume the savage. I shall not say that my companions or my-
self were particularly civilized in our previous state ; but no-
thing could be more certain, than that during our long vaca^
tion we became very happy, and tolerably perfect savages.
The class which we attended was of a kind not opened in any
of our accredited schools, and it might be difficult to procure
even testimonials in its behalf, easily procurable as these
usually are ; and yet, there were some of its lessons which
might be conned with some little advantage, by one desirous
of cultivating the noble sentiment of self-reliance, or the all-
important habit of self-help. At the time, howeveT-, they
appeared quite pointless enough ; and the moral, as in the case
of the continental apologue of Reynard the Fox, seemed al-
ways omitted.
Our parties in these excursions used at times to swell out
to ten or twelve, — at times to contract to two or three ; but
what they gained in quantity they always lost in quality, and
became mischievious with the addition of every new member,
in greatly more than the arithmetical ratio. When most in
nocent they consisted of only a brace of members, — a warm-
hearted, intelligent boy from the south of Scotland, who board-
ed with two elderly ladies of the place, and attended the sub-
8crii>tion school ; and the acknowledged leader of the band,
who, belonging to the permanent irreduciable stafl' of the es-
tablishment, was never off duty. We used to be very ha|)py,
and not altogether irrational, in these little skeleton jtarties.
My new friend was a gentle, tasteful 1)oy, fond of poetry, and
a writer of soft, simjdo verses in the old-fashioned pastoral
vein, which he never showed to any one save myself; and we
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 127
learned to love one another all the more, from the circum
stance that I was of a somewhat bold, self-relying tempera
ment, and he of a clinging, timid one. Two of the stanzas of
a little pastoral, which he addressed to me about a twelve-
month after this time, when permanently quitting the north
country for Edinburgh, still remain fixed in my memory ; and
I must submit them to the reader, both as adequately repre-
sentative of the many others, their fellows, which have been
lost, and of that juvenile poetry in general which " is written,"
according to Sir Walter Scott, " rather from the recollection
of what has pleased the author in others, than what has been
suggested by his own imagination."
" To you my poor sheep, I resign
My colly, my crook, and my horn :
To leave you, indeed, I repine,
But I musl away with the morn.
New scenes shall evolve on my sight,
The world and its follies be new ;
But, ah ! can such scenes of delight
Ero arise, as I witnessed with you?"
Timid as he naturally was, he soon learned to abide in my
company terrors which most of my bolder companions shrank
from encountering. I was fond of lingering in the caves until
long after nightfall, especially in those seasons when the moon
at fuvl, or but a few days in her wane, rose out of the sea as
the evening wore on, to light up the wild precipices of that
solitary shore, and to render practicable our ascending path to
the Hill above. And Finlay was almost the only one of my
band who dared to encounter with me the terrors of the dark-
ness. Our fire has often startled the benighted boatman as he
came rowing round some rocky promontory, and saw the red
glare streaming seaward from the cavern mouth, and partially
lighting up the angry tumbling of the surf beyond ; and ex-
cise-cutters have oftener than once altered their track in middle
Frith, and come bearing towards the coast, to determine
whether the wild rocks of Marcus were not becoming a haunt
of smugglers.
Immediately beyond the granite gneiss of the Hill there ia
128 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
a subaqueous deposit of the Lias formation, never yet ex-
plored b}' geologist, because never yet laid bare by die ebb ;
though every heavier storm from the sea tells of its existence,
by tossing ashore fragments of its dark bituminous shale. I
soon ascertained that the shale is so largely charged with in-
flammable matter as to burn with a strong flame, as if steeped
in tar or oil, and that I could repeat with it the common ex-
periment of producing gas by means of a tobacco-pipe luted
with clay. And, having read in Shakspeare of a fuel termed
" sea coal," and unaware at the time that the poet merely
meant coal brought to London by sea, 1 inferred that the in-
flammable.. shale cast up from the depths of the Frith by the
waves could not be other than the veritable " sea-coal" which
figured in the reminiscences of Dame Quickly ; and so, as-
sisted by Finlay, who shared in the interest which I felt in the
substance, as at once classical and an original discoveiy, I used
to collect it in large quantities, and convert it into smoky and
troubled fires, that ever filled our cavern with a horrible stench,
and scented all the shores. Though unaware of the fact at the
time, it owed its inflammability, not to vegetable, but to ani-
mal substance ; the tar which used to boil in it to the heat,
like resin in a foggot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixturo as
ever yet bubbled in witches' cauldron, — blood of pterodactyl e
and grease of ichthyosaur, — eye of belemnite and hood of nau-
tilis; and we learned to delight in its very smell, all oppress-
ive as that was, as something wild, strange, and inexplical)lo.
Once or twice I seemed on the eve of a discovery ; in splitting
the masses, I occasionally saw what appeared to be fragments
of shells embedded in its substance ; and at least once I laid
open a mysterious-looking scroll or volute, existing on the dark
surface as a cream-colored film ; but tho\igh these oi^ranisma
aiscd a temporary wonder, it was not until a later period that
I learned to comprehend the'r true import, as the half-effliced
but still decipherable charact }rs of a marvellous record of the
gray, droam-cncirclcd past.
With tne docile Finlcy as my companion, and left, to work
out my own will uncliallenged, I was rarely or never mischie-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 129
vous. On the occasions, however, in which my band swelled
out to ten or a dozen, I often experienced the ordinary evils of
leadership, as known in all gangs and parties, civil and eccle-
siastical ; and was sometimes led, in consequence, to engage in
enterprises which my better judgment condemned. I fain wish
that anions: the other " Confessions" with which our literature
is charged, we had the bona fide "Confessions of a Lcadei,"
with examples of the cases in which, though he seems to over-
bear, he is in reality overborne, and actually follows, though
he appears to lead. Honest Sir William Wallace, though
seven feet high, and a hero, was at once candid and humble
enough to confess to the canons of Hexham, that, his " sol
diers being evil-disposed men," whom he could neither "jus-
tify nor punish," he was able to protect women and Church-
men only so long as they " abided in his sight." And, of
course, other leaders, less tall and less heroic, must not unfre-
quently find themselves, had they but Wallace's magnanimity
to confess the fact, in circumstances much akin to those of
Wallace. When bee-masters get hold of queen bees, the)
are able, by controlling the movements of these natural leaders
of hives, to control the movements of the hives themselves ;
and not unfrequently in Churches and States do there exist
inconspicuous bee-masters, who, by influencing or controlling
the leader-bees, in reality influence and control the move-
ments of the entire body, politic or ecclesiastical, over which
these natural monarchs seem to preside. But truce with apol-
ogy. Partly in the character of a leader, — partly being my
self led, — I succeeded about this time in getting one of my
larger parties into a tolerably serious scrape. We passed every
day, on our way to the cave, a fine large orchard, attached to
the manor-house of the Cromarty estate ; and in ascending an
adjacent hill over which our path lay, and which commands a
bird's-eye view of the trim-kept walks and veil-laden trees,
there used not unfrequently to arise wild speculations among
us regarding the possibility and propriety of getting a supply
of the fruit, to serve as desserts to our meals of shell-fish and
potatoes. Weeks elapsed, however, and autumn was drawing
130 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
on to its close, ere we could quite make up our minds regard
ing the adventure, when at length I agreed to lead ; and, after
arranging the plan of the expedition, we broke into the or-
chard under the cloud of night, and carried away with us
whole pocketfuls of apples. They were all intolerably bad, —
sour, hard, baking-apples ; for we had delayed the enterprise
until the better fruit had been pulled ; but though they set
our teeth on edge, and we flung most of them into the sea, we
had " snatched," in the foray, what Gray well terms " a fear-
ful joy," and had some thought of repeating it, merely for the
sake of the excitement induced and the risk encountered, when
out came the astounding fact, that one of our number had
" peached," and, in the character of king's evidence, betrayed
his companions.
The factor of the Cromarty property had an orphan nephew,
who formed at times a member of our gang, and who had
taken a willing part in the orchard foray. He had also en-
gaged, however, in a second enterprise of a similar kind wholly
on his own account, of which we knew nothing. An out-
nouse pertaining to the dwelling in which he lodged, though
' itself situated outside the orchard, was attached to another
house inside the walls, which was employed by the gardener
as a store-place for his apples ; and finding an unsuspected
crevice in the partition which divided the two buildings, some-
what resembling that through which Pyramus and Thisbe
made love of old in the city of Babylon, our comrade, straight-
way availing himself of so fair an opening, fell a-courting
the gardener's apples. Sharpeiiing the end of a long stick, he
began harpooning, through the hole, the api)lc heap below ;
and thungli (he hole was greatly too small for admitting tho
finer and larger specimens, and they, in consequence, fell back
disengaged from the harpoon, in the attempt to land them, ht
Buccct'ded in getting a good nuuiy of the smaller ones. Old
John Clark the gardener, — far advanced in life at the time,
and seeing too imj»erfectly to discover the crevice which open-
ed high amid the obscurity of the loft, — was in a perfect maze
regarding the evil influence that was destroying his apples.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 131
fhe harpooned individuals lay scattered over the floor by scores ;
but the agent that had dispersed and perforated them remained
for weeks together an inscrutable mystery to John. At
length, however, there came a luckless morning, in which )ur
quondam companion lost hold, when busy at work, of the
pointed stick ; and when John next entered his store-house,
the guilty harpoon lay stretched across the harpooned apples.
The discovery was followed up ; the culprit detected ; and, on
being closeted with his uncle the factor, he communicated no
only the details of his own special adventure, but the particu
lars of ours also. And early next day there was a message
sent us by a safe and secret messenger, to the effect that we
would be all put in prison in the course of the week.
We were terribly frightened ; so much so, that the strong
point of our position — the double-dyed guilt of the factor's
nephew — failed to occur to any of us ; and we looked for only
instant incarceration. I still remember the intense feeling of
shame I used to experience every time I crossed my mother's
door for th-^. street, — the agonizing, all-engrossing belief that
every one was looking at and pointing me out, — and the ter-
ror, when in my uncles', — akin to that of the culprit who hears
from his box the footsteps of the returning jury, — that, having
learned of my offence, they were preparing to denounce me
as a disgrace to an honest flimily, on which, in the memory
of man, no stain had rested before. The discipline was emi-
nently wholesome, and I never forgot it. It did seem some-
what strange, however, that no one appeared to know any-
thing about our misdemeanor : the factor kept our secret re-
markably well ; but we inferred he was doing so in order to
pounce upon us all the more effectually ; and, holding a hasty
council in the cave, we resolved that, quitting our homes for
a few weeks, we should live among the rocks till the storm
that seemed rising should have blown by.
Marcus' Cave was too accessible and too well known ; but
my knowledge of the locality enabled me to recommend to my
lads two other caves in which I thought we might be safe.
The one opened in a thicket of furze, some forty feet above
7
132 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
the shore ; and, though large enough within to contain fi'oin
fifteen to twenty' men, it presented outside much the appear-
ance of a fox-earth, and was not known to half-a-dozen people
in the country. It was, however, damp and dark ; and we
found that we could not venture on lighting a fire in it with
out danger of suffocation. It was pronounced excellent, how
ever, as a temporary place of concealment, were the search fo*
ds to become Yery hot. The other cavern was wide and open ;
out it was a wild, ghostly-looking place, scarcely once visited
from one twelvemonth's end to another ; its floor was green
with mould, and its ridgy walls and roof bristled over with
slim pale stalactites, which looked like the pointed tags that
roughen a dead dress. It was certain, too, that it was haunt-
ed. Marks of a cloven foot might be seen freshly impressed
on its floor, which had been produced either by a stray goat, or
by something worse : and the few boys to whom its existence
and character were known used to speak of it under their
breath as " the Devil's Cave." My lads did at first look round
them, as we entered, with an awe-struck and disconsolate
expression ; but falling busily to work among the clifts, we
collected large quantities of withered grass and fern for bed-
ding, and, selecting the drier and less exposed portions of the
floor, soon piled up for ourselves a row of little lairs, formed
in a sort of half-way style between that of the wild beast and
the gipsy, on which it would have been possible enough to
sleep. We sckcted, too, a place for our fire, gathered a little
heap of fuel, and secreted in a recess, for ready use, our IMar-
cus' Cave pot and pitcher, and the lethal weapons of the
gang, which consisted of an old l)ayonet so corroded with rust
tliat it somewhat resembled a tliree-edged saw, and an old
horseman's pistol tied fast to the stocl< l)y cobbler's ends, and
with l<j(k and j'amrod awanting. Evening surprised us in the
middle of our preparations; and as the shadows fell dark and
thicit, my lads began to look most uncomforlalily iiroiuid them.
At lengtfi they fiiirly struck work ; llu-re was no use, they
said, fur ijciiig in the Devil's Cave so late, — no use, indeed, foi
being in it at all, until we were made sure the factor did ao
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 133
tually intend to imprison us ; and, after delivering themselves
to this effect, they fairly bolted, leaving Finlay and myself to
bring up the rear at our leisure. My well-laid plan was, in
short, found unworkable, from the inferior quality of my ma-
terials. I returned home with a heavy heart, somewhat grieved
that I had not confided my scheme to only Finlay, who could,
] ascertained, do braver things, with all his timidity, than the
bclHfr boys, our occasional associates. And yet, when, in
passing homewards through the dark lonely woods of the
Hill, I bethought me of the still deeper solitude and gloom of
the haunted cave far below, and thought further, that at that
very moment the mysterious being with the cloven feet might
be traversing its silent floor, I felt my blood run cold, and at
once leaped to the conclusion that, save for the disgrace, a
cave with an evil spirit in it could be not a great deal better
than a prison. Of the prison, however, we heard no more ;
though I never forgot the grim but precious lesson read me
by the fiictor's threat ; and from that time till the present, —
save now and then, by inadvertently admitting into my news-
paper a paragraph written in too terse a style by some good
man in the provinces, against some very bad man his neigh-
bor, — I have not been fairly within wind of the law. I would,
however, seriously advise such of my young friends as may
cast a curious eye over these pages, to avoid taking any such
lesson as mine at first-hand. One half-hour of the mental
anguish which I at this time experienced, when I thought of
my mother and uncles, and the infamy of a prison, would
have vastly more than counterbalanced all that could have
been enjoyed from banqueting on apples, even had they been
those of the Hesperides or of Eden, instead of being, what
they were in this case, green masses of harsh acid, alike for-
midable to teeth and stomach. I must add, in justice to my
friend of the Doocot Cave, that, though an occasional visitor
at Marcus, he had prudently avoided getting into this scrape.
Our long vacation came at length to an end, by the ap
pointment of a teacher to the subscription school ; but the ar-
rangement was not the most profitable possible for the pupils,
184 MY SCHOOLS AND school:m:asters ;
It was an ominous circumstance, that we learned in a fe^ daya
to designate the new master by a nickname, and that the name
stuck, — a misfortune which almost never befalls the truly su-
perior man. He had, however, a certain dash of cleverness
about him ; and observing that 1 was of potent influence
among my school-fellows, he set himself to determine the
gi-ounds on which my authority rested. Copy and arithmetio
books in schools in which there was liberty used in those an-
cient times to be charged with curious revelations. In the
parish school, for instance, which excelled, as I have said,
every other school in the world in its knowledge of barks and
carvels, it was not uncommon to find a book which, when opened
at the right end, presented only copy-lines or arithmetical
questions, that when opened at the wrong one, presented only
ships and boats. And there were cases on record in which, on
the grand annual examination-day that heralded the vacation,
the worthy parish minister, by beginning to turn over the
leaves of some exhibited book at the reverse end, found him-
self engaged, when expecting only the questions of Cocker, or
the ship-lines of Butterworth, amid whole fleets of smacks,
frigates, and brigantines. My new master, professionally ao-
quainted with this secret property of arithmetic and copy-
books, laid hold of mine, and, bringing them to his desk,
found them charged with very extraordinary revelations in-
deed. Tiie blank spaces were occupied with deplorably scrab-
bled couplets and stanzas, blent with occasional remarks in
rude prose, that dealt chiefly with natural phenomena. One
note, for instance, which the master took the trouble of de-
cij)hering, referred to the supposed ^c/, familiar as a matter
of sensation to boys located on the sea-coast, that during the
bathing season the water is warmer in windy days, when the
waT2s break high, than during dead calms; and accounted for
It (I f€ar, not very philosophically) on the hypothesis that (ho
"waves, by slapping against each other, engender heat, as
heat may be engendered by clapping (he hands." The mas(er
read on, evidently with muoli difficulty, and apparently with
considerable scepticism : he inferred that I had been borrow*
OR, THE STORY OF MY El>rCATION. 135
ing, not inventing ; though where such prose and such verse
could have been borrowed, and, in especial, such grammar
and such spelling, even cleverer men than he might well have
despaired of ever finding out. And in order to test my pow-
ers, he proposed furnishing me with a theme on which to
write. " Let us see," he said, " let us see : the dancing-school
ball comes on here next week ; — bring me a poem on the
3ancing-school ball." The subject did not promise a great
deal ; but, setting myself to w^ork in the evening, I produced
half-a-dozen stanzas on the ball, which were received as good,
in evidence that I actually could rhyme ; and for some weeks
after I was rather a favorite with the new master.
I had, however, ere now become a wild insubordinate boy,
and the only school in which I could properly be taught was
that world-wide school which awaited me, in which Toil and
Hardship are the severe but noble teachers. I got into sad
scrapes. Quarrelling, on one occasion, with a boy of my own
standing, we exchanged blows across the form ; and when
called up for trial and punishment, the fault was found to at-
tach so equally to both sides, that the same number of palmies,
well laid on, were awarded to each. I bore mine, however,
like a North American Indian, whereas my antagonist began
to howl and cry ; and I could not resist the temptation of say-
ing to him, in a whisper that unluckily reached the ear of the
master, " Ye big blubbering blockhead, take that for a drub-
bing from me." I had of course to receive a few palmies ad-
ditional for the speech ; but then, " who oared for that V The
master, however, " cared " considerably more for the offence
than I did for the punishment. And in a subsequent quarrel
with another boy, — a stout and somewhat desperate mulatto,
— I got into a worse scrape still, of which he thought still
worse. The mulatto, in his battles, which were many, had a
trick, when in danger of being over-matched, of drawing hig
knife; and in our aflair — the necessities of the fight seeming
to require it — he drew his knife upon me. To his horror and
astonishment, however, instead of running off, I immediately
drew mine, and, quick as lightning, stabbed hiiu in the thigh.
136 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
He roared out in fright and pain, and, though more alarmed than
hurt, never after drew knife upon a combatant. But the value
of the lesson which I gave was, like most other very valuable
things, inadequately appreciated ; and it merely procured for
me the character of being a dangerous boy. 1 had certainly
reached a dangerous stage ; but it was mainly myself that was
in jeopardy. There is a transition time in which the strength
and independence of the latent man begin to mingle with the
wilfulness and indiscretion of the mere boy, which is more
perilous than any other, and in which many more downward
careers of recklessness and folly begin, that end in wreck and
ruin, than in all the other years of life which intervene be-
tween childhood and old age. The growing lad should be
wisely and tenderly dealt with at this critical stage. The se-
verity that would fain compel the implicit submission yielded
at an earlier period, would probably succeed, if his character
was a strong one, in ensuring but his ruin. It is at this tran-
sition stage that boys run off to sea from their parents and
masters, or, when tall enough, enlist in the army for soldiers.
The strictly orthodox parent, if more severe than wise, suc-
ceeds occasionally in driving, during this crisis, his son into
Popery, or infidelity ; and the sternly moral one, in landing
his in utter profligacy. But, leniently and judiciously dealt
with, the dangerous period passes ; in a few years at most, —
in some instances in even a few months, — the sobriety inci-
dental to a further development of character ensues, and the
wild boy settles down into a rational young man.
It so chanced, however, that in what proved the closing
scene in my term of school attendance, 1 was rather unfor-
tunate than guilty. The class to which I now belonged read
an English lesson every afternoon, and had its rounds of
Bpelling; and in these last I acquitted myself but ill ; partly
fi'orn the circMmstance that I spelt only indillerently, but still
more from the further circumstance, that, retaining strongly
fixed in my memorj the broad Scotch pronunciation acquired
at the dames' school I had to carry on in my mind the double
process of at onoe s])eHing the required word, and of trans
OH, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". IBI
lating the oK sounds of the letters of which it was composed
into the modern ones. Nor had I been taught to break the
words into syllables ; and so, when required one evening to
spell the word " awful" with much deliberation, — for I had
to translate, as I went on, the letters a-w and m, — I spelt it
word for word, without break or pause, as a-w-f-u-1. " No,"
said the master; "a-w, aw, f-u-1, awful; spell again." This
seemed preposterous spelling. It was sticking in an a, as
thought, into the middle of the word, where, I was sure, no
had a right to be ; and so I spelt it as at first. The master
recompensed my supposed contumacy with a sharp cut athwart
the ears with his taws ; and again demanding the spelling of
the word, I yet again spelt it as at first. But on receiving a
second cut, I refused to spell it any more ; and, determined on
overcoming my obstinacy, he laid hold of me, and attempted
throwing me down. As wrestling had, however, been one of
our favorite Marcus' Cave exercises, and as few lads of my
inches wrestled better than I, the master, though a tall and
tolerably robust fellow, found the feat considerably more
difficult than he could have supposed. We swayed from side
to side of the school-room, now backwards, now forwards, and
for a full minute it seemed to be rather a moot point on which
side the victory was to incline. At length, however, I was
tripped over a form ; and as the master had to deal with me,
not as master usually deals with pupil, but as one combatant
deals with another, whom he has to beat into submission, I
was mauled in a way that filled me with aches and bruises for
a full month thereafter. I greatly fear that, had I met the
fellow on a lonely road five j'cars subsequent to our encounter,
wnen I had become strong enough to raise breast-hign the
" great lifting stone of the Dropping Cave," he would have
caught as sound a thrashing as he ever gave to little boy or
girl in his life ; but all I could do at this time was to take
down my cap from off the pin, when the afiair had ended, and
march straight out of school. And thus terminated my school
education. Before night I had avenged myself, in a copy of
satiric verses, entitled " The Pedagogue," which — as they had
138 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTEES ;
some little cleverness in them, regarded as the work of a boy
and as the known eccentricities of their subject gave me large
scope — occasioned a good deal of merriment in the place ;
and of the verses a fair copy, written out by Finlay, was
transmitted through the Post-Office to the pedagogue himself.
But the only notice he ever took of them was incidentally,
in a short speech made to the copyist a few days after. " I
see, Sir," he said. — " I see you still associate with that fellow
Miller ; perhaps he will make you a poet !" " I had thought,
Sir," said Finlay, very quietly, in reply, " that poets were
born, — not made."
As a specimen of the rhyme of this period, and as in some
degree a set-ofF against my drubbing, which remains till this
day an unsettled score, I submit my pasquinade to the reader.
THE PEDAGOGUE.
With solemn mien and pious air,
S— 1{ — r attends eacii cull of grace ;
Loud eloquence bedecks his prayer,
And formal sanctity his face.
All good ; but turn the other side,
And see the smirking; beau displayed ;
The pompous strut, exalted air,
And all that marks the fop, is thure.
In character we seldom see
Traits so diverse meet and agree:
Can the affected mincing trip,
Exalted brow, and pride-pressed lip,
In stranife incongruous imion meet.
With all that stamps the hypocrite ?
We see they do : but let us scan
Those secret springs which move the vatM
Though now he wields the knotty bircU,
His bettor hope lies in the Cliurch :
For this the sal)lo robe lie wears,
For this ill pious guise appears.
But then, the weak will cannot hide
Th' inlierent vanity and pride ;
And thus he acLs the coxcoml>'a part)
An dearer to his poor fain heart :
Nature's burn lop 1 a suiiit by aril i
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION 135
But, hold, he wears no fopling's dress ;
Each seam, each thread the eye can trace.
His garb all o'er ; — the i.je, though true,
Time-blanch'd, displays a fainter hue:
Dress forma the fopling's better part ; —
Reconcile this and prove your art.
"Chill penury represses pride ;" —
A maxim by the wise denied ;
For 'tis alone tame plodding souls,
Whose spirits bend when it conlrols,-
Whose lives run on in one dull same,
Plain honesty their highest aim.
With him it merely can repress —
Tailor o'er-cowed — the pomp of <lre88;
His spirit, unrepressed, can soar
High as e'er folly rose before;
Can fly pale study, learii'd debate,
And ape proud fashion's idle state ;
Yet fails in that engaging grace
That lights the practis'd courtier's face.
His weak affected air we mark,
And, smiling, view the would-be spark;
Complete in every act and feature, —
An ill-bred, silly, awkward creature.
My school-days fairly over, a life of toil frowned full in
front of me •, but never yet was there half-grown lad less
willing to take up the man and lay down the boy. My set of
companions was fast breaking up; — my friend of the Doocol
Cave was on the eve of proceeding to an academy in a neigh,
boring town ; Finlay had received a call from the south, tG
finish his education in a seminary on the banks of the Tweed ;
one Marcus' Cave lad was preparing to go to sea ; another
to learn a trade ; a third to enter a shop : the time of dis-
persal was too evidently at hand ; and, taking cour.sel one
day together, we resolved on constructing something — we at
first knew not what — that might serve as a monument to re-
call to us in after years the memory of our early pastimes and
enjoyments. The common school-book story of the Persian
shepherd, who, when raised by his sovereign to high place in
the empire, derived his chief pleasure from contemplating, in
a secret apartment the pipe, crook, and rude habiliments of
140 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS',
his happier days, sugges.ed to me that we also should have
our secret apartment, in which to store up, for future contem-
plation, our bayonet and pistol, pot and pitcher ; and I rec-
ommended that we should set ourselves to dig a subterranean
chamber for that purpose among the woods of the hill, accessi-
ble, like the mysterious vaults of our story-books, by a trap
door. The projwsal was favorably received ; and, selecting
a solitary spot among the trees as a proper site, and procur-
ing spade and mattock, we began to dig.
Soon passing through the thin crust of vegetable mould, we
found the red boulder clay beneath exceedingly stiff and hard ;
but day after day saw us perseveringly at work ; and we suc-
3eeded in digging a huge square pit, about six feet in length
and breadth, and fully seven feet deep. Fixing four upright
posts in the corners, we lined our apartment with slender spars
nailed closely together ; and we had prepared for giving it a
massive roof of beams formed of fallen trees, and strong
enough to bear a layer of earth and turf from a foot to a foot
and a half in depth, with a little opening for the trap-door;
when we found, one morning, on pressing onwards to the scene
of our labors, that we were doggedly tracked by a horde of
boys considerably more numerous than our own party. Their
curiosity had been excited, like that of the Princess Nekayah
in Rasselas, by the tools which we carried, and by " seeing
that we had directed our walk every day to the same point;"
and in vain, by running and doubling, by scolding and remon-
strating, did we now attempt shaking them off. I saw that,
were we to provoke a general melee, we could scarce expect
to come off victors ; but deeming myself fully a match for
their stoutest boy, I stepped out and challenged him to come
forward and fight me. He hesitated, looked foolish, and re-
fused, but said, he would readily fight with any of my party
except myself I immediately named my friend of the Doocot
Cave, who leaped out with a bound to meet him ; but the boy,
as I had anticipated, refused to fight liim also ; and, ohst-rving
the proper eU'ect produced, I ordered my lads to march fur-
ward ; and from an u])per slope ol' the hill we had the satisfao-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 143
tion of seeing that our pursuers, after lingering for a little while
on the spot on which \»e had left them, turned homewards,
fairly cowed, and pursued us no more. But, alas ! on reach-
ing our secret chamber, we ascertained, by marks all too un
equivocal, that it was to be secret no longer. Some rude hand
had torn down the wooden lining, and cut two of the posts
half through with a hatchet ; and on returning disconsolately
to th« town, we ascertained that Johnstone, the forester, hud
just been there before us, declaring that some atrociously
wicked persons — for whose apprehension a proclamation was
to be instantly issued — had contrived a diabolical trap, which
he had just discovered, for maiming the cattle of the gentle-
man, his employer, who farmed the Hill. Johnstone was an
old Forty -Second man, who had followed Wellington over the
larger part of the Peninsula ; but though he had witnessed the
storming and sack of St. Sebastian, and a great many other bad
things, nothing had he ever seen on the Peninsula, or anywhere
else, he said, half so mischievous as the cattle-trap. We, of
course, kept our own secret ; and as we all returned under the
cloud of night, and with heavy hearts filled up our excavation
level with the soil, the threatened proclamation was never is-
sued. Johnstone, however, who had been watching my mo
tions for a considerable time before,. and whom, as he was a
formidable fellow, very unlike any of the other foresters, I had
been sedulously watching in turn, — had no hesitation in declar-
ing that I, and I only, could be the designer of the cattle-trap.
I had acquainted myself in books, he said, with the mode of
entrapping by pitfalls wild beasts in the forests abroad ; and
my trap for the Colonel's cattle was, he was certain, a result
of my book-acquired knowledge.
I was one day lounging in front of my mother's dwelling,
when up came Johnstone to address me. As the evideuvie
regarding the excavation had totally broken down, I was
aware of no special offence at the time that could have secur-
ed for me such a piece of attention, and inferred that the old
soldier was laboring under some mistake ; but Johnstone's
address soon evinced that he was not in the least mistakea
142 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS j
He- wished to be acquainted with me, he said. " It was all
noLsense for us to be bothering one another, when we had no
cause of quarrel." He used occasionally to eke out his pen-
sion, and his scanty allowance as forester, by catching a basliet
of tish for himself from off the rocks of the Hill ; and he had
\ust discovered a projecting rock at the foot of a tall precii:)ice,
which would prove, he was sure, one of the best fishing plat,
forms in the Frith. But then, in the existing state, it was
wholly inaccessible. He was, however, of opinion that it was
possible to lay it open by carrying a path adown the shelving
face of the precipice. He had seen Wellington address him-
self to quite as desperate-looking matters in the Peninsula ;
and were I but to assist him, he was sure, he said, we could
construct between us the necessary path. The undertaking
was one wholly according to my o^vn heart ; and next morn-
ing Johnstone and I were hard at work on the giddy brow
of the precipice. It was topped by a thick bed of boulder
clay, itself — such was the steepness of the slope — almost a pre-
liplce ; but a series of deeply-cut steps led us easily adown the
bed of clay ; and then a sloping shelf, which, with much labor,
we deepened and flattened, conducted us not unsafely some
five-and-twenty or thirty feet along the face of the precipice
proper. A second series of steps, painfully scooped out of
the living rock, and which passed within a few yards of a
range of herons' nests perched on a hitherto inaccessible plat-
form, brought us down some five-and-twenty or thirty feet
more ; but then we arrived at a sheer descent of about twenty
feet, at which Johnstone looked rather blank, though, on my
suggesting a ladder, he took heart again, and cutting two slim
taper trees in the wood above, we flung them over the preci-
pi(X) into the sea ; and then fishing them up with a world of
toil and trouble, we squared and bore them upwards, and, cut
ting tenons for them in the hard gneiss, we placed them against
the rock front, and nailed ovi-r them a line of steps. The
precipice beneath sloped easily on to the fishing rock, and so a
few steps more completed our path. I never saw a man more
ieliglited than Johnstone. As being lighter and more active
OR, THE STOEY OF MY EDFCATTON. X\?)
than he, — for, though not greatly advanced in life, he was con-
siderably debilitated by severe wounds, — I had to take some
of the more perilous parts of the work on myself I had cut
the tenons for the ladder with a rope round my waist, and had
recovered the trees flung into the sea by some adroit swim-
ming ; and the old soldier became thoroughly impressed with
the conviction that my proper sphere was the army. I was
already five feet three, he said ; in little more than a twelve-
month I should be five feet seven ; and were I then but to en-
list, and to keep from the " drop drink," — a thing which he
never could do, — I would, he was certain, rise to be a serjeant.
In brief, such were the terms on which Johnstone and I learn
ed to live ever after, that, had I constructed a score of traps
for the Colooel's cattle, I believe he would have winked at
them all. Poor fellow ! he got into difficulties a good many
years after, and, on the accession of the Whigs to power,
mortgaged his pension, and emigrated to Canada. Deeming
the terms hard, however, as he well might, he first wrote a
letter to his old commander, the Duke of Wellington, — I hold-
ing the pen for him, — in which, in the hope that their strin-
gency might be relaxed in his behalf, he stated both his ser-
vices and his case. And promptly did the Duke reply, in an
essentially kind holograph epistle, in which, after stating that
he had no influence at the time with the Ministers of the
Crown, and no means of getting a relaxation of their terms
in behalf of any one, he "earnestly recommended William
Johnstone, Jirst, not to seek a provision for himself in Cana-
da, unless he were able-bodied, and fit to provide for himself
in circumstances of extreme hardship ; and, second, on no ac-
count to sell or mortgage his pension." But the advice was
not taken ; — Johnstone did emigrate to Canada, and did mort-
gage his pension ; and I fear — though I failed to trace his a£-
ter-history — that he suffered in consequence.
144 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
CHAPTER VIli.
" Now, surely, thoiighl I, there's enou'
To till life's (111 sly way ;
And who will tiiiss a poet's feet,
Or woncler where he stray !
So to the woods luid WHStes I'll go,
And I will build an o/ier bower;
And sweetly there to ine shall flow
The meditative hour."
Henry Kirke White.
FiNLAY was away ; my friend of the Doocot Cave was away ;
my other companions were all scattered abroad ; my mother,
after a long widowhood of more than eleven years, had enter-
ed into a second marriage ; and I found myself standing face
to face with a life of labor and restraint. The prospect ap-
peared dreary in the extreme. The necessity of ever toiling
from morning to night, and from one week's end to another,
and all for a little coarse food and homely raiment, seemed to
be a dire one ; and fain would I have avoided it. But there
was no escape, and so I determined on being a mason. T ro-
membered my Cousin George's Itjiig winter holidays, and hoH
delightfully he employed them ; and, by making choice of
Cousin George's profession, I trusted to find, like him, largo
compensation, in the amusements of one half the year, for the
toils of the other half Labor shall not wield over me, I said,
a rot] entirely black, but a rod like one of Jacob's peeled
wands, chequered white and black alternately.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 145
I, however, did look, even at this time, notwithstanding the
antecedents of a sadly mis-spent boyhood, to something higher
,han mere amusement; and, daring to believe that literature,
and, mayhap, natural science, were, after all, my proper vocar
Uons, I resolved that much of n y leisure time should be given
lO careful observation, and the study of our best English au
'hors. Both my uncles, especially James, were sorely vexed
by my determination to be a mason ; they had expected to see
ne rising in some one of the learned professions ; yet here was
• going to be a mere operative mechanic, like one of them-
selves ! I spent with them a serious hour, in which they
urged that, instead of entering as a mason's apprentice, 1
should devote myself anew to my education. Though the
labor of their hands formed their only wealth, they would as-
sist me, they said, in getting through college ; nay, if I pre-
ferred it, I might meanwhile come and live with them ; all they
asked in return of me was, that I should give myself as scdu
lously to my lessons as, in the event of my becoming a mason,
1 would have to give myself to my trade. I demurred. The
lads of my acquaintance who were preparing for college had
an eye, I said, to some profession ; they were qualifying them-
selves to be lawyers, or medical men, or, in much larger part,
were studying for the Church ; whereas I had no wish and no
peculiar fitness to be either lawyer or doctor ; and as for the
Church, that was too serious a direction to look in for one's
bread, unless one could honestly regard one's self as called to
the Church's proper Avork ; and I could not. There, said my
uncles, you are perfectly right : better be a poor mason, — bet-
ter be anything honest, however humble, — than an uncalled
minister. Plow very strong the hold taken of the mind in
some cases by hereditary convictions of which the ordinar}
conduct shows little apparent trace ! 1 had for the last few
years been a wild boy, — not without my share of respect for
Donald Roy's religion, but possessed of none of Donald's se-
riousness ; and yet here was his belief in this special matter
lying so strongly entrenched in the recesses of my mind, that
no consideration whatever could have induced me to outrage
146 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
it by obtruding my unworthiness on the Church. Though,
mayhap, overstrained in many of its older forms, I fain wish
the conviction, in at least some of its better modifications,
were more general now. It might be well for all the Protest-
ant Churches prai^tically to hold, with Uncles Jim<^s and Sandy,
that true ministers cannot be manufactured Out of ordinary
men — men ordinary in talent and character — in a given num-
ber of years, and then passed by the imposition of hands into
the sacred office ; but that, on the contrary, ministers, when
real, are all special creations of the grace of God. I may
add, that in a belief of this kind, deeply implanted in the pop-
ular mind of Scotland, the strength of our recent Church con-
troversy mainly lay.
Slowly and unwillingly my uncles at length consented that I
should make trial of a life of manual labor. The husband of
one of my maternal aunts was a mason, who, contracting for jobs
on a small scale, usually kept an apprentice or two, and employ-
ed a few journeymen. With him I agreed to serve for the term
of three years ; and, getting a suit of strong moleskin clothes,
and a pair of heavy hob-nailed shoes, I waited only for t|ie
breaking up of the winter frosts, to begin work in the Cro-
marty quarries, — -jobbing masters in the north of Scotland us-
ually combining the profession of the quarrier with that of the
mason. In the beautiful poetic fragment from which I have
chosen my motto, poor Kirk White fondly indulges in the
drL-am of a hermit life, — cpiiet, meditative, solitary, spent far
away in deep woods, or amid wido-sj>rea<l wastes, where the
very sounds that arose would lie but the faint echoes of a lone-
liness in which man was not, — a " voice of the desert, never
dumb." The dream is that of a certain brief period of life be-
tween l)oyhood and comparatively mature youth ; and we (ind
more traces of it in the poetry of Kirke \\ hite than in that of
almost any other poet; simply because he wrote at the ago in
which it is natural to indulge in it, and because, being less an
imitator and more an original than most juvenile poets, he
gave it as a portion of the iMtrrnal experitmce from which he
drew But it is a dream not restricted to young poets ; the
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 147
ignorant, half-grown lad, who learns for the first time " about
the groat rich gentleman who advertises for a hermit," and
wish(>s that he had but the necessary qualifications of beard to
offer nimself as a candidate, indulges in it also ; and I, too, in
this transition stage, cherished it with all the strength of a
passion. It seems to spring out of a latent timidity in the yet
undeveloped mind, that shrinks from grappling with the stern
realities of life, amid the crowd and press of a busy world,
and o'ershaded by the formidable competition of men already
practised in the struggle. I have still before me the picture
of the " lodge in some vast wilderness," to which I could have
fam retired, to lead all alone a life quieter, but quite as wild,
as my Marcus' Cave one ; and the snugness and comfort of the
humble interior of my hermitage, during some boisterous night
of winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the
roof, and the rain beating on the casement, but when in the
calm within, the cheerful flame would roar in the chimney,
and glance bright on raftei and wall, still impress me as if the
recollection was in reality that of a scene witnessed, not of a
mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But it was all the idle
dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on former oc-
casions, have avoided going to school, — that best and noblest
of all schools, save the Christian one, in which honest Labor
is the teacher, — in which the ability of being useful is impart-
ed, and the spirit of independence communicated, and the hab-
it of persevering eflbrt acquired ; and which is more moral
than the schools in which only philosophy is taught, and great-
ly more happy than the schools which profess to teach only the
art of enjoyment. Noble, upright, self-relying Toil ! Who
that knows thy solid worth and value would be ashamed of
thy hard hands, and thy soiled vestments, and thy obscure
tasks, — thy huml)le cottage, and hard couch, and homely fare !
Save for thee and thy lessons, man in society would everywhere
sink into a sad compound of the fiend and the wild beast ; and
this fallen world would be as certainly a moral as a natural wil-
derness. But I little thought of the excellence of thy character
»nd of thy teachings, whei^ , with a heavy heart, I set out about
148 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
this time, on a morning of early spring, to take my first lessee
from thee in a sandstone quarry.
I have elsewhere recorded the history of my few first days
of toil ; but it is possible for two histories of the same period
and ind vidual to be at once true to fact, and unlike each other
hi the scenes which they describe and the events which they
record. The quarry in which I commenced my life of labor
was, as T have said, a sandstone one, and exhibited in the sec-
tion of the furze-covered bank which it presented, a bar of
deep-red stone beneath, and a bar of pale-red clay above.
Both deposits belonged to formations equally known at the
time to the geologist. The deep-red stone formed part of an
upper member of the Lower Old Red Sandstone ; the pale-
red clay, which was much roughened by rounded pebbles, and
much cracked and fissured by the recent frosts, was a bed of
the boulder clay. Save for the wholesome rcsCraint that con-
fined me for day after day to the spot, I would perhaps have
paid little attention to either. Mineralogy in its first rudi-
ments had early awakened my curiosity, just as it never fails
to awaken, with its gems, and its metals, and its hard glitter-
ing rocks, of which tools may be made, the curiosity of infant
tribes and nations. But in unsightly masses of mechanical
origin, whether sandstone or clay, I could take no interest ;
just as infant societies take no interest in such masses, and so
fail to know anything of geology ; and it was not until I had
learned to detect among the ancient sandstone strata of this
quarry exactly the same phenomena as those wliieh I used to
witness in my walks with Uncle Sandy in the ebb, that I was
fairly excited to examine and inquire. It was the necessity
which made me a quarricr that taught me to be a geologist.
Further. I soon found that there was much to be eiijoyed in a
life of hihor. A taste for the beauties of natural scenery is of
itself a never-failing spring of delight ; and there was scarco
a day in which I wrought in the open air, during this period,
m which I did not experience its sootliing and exhilarating in-
fluence. Wi'll has it been said by the poet Ki'ats, that " a
thing of beauty is a joy forever." I owed much to the upper
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlSr. 149
reaches of Cromarty Frith, as seen, when we sat down tc
our mid -day meal, from the gorge of the quarry, with their
numerous rippling currents, that in the calm resembled stream
lets winding through a meadow, and their distant gray pro-
montories tipped with villages that brightened in the sunshine ;
while, pale in the background, the mighty hills, still streaked
with snow, rose high over bay and promontory, and gave dig-
nity and power to the scene.
Still, however, with all my enjoyments, I had to suffer some
of the evils of excessive toil. Though now seventeen, I was
still seven inches short of my ultimate stature ; and my frame^
cast more at the time in the mould of my mother than in that
of the robust sailor, whose " back," according to the descrip-
tion of one of his comrades, " no one had ever put to the
ground," was slim and loosely knit ; and I used to suffer much
from wandering pains in the joints, and an oppressive feeling
about the chest, as if crushed by some great weight. 1 be-
came subject, too, to frequent fits of extreme depression of
spirits, which took almost the form of a walking sleep, — re
suits, I believe, of excessive fatigue, — and during which my ab
sence of mind was so extreme, that 1 lacked the ability of
protecting myself against accident, in cases the most simple
and ordinary. Besides other injuries, I lost at different times
during the first few months of my apprenticeship, when in
these fits of partial somnambulism, no fewer than seven of my
finger-nails. But as I gathered strength, my spirits became
more equable ; and not until many years after, when my health
failed for a time under over-exertion of another kind, had I
any renewed experience of the fits of walking sleep.
My master, an elderly man at the time, — for, as he used not
unfrequently to tell his apprentices, he had been born on the
same day and year as George the Fourth, and so we could
celebrate, if we pleased, both holidays together, — was a per-
son of oloading, persevering industry, who wrought rather
longer hours than was quite agreeable to one who wished to
have some time to himself ; but he was, in the main, a good
tiaster. As a builder, he made conscience of every stone he
150 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
laid. It was remarked in the place, that the walls built bj
Uncle David never bulged or fell ; and no apprentice or jour-
neyman of his was permitted, on any plea, to make " slight
"svork." Though by no means a bold or daring man, he was,
from sheer abstraction, when engrossed in his employment,
more thoroughly insensible to personal danger than almost
any other individual I ever knew. On one occasion, when an
overloaded boat, in which he was carrying stones from the
quarry to the neighboring town, was overtaken by a series of
rippling seas, and suddenly sank, leaving him standing on on<
of the thwarts submerged to the throat, he merely said to hi;
partner, on seeing his favorite snuffmull go floating past
" Od, Andro man, just rax out your han' and tak in my snuff
box." On another, when a huge mass of the boulder claji
came toppling down upon us in the quarry with such momen
tum, that it bent a massive iron lever like a bow, and crushed
into minute fragments a strong wheelbarrow. Uncle David,
who, older and less active than any of the others, had been
entangled in the formidable debris, relieved all our minds by
remarking, as we rushed back, expecting to lind him crushed
as flat as a botanical preparation, " Od, I draid, Andro man,
we have lost our good barrow." He was at first of opinion
that I would do him little credit as a workman ; in my ab-
sent fits I was well-nigh as impervious to instruction as he him-
self was insensible to danger ; and I labored under the further
disadvantage of knowing a little, as an amateur, of both hew-
ing and building, from the circumstance, that when the under-
takings of my schoolboy days involved, as they sometimes did,
the erection of a house, I used always to be selected as the
mason of the party. And all that 1 had learned on these oc-
casions I had now to unlearn. In the course of a few months,
however, I did unlearn it all ; and then, acquiring in less than
a fortnight a very considerable mastery over the mallet, — for
mine was one of the n.")t very unfrequent cases in whicli the
mechanical knack seems, after many an abortive altenq)t, to
be 3Jiught up at once, — I astonished Uncle David one morn-
ing by setting myself to com])eto with him, and by hewinp
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 151
nearly t^v'o feet cf pavement for his one. And on this occa
sion my aunt, his wife, who had been no stranger to his pre
vious complaints, was informed that her " stupid nephew" wai
to turn out " a grand workman after all."
A life of toil has, however, its peculiar temptations. When
overwrought, and in my depressed moods, I learned to regard
the ardent spirits of the dram-shop as high luxuries ; the}
gave lightness and energy to both body and mind, and substi
tated for a state of dulness and gloom, one of exhilaratior
and enjoyment. Usquebhae was simply happiness doled out
by the glass, and sold by the gill. The drinking usages of tlu
profession in which I labored were at this time many ; when
a foundation was laid, the workmen were treated to drink ;
they were treated to drink when the walls were levelled for
laying the joists ; they were treated to drink when the build-
nig was finished ; they were treated to drink when an appren-
tice joined the squad ; treated to drink when his " apron was
washed ;" treated to drink when his " time was out ;" and oc-
casionally they learned to treat one another to drink. In lay-
ing down the foundation-stone of one of the larger houses
built this year by Uncle David and his partner, the workmen
had a royal " founding-pint," and two whole glasses of the
whiskey came to my share. A full-grown man would not have
deemed a gill of usquebhae an overdose, but it was consider-
ably too much for me ; and when the party broke up, and 1
got home to my books, I found, as I opened the pages of a
favorite author, the letters dancing before my eyes, and that
I could no longer master the sense. I have the volume at pres-
ent before me, — a small edition of the Essays of Bacon, a
good deal worn at the corners by the friction of the pocket :
for of Bacon I never tired. The condition into which I had
brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation. I had sunk.
Dy my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence
than that on which it was my privilege to be placed ; and
'jhough the state could have been no very favorable one foi
forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should
never again sacrifice my capacity for intellectual enjovnent tc
152 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMj^STERS ;
a drinking usage ; and, with God's help, I was enabled to bold
by the determination. Though never a strict abstainer, li
have wrought as an operative mason for whole twelvemonths
together, in which I did not consume half-a-dozen glasses of
ardent spirits, or partake of half-a-dozen draughts of ferment-
ed liquor. But I do see, in looking back on this my first year
of labor, a dangerous point, at which, in the attem^Dt to escape
from the sense of depression and fatigue, the criiving appetite
of the confirmed tippler might have been formed.
The ordinary, long-wrought quarries of my native town have
been opened in the old coast-line along the southern shores of
the Cromarty Frith, and they contain no organisms. The
beds occasionally display their water-rip[)led surfaces, and oc-
casionally their areas of ancient desiccation, in which the poly-
gonal partings still remain as when they had cracked in the
dr}'ing, untold ages before. But the rock contains neither fish
nor shell ; and the mere mechanical processes of which it gave
evidence, though they served to raise strange questions in my
mind, failed to interest me so deeply as the wonderful organ-
isms of other creations would have done. We soon quitted
these quarries, however, as they proved more than usually dif-
ficult in the working at this time, for a quarry situated on the
northern shore of the Moray Frith, which had been recently
opened in an inferior member of the Lower Old Red Sand-
stone, and which, as I subsequently ascertained, does in some
of its beds contain fossils. It was, however, not to the quarry
itself that my first-found organisms belonged. There lies in
the Frith beyond, an outlier of the Lias, which, like the Mar-
cus' Cave one referred to in a preceding chapter, strews the
beach with its fragments after every storm from the sea ; and
n a nodular mass of blueish-gray limestone derived from thi?
ubaqueous bed I laid open my lirst-found ammonite. It wa?
a beautiful specimen, graceful in its curves as those of the
Ionic volute, and greatly more delicate in its sculpturing ; and
its bright cream-colored tint, dimly burnished by the pris-
matic hues of the original jiearl, contrasted exquisitely with the
dark gray )fthc matrix which enclosed it. I broke open many
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 153
a similar nodule during our stay at this delightful quarry and
there were few of them in which I did not detect some or-
jranism of the ancient world, — scales of fishes, groupes of shells,
bits of decayed wood, and fragments of fern. At the dinner
hour 1 used to show my new-found specimens to the work-
men ; but though they always took the trouble of looking at
them, and wondered at times how the shells and plants had
" got into the stone," they seemed to regard them as a sort of
atural toys, which a mere lad might amuse himself in look
ng after, but which were rather below the notice of grown-up
people like themselves. One workman, however, informed
me, that things of a kind I had not yet found, — genuine thun-
derbolts, — which in his father's times were much sought after
for the cure of bewitched cattle, — were to be found i)i tolerable
abundance on a reach of the beach about two miles further to
the west ; and as, on quitting the quarry for the piece of work
on which we were to be next engaged. Uncle David gave us
all a half-holiday, I made use of it in visiting the tract of
shore indicated by the workman. And there, leaning against
the granite gneiss and hornblend slate of the Hill of Eathie,
I found a Liasic deposit, amazingly rich in its organisms, —
not buried under the waves, as at Marcus' shore, or as opposite
our new quarry, but at one part underlying a little grass-cover
ed plain, and at another exposed for several hundred yards to-
gether along the shore. Never yet did embryo-geologist break
ground on a more promising field ; and memorable in my ex-
istence was this first of the many happy evenings that I have
spent in exploring it.
The Ilill of Eathie, like the Cromarty Sutors, belongs, as I
have already had occasion to mention, to what De Beaumont
^ould term the Ben Nevis system of hills, — that latest of oui
Scottish mountain systems which, running from south- west to
north-east, in the line of the great Caledonian valley, and in
that of the valleys of the Nairn, Findhorn, and Spey, uptilted
in its course, when it arose, the Oolites of Sutherland, and iho.
Lias of Cromarty and Ross. The deposit which the Hill of
Eathie distuiLtd is exclusively a Liasic one. The upturned
154 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
base of the formation rests immediately against the Hill ; and
we may trace the edges of the various overlaying beds for seve
ral hundred feet outwards, until, apparently near the top of
the deposit, we lose them in the sea. The various beds — all
save the lowest, which consists of a blue adhesive clay — are
composed of a dark shale, consisting of easily-separable lamina),
thin as sheets of pasteboard ; and they are curiously divided
from each other by bands of fbssiliferous limestone of but fi'om
one to two feet thick. These Liasic beds, with their separating
bands, are a sort of boarded books ; for as a series of volume?
reclining against a granite pedestal in the geological library of
nature, I used to find pleasure in regarding them. The lime-
stone bands, elaborately marbled with lignite, icthyolite, and
shell, form the stiff boarding ; the pasteboard-like laminae be-
tween, — tens and hundreds of thousands in number in even
the slimmer volumes, — compose the closely-written leaves. I
say closely written ; for never yet did signs or characters lie
closer on page or scroll than do the organisms of the Lias on
the surface of these leaf-like laminas. I can scarce hope to
communicate to the reader, after the lapse of so many years,
an adequate idea of the feeling of wonder which the marvels of
this deposit excited in my mind, wholly new as they were to me
at the time. Even the fairy lore of my first-formed library, —
that of the birchen box, — had impressed me less. The general
tone of the coloring of these written leaves, though dimmed
by the action of untold centuries, is still very striking. The
ground is invariably of a deep natural gray, verging on black ;
while the flattened organisms, which present about the same
degree of relief as one sees in tlie figures of an embossed card,
contrast with it in tints that vary from ojiaque to silvery white,
and from pale yi-lluwtoan umijry ur chestnutbrown. Groups
of ammonites appear as if drawn in white chalk ; clusters of a
minute undescribed bivalve are still jilated with thin films of
the silvery nacre ; the mytilaceie usually bear a warm lint of
yellowish brown, and must have been brilliant shells in their
day ; grvphites and oysters are always of a dark gray, and
plagio.'5tomuj ordinarily of a blueish or neutral tint. On some
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlSr. 155
of the leaves curious pieces of incident seem recorded. We see
fleets of minute terebratulse, that appear to have been covered
up by some sudden deposit from above, when riding at th^r
anchors ; and whole argosies of ammonites, that seem to have
been wrecked at once by some untoward accident, and sent
crushed and dead to the bottom. Assemblages of bright black
plates, that shine like pieces of Japan work, with numerous pa-
rallelogrammical scales bristling with nail-like pointSj indicate
where some armed fish of the old ganoid order lay down and
died ; and groupes of belemnites, that lie like heaps of boarding
pikes thrown carelessly on a vessel's deck on the surrender of
the crew, tell where scnlls of cuttle-fishes of the ancient type
had cciiscd to trouble the waters. I need scarce add, that these
spear-like belemnites formed the supposed thunderbolts of the
deposit. Lying athwart some of the pages thus strangely in-
scribed, we occasionally find, like the dark hawthorn leaf in
Bewick's well-known vignette, slim-shaped leaves colored in
deep umber ; and l^ranches of extinct pines, and fragments of
strangely fashioned ferns, form their more ordinary garnishing.
Page after page, for tens and hundreds of feet together, repeat
the same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian library,
with its tomes of ancient literature, the accumulation of long
ages, was but a meagre collection, — not less puny in bulk than
recent in date, — compared with this marvellous library of the
Scotch Lias.
Who, after once spending even a few hours in such a school,
could avoid being a geologist ? I had formerly fovmd much
pleasure among rocks and in caves ; but it was the wonders of
the Eathie Lias that first gave direction and aim to my curi-
osity. From being a mere child, that had sought amusement
iu looking over the pictures of the' stony volume of nature, I
henceforth became a sober student, desirous of reading and
knowing it as a book. The extreme beauty, however, of the
Liasic fossils made me pass over at this time, as of little in-
terest, a discovery which, if duly followed up. would have prob-
ably landed me in full in the midst of the Old Red Sandstone
ichthyolites fully ten years ere I learned to know them. In
156 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS;
forming a temporary harbor, at which we boated the stones
we had been quarrying, I struck iny pick into a slaty sand-
stone bed, thickly mottled in the layers by carbonaceous mark-
ings. They consisted, I saw, of thin rectilinear stems or leaves,
much broken, and in a bad state of keeping, that at once sug-
gested to me layers of comminuted Zostera marina^ such as I
had often seen on the Cromarty beach thix)wn up from the
sub-marine meadows of the Frith beyond. But then, with
nagnificent ammonites and belemnites, and large well-marked
ignites, to be had in abundance at Eathie just for the laying
open and the picking up, how could I think of giving myself
to disinter what seemed to be mere broken fragments o^ Zos-
tera ? Within, however, a few feet of these carbonaceous
markings there occurred one of those platforms of violent
death for which the Old Red Sandstone is so remarkable, — a
platform strewed over with fossil remains of the first-born ga-
noids of creation, many of which still bore in their contorted
outlines evidence of sudden dissolution and the dyiug pang.
During the winter of this year, — for winter at length came,
and, my labors over, three happy months were all my own,
— I had an opportunity of seeing, deep in a wild Highland
glen, the remains of one of our old Scotch forests of the na-
tive pine. My cousin George, finding his pretty Highland
cottage on the birch-covered Tomhan situated too for from his
ordinary scenes of employment, had removed to Cromarty ;
and when his work had this year come to a close for the sea-
son, he made use of his first leisure in visiting his father-in-
law, an aged shepherd who resided in the upper recesses cf
Strathcarron. He had invited me to accompany him ; and cf
the invitation I gladly availed myself. We struck across the
tract of wild hills which intervenes between the Cromarty and
Dornoch Frith-!, a few miles to the west of the village of In-
vergordoii ; and, after spending several hours in toiling across
dreary moors, unopened at the time oy any public road, we
took our noon-day refreshment in an uninhabited valley, among
broken cottage-walls, with a few fniTowed jiatchfs stretching
out around us, green amid the waste One of the host «word»
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 157
men in Ross had once lived there ; but both he and his race
had been lost to Scotland in consequence of the compelled emi-
gration so common in the Highlands during the last two ages ;
and Cousin George came strongly out against the lairds. The
chill winter night had fallen on the dark hills and alder-skirted
river of Strathcarron, as, turning from off the road that winds
along the Kyle of Dornoch, we entered its bleak gorge ; and
as the shepherd's dwelling lay high up the valley, where the
loily sides approach so near, and rise so abruptly, that for the
whole winter qnarter the sun never foils on the stream below,
we had still some ten or twelve miles of broken road before us.
The moon, in her first qnarter, hung on the edge of the hills,
dimly revealing their rough outline ; while in a recess of the
stream, far beneath, we could see the torch of some adventur-
ous fisher, now gleaming red on rock and water, now suddenly
disappearing, eclipsed by the overhanging brushwood. It was
late ere we reached the shepherd's cottage, — a dark-raftered,
dimly-lighted erection of turf and stone. Tlie weather for
several weeks before had been rainy and close, and the flocks
of the inmate had been thinned by the common scourge of the
sheep-farmer at such seasons on damp, boggy farms. The
beams were laden with skins besmeared with blood, that
dangled overhead to catch the conservative influences of the
smoke ; and on a rude plank-table below, there rose two tall
pyramids of braxy-mutton, heaped up each on a corn-riddle.
The shepherd, — a Highlander of large proportions, but hard,
and thin, and worn by the cares and toils of at least sixty
winters, — sat moodily beside the fire. The state of his flocks
was not cheering ; and, besides, he had seen a vision of late,
oe said, that filled his mind with strange forebodings. He
Uad gone out after nightfall on the previous evening, to a dank
ti:>llow, in which many of his flock had died. The rain had
ceased a few hours before, and a smart frost had set in. that
filled the whole valley with a wreath of silvery vapor, dimly
lighted by the thin fragment of a moon that appeared as if
resting on the hill-top. The wreath stretched out its gray folds
beneath hiix, — for he had climbed half-way up the. acclivity,
158 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS;
— when suddenly the figure of a man, formed as of iieated
metal, — the figure of what seemed to be a brazen man brought
to a red heat in a furnace, — sprang up out of the darkness ;
and, after stalking over the surface of the fog for a few brief sec-
orids, during which, however, it had traversed the greater part
of the valley, it as suddenly disappeared, leaving an evanscent
trail of flame behind it. There could be little doubt that the
old shepherd had merely seen one of those shooting lights that
jn mountain districts so frequently startle the night traveller;
but the apparition now filled his whole mind, as one vouch-
safed from the spiritual world, and of strange and frightful
portent ; —
" A meteor of the night of distant yciirs,
That flashed unnoticed, save by wrinkled eld,
Musing at midnight upon prophecies."
I spent the greater part of the following day with my cousin
in the forest of Corrybhalgan, and saw two large herds of red
deer on the hills. The forest was but a shred of its former
self; but the venerable trees still rose thick and tall in some
of the more inaccessible hollows ; and it was interesting to
mark, where they encroached furthest on the open waste, how
thoroughly they lost the ordinary character of the Scotch fir,
and how, sending out from their short gnarled boles immense
branches, some two or three feet over the soil, they somewhat
resembled, in their squat, dense proportions, and rounded con-
tours, gigantic bee-hives. It was of itself worth while under-
taking a journey to the Highlands, to witness these last re-
mains of lliat arboreous condition of our country to which the
youngest of our geological formations, the Peat Mosses, bear
such significant witness ; and which still, largely existing as
the condition of the Jiorthern countries of continental Europe,
"remains to attest," as Humboldt well remarks, '' more than
even the records of history, the youtlifiiliu'ss of our civiliza-
tion." I revisited at this time, before returning home, tlie
Barony of Gruids; but winter had not improved it: its
himible features, divested of their summer comi)lexion, had as
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 159
Bumed an express. on of blank wretchedness ; and hundreds of
its people, appalled at the time by a summons of ejection
looked quite as depressed and miserable as its scenery.
Finlay and my friend of the Doocot Cave were no longer
within reach ; but during this winter I was much in the com-
pany of a young man about five years my senior, who was of
the true stuff of which friends are made, and to whom I became
much attached. I had formed some acquaintance with him
about five years before, on his coming to the place from the
neighboring parish of Nigg, to be apprenticed to a house-
painter, who lived a few doors from my mother's. But there
was at first too great a disparity between us for friendship : he
was a tall lad, and I a wild boy ; and, though occasionally ad-
mitted into his sanctum, — a damp little room in at outhouse
m which he slept, and in his leisure hours made water-color
drawings and verses, — it was but as an occasional visitor, who,
having a rude taste for literature and the fine arts, was just
worthy of being encouraged in this way. My year of toil had,
however, wrought wonders for me : it had converted me into
a sober young man ; and William Ross now seemed to /ind
scarce less pleasure in my company than I did in his. P(/or
William ! his name must be wholly unfamiliar to the reader ;
and yet he had that in him which ought to have made it a
known one. He was a lad of genius, — drew truthfully, had
a nice sense of the beautiful, and possessed the true poetic fac
ulty ; but he lacked health and spirits, and was naturally of
a melancholy temperament, and diffident of himself He was
at this time a thin, pale lad, fair-haired, with a clear waxen
complexion, flat chest, and stooping figure ; and though he
lasted considerably longer than could have been anticipated
from his appearance, in seven years after he was in his grave.
He was unfortunate in his parents : his mother, though of a
devout family of the old Scottish type, was an aberrant speci'
men; — she had fallen in early youth, and had subsequently
married an ignorant, halfiinbccile laborer, Avith whom siie
passed a life of poverty and unhappiness ; and of this unprom-
ising niarr"age William was the eldest child. It was cer-
160 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
tainly no from either parent he derived his genius. His ma
ternal grandmother and aunt were, however, excellent Chris-
tian women, of superior intelligence, who supported them-
selves Ly keeping a girls' school in the parish ; and William,
who had been brought at an early age to live with them, and
was naturally a gentle-spirited, docile boy, had the advantage,
in consequence, of having that most important lesson of any
education, — the lesson of a good example at home, — set well
before him. His boyhood had been that of the poet : he had
loved to indulge in his day-dreams in the solitude of a deep
wood beside his grandmother's cottage ; and had learned to
write verses and draw landscapes in a rural locality in which
no one had ever written verses or drawn landscapes before.
And finally, as, in the north of Scotland, in those primitive
times, the nearest approach to an artist was a house-painter,
William was despatched to Ci-omarty, when he had grown tall
enough for the work, to cultivate his natural taste for the fine
arts, in papering rooms and lobbies, and in painting railings and
wheel-barrows. There are, I believe, a few instances on rec-
ord of house-painters rising to be artists: the history of the
late Mr. William Bonnar, of the Royal Academy of Edinburgh,
furnishes one of these; but the fact that the cases are not
more numerous serves, I fear, to show how much oftoner a
turn for drawing is a merely imitative, than an original, self
derived faculty. Almost all the apprentices of our neighbor
the house-painter had their turn for drawing, decided enough
to influence their choice of a profession ; and wliat was so re-
peatedly the case in Cromarty must, I should think, have been
the case in many similar jilaces; but of how few of these em-
bryo limners have the works appeared in even a provincia]
exhibition-room !
At the time my intiTuacy with William became most close,
hoth his grandmother and aunt were dead, and he was strug-
gling with great diniculty through the last year of his appren-
ticeship. As his master supplied him with but food and lodg-
ing, his linen was becoming scant, and his Salibath suit shabby ;
and he was looking forward to the timo wIumi he should be at
OR, THE STORV OF MY EDUCATION. 161
liberty to work for himself, with all the anxiety of the voyager
wh ", fears that his meagre stock of provisions and water may
wholly fail him ere he reaches port. I of course could not as-
sist him. I was an apprentice, like himself, and had not the
command of a sixpence ; nor, had the case been otherwise,
would he in all probability have consented to accept of my
help ; but he lacked spirits as much as money, and in that par-
ticular my society did him good. We used to beat over all
manner of subjects together, especially poetry and the fine
arts ; and tliough we often differed, our differences served only
to knit us the more. He, for instance, deemed the " Min-
strel" of Beattie the most perfect of English poems ; but though
he liked Dryden's " Virgil " well enough, he could find no
poetry whatever in the " Absalom and Ahithophel" of Dry den ;
whereas I liked both the " Minstrel " and the "Ahithophel,"
and, indeed, could hardly say, unlike as they were in com-
plexion and character, which of the two I read oftenest or ad-
mired most. Again, among the prose writers, Addison was
his especial favorite, and Swift he detested ; whereas I liked
Addison and Swift almost equally well, and passed without
sense of incongruity, from the Vision of Mirza, or the paper
on Westminster Abbey, to the true account of the death of
Partridge, or the Tale of a Tub. If, however, he could wonder
at the latitudinarian laxity of my taste, there was at least one
special department in which I could marvel quite as much at
the incomprehensible breadth of his. Nature had given me,
in despite of the phrenologists, who find music indicated by
two large protuberances on the corners of my forehead, a de-
plorably defective ear. My Uncle Sandy, who was profoundly
skilled in psalmody, had done his best to make a singer of me ;
but he was at length content to stop short, after a w'orld of
effort, when he had, as he thought, brought me to distinguish
St. George's from any other psalm-tune. On the introduction,
however, of a second tune into the parish church that repeated
the line at the end of the stanza, even this poor fragment of
ab/.ity deserted me; and to this day, — though I rather like
the strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection to
162 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERM •
drums in particular, — doubts do occasionally come across nit:
whether there be in reality any such thing as tune. My
friend William Ross was, on the contrary, a born musician.
When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and
clarionet of young shoots of elder, on which he succeeded in
discoursing sweet music ; and, addressing himself at another
and later period to both the principles and practices of the
science, he became one of the best flute-players in the district.
Notwithstanding my dulness of ear. I do cherish a pleasing
recollection of the sweet sounds that used to issue from his
little room in the outhouse, every milder evening as I ap-
proached, and of the soothed and tranquil state in which I
ever found him on these occasions, as I entered. I could not
understand his music, but I saw that, mentally at least, though,
I fear, not physically, — fur the respiratory organs were weak,
— it did him great good.
There was, however, one special province in which our tastes
thoroughly harmonized. We were b")th of us, if not alike
favored, at least equally devoted, loveis of the wild and beau-
tiful in nature ; and many a moon-light walk did we take to-
gether this winter among the woods and rocks of the Hill. It
was once said of Thomson, by one who was himself not at all
morbidly poetic in his feelings, that " he could not have viewed
two candles burning but with a poetical eye." It might at
least be said of my friend, that he never saw a piece of line or
striking scenery without being deeply moved by it. As for
the mere candles, if placed on a deal-dresser or shop-counter,
they might have failed to touch him ; but if burning in some
/y/r-wakc beside the dead, or in some vaulted crypt or lonely
rotk-cave, he also could not have looked other than poet,
ically on them. I have seen him awed into deep solemnity,
in our walks, by the rising moon, as it peered down upon us
over the hill, red and broad, and cloud-encircled, through the
interstices of some clump of dark (irs ; and have observed
him Itecome suddenly silent, as, emerging Irom the moonlight
woods, we looked into a rugged dell, and saw far beneath, ihe
«lim rippling streamlet gleaming in the light, like a narrow
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 163
strip of the aurora borealis shot athwart a dark sky, when the
steep rough sides of the ravine, on either hand, were enveloped
in gloom. My friend's opportunities of general reading had
not been equal to my own, but he was acquainted with at least
one class of books of which I knew scarce anything : — he had
carefully studied Hogarth's " Analysis of Beauty," Fresnoy's
" Art of Painting," " Gessner's Letters," the " Lectures of Sit
Joshua Reynolds," and several other works of a similar kind j
and in all the questions of criticism that related to external
form, the eftects of light and shade, and the influences of the
meteoric media, I found him a high authority. He had a fine
eye for detecting the peculiar features which gave individuality
and character to a landscape, — those features, as he used to
say, which the artist or poet should seize and render promi-
nent, while, at the same time, lest they should be lost as in a
mob, he softened down the others ; and, recognizing him as a
master in this department of characteristic selection, I delight-
ed to learn in his school, — by far the best of its kind I ever
attended. I was able, however, in part to repay him, by in-
troducing him to many an interesting spot among the rocks,
or to retired dells and hollows in the woods, which, from his
sedentary habits, he would scarce ever have discovered for
himself I taught him, too, to light fires after nightfall in the
caves, that we might watch the eflects of the strong lights and
deep shadows in scenes so wild ; and I still vividly remember
the delight he experienced, when, after kindling up in the day-
time a strong blaze at the mouth of the Doocot Cave, which
filled the recess within with smoke, we forced our way inwards
through the cloud, to mark the appearance of the sea and the
opposite land seen through a medium so dense, and saw, on
turning round, the landscape strangely enwrapped " in the dun
hues of earthquake and eclipse." We have visited, after night-
fall, the glades of the surrounding woods together, to listen to
the night breeze, as it swept sullenly along the pine-tops ; and,
after striking a light in the old burial vault of a solitary church-
yard, we have watched the ray falling on the fissured walls and
ropy damp and mould ; or, on setting on fire a few withered
16-* MY SCHOOLS AjSTD SCHOOLMASTERS:
leaves, have seen the smoke curling slowly upwards, through
a square opening in the roof, into the dark sky. William's
mind was not of the scientific cast. He had, however, acquired
?ome knowledge of the mathematics, and some skill both in
architecture and in the anatomy of the human skeleton and
muscles ; while of perspective he perhaps knew well-nigh as
much as was known at the time. I remember he preferred
the Treatise on this art, of Ferguson the astronomer and me-
chanician, to any other ; and used to say that the twenty years
spent by the philosopher as a painter were fully redeemed,
though they had produced no good pictures, by his little work
on Perspective alone. My friend had ere this time given up
the -writing of verses, very much because he had learned to
know what verses ought to be, and failed to satisfy himself
with his own ; and ere his death, I saw him resign in success-
ion his flute and pencil, and yield up all the hopes he had
once cherished of being known. But his weak health affected
his spirits, and prostrated the energies of a mind originally
rather delicate than strong.
OR. THE STORY OF MY EI L CATION. 165
CHAPTER IX
"Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate ; and reasoned high
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute.
And found no end in wandering mazes lost."
Milton.
Sprin 3 came on, and brought with it its round of labor,-^
quarryiig, building, and stone-cutting; but labor had now
no terrors for me : I wrought hard during the hours allotted tc
toil, and was content ; and read, wrote, or walked, during the
hours that were properly my own, and was happy. Early in
May, however, we had finished all the work for which my
master had previously contracted ; and as trade was usually
dull at the time, he could procure no further contracts, and
the squad was thrown out of employment. ' I rushed to the
woods and rocks, and got on with my lessons in geology and
natural science ; but my master, who had no lessons to learn,
wearied sadly of doing nothing; and at length, very unwill
'ngly, — for he had enacted the part of the employer, thougl
m a small scale, for a full quarter of a century, — he set him
self to procure work as a journeyman. lie had another ap
prentice at the time; and he, availhig himself of the oppoi
tunity which the old man's inability of employing him .'lir
nished, quitted his service, and commenced work on his own
behalf, — a step to which, though the position of a journev
16h MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS:
man's apprentice seemed rather an anomalous one, I could not
see my way. And so, as work turned up for both master
and apprentice at a place about twenty miles distant from
Cromarty, I set out with him, to make trial, for the first time,
of the sort of life that is spent in bothies and barracks. Our
work wa? to consist, I was informed, of building and hewing
at an extensive farm-steading on the banks of the river Conon,
which one of the wealthier proprietors of the district was get-
ting built for himself, not on contract, but by the old mc»de
of employing operatives on days' wages ; and my master was
to be permitted to rate as a full journeyman, though now
considerably in his decline as a workman, on condition that
the services of his apprentice should be rated so much lower
than their actual value as to render master and man regarded
as one lot, — a fair bargain to the employer, and somewhat
more. Tlie arrangement was not quite a flattering one for
me ; but I acquiesced in it without remark, and set out with
my master for Conon-side.
The evening sun was gleaming delightfully, as we neared
the scene of our labors, on the broad reaches of the Conon,
and lighting up the fine woods and noble hills beyond. It
would, 1 know, be happiness to toil for some ten hours or so
per day in so sweet a district, and then to find the evening
all my own ; but on reaching the work, we were told that we
would require to set out in the morning for a place about four
miles farther to the west, where there were a few workmen
engaged in building a jointure-house Ibr the lady of a Ross-shiro
proprietor lately di^ad, and which lay off the river in a rather
uniironiising direction. And so, a little after sunrise, we had
to take the road with our tools slung across our backs, aud
before six o'clock we reached the rising jointure-house, and set
to work, The coiuitry around was somewhat bare and dreary,
— a scene of bogs and moors, overlooked by a range of tame
heathy hills ; but in our imim-diate nciglilxirliood there was
a picturesque little scene, — rather a vignette than a picture,
— that in some degree redeemed the general defoi-mity. Two
•neal-inilU — the one small and old, the other larger and more
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 167
modern — wore placed beside each other, on ground so un-
equal, that, seen in front, the smaller seemed perched on the
top of the larger ; a group of tall graceful larches rose imme-
diately beside the lower building, and hung their slim branches
over the huge wheel ; while a few aged ash-trees that encircled
the mill-pond, which, in sending its waters down the hill, sup-
plied both wheels in succession, sprang up immediately beside
the upper erection, and shot their branches over its roof. On
closing our labors for the evening, we repaired to the (»ld
mansion-house, about half a mile away, in which the dowager
lady for whom we wrought still continued to reside, and where
we expected to be accommodated, like the other workmen,
with beds for the night. We had not been expected, how-
ever, and there were no beds provided for us ; but as the
Highland carpenter who had engaged to execute the wood-
work of the new building had an entire bed to himself, we
were told we might, if we pleased, lie three a-bed with him.
But though the carpenter was, I dare say, a most respectable
man, and a thorough Celt, I had observed during the day
that he was miserably affected by a certain skin disease,
which, as it was more prevalent in the past of Highland
history than even at this time, must have rendered his ances-
tors of old very formidable, even without their broadswords ;
and so I determined on no account to sleep with him. I gave
my master fair warning, by telling him what I had seen ; but
Uncle David, always insensible to danger, conducted himself
on the occasion as in the sinking boat or under the tailing
bank, and so went to bed with the carpenter ; while I, steal-
ing out, got into the upper story of an outhouse ; and, fling-
ing myself down in my clothes on the floor, on a heap jf
straw, was soon fast asleep. I was, however, not much ac-
customed at the time to so rough a bed ; every time I turned
me in my lair, the strong, stiff straw rustled against my face ;
and about midnight I awoke.
I rose to a little window which opened upon a dreary moor,
and commanded a view, in the distance, of a ruinous chapel
and solitary burying-ground, famous in the traditions of the
168 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
district as the chapel and burying-ground of Gillie-christ. Dr.
Johnson relates, in his " Journey," that when eating, on one
occasion, his dinner in Skye to the music of the bagpipe, he
was informed by a gentleman, " that in s^ me remote time, the
Macdonalds of Glengarry having been injured or offended by
the inhabitants of Culloden, and resolving to have justice, or
vengeance, they came to Culloden on a Sunday, when, finding
their enemies at worshijjj, they shut them up in the church,
which they set on fire ; and this, said he, is the tune that the
piper played while they were burning." Culloden, however,
was not ^he scene of the atrocity ; it was the Mackenzies of
Ord that their fellow-Christians and brother-Churchmen, the
Macdonalds of Glcngary succeeded in converting into ani-
mal charcoal, when the poor people were engaged, like good
Catholics, in attending mass ; and in this old chapel of Gillie-
christ was the experiment performed. The Macdonalds, after
setting fire to the building, held fast the doors until the last of
the Mackenzies of Ord had perished in the flames ; and then,
pursued by the INIackenzies of Bi-ahan, they fled into their own
country, to glory every after in the greatness of the feat. The
evening was calm and still, but dark for the season, for it was
now near mid-summer ; and every object had disappeared in
the gloom, save the outlines of a ridge of low hills that rose
beyond the moor ; but I could determine where the chapel
and churchyard lay ; and great was my astonishment to see
a light flickering amid the grave-stones and the ruins. At one
time seen, at another hid, like the revolving lantern of a light-
house, it seemed to be passing round and round the l)uilding ;
and, as I listened, I could hear distinctly what ap[)eared to be
a continuous screaming of most unearthly sound, proceeding
from evidently the same spot as the twinkle of the light.
What could be the meaning of such an apparition, with such
accompaniments, — the time of its appearance midnight, the
pace a solitary burying-ground? I was in the Highlands;
was there truth, af\ep all, in the many floating Highland stories
of spectral dead-lights and wild supernatural sounds, seen and
heard by nights in lonely places of sepulture, when some sud-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 169
det death was near? I did feel my blood run somewhat cold^
— fcr I had not yet passed the credulous time of life, — and had
6om>'^ thoughts of stealing down to my master's bed-side, to
be within reach of the human voice ; when I saw the light
quittinj','; the churchyard and coming downward across th<»
moor in a straight line, though tossed about in the dead calm,
m many a wave and flourish ; and further, I could ascertain,
chat what I had deemed a persistent streaming was in reality
A continuous singing, carried on at the pitch of a powerful
ch.">ugh somewhat cracked voice, hi a moment after, one of
the .'.ervant girls of the mansion-house came rushing out half-
dies.^o.d to the door of an outer building in which the work-
iren i^vd a farm-servant lay, and summoned them immediate-
ly to ri-.ie. Mad Bell had again broke out, she said, and would
set tberii. on fire a second time.
The men rose, and, as they appeared at the door, I joined
tliem ; but on striking out a few yards into the moor, we
found the maniac already in the custody of t'>\o men, who had
seized and were dragging her towards her cottage, a miserable
hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke to us,
but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued
tone of voice than before, a Gaelic song. We reached her
hut, and, making use of her own light, we entered. A chain
of considerable length, attached by a stopple to one of the
Plighland couples of the erection, showed that her neighbors
had been compelled on former occasions to abridge her liberty ;
and one of the men, in now making use of it, so wound it
round her person as to bind her down, instead of giving her
the scope of the apartment, to the damp uneven floor. A very
•^amp and uneven floor it was. There were crevices in the
roof above, which gave free access to the elements ; and the
turf walls, perilously bulged by the leakage in several places,
were green with mould. One of the masons and I simulta
Deously interlired. It would never do, we said, to pin down
a hun.an creature in that way, to the damp earth. Why not
give her what the length of the chain permitted, — the full
raiige of thft room 1 If we did that, replied the man, she would
170 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
be sure to set herself free before morning, and we w<)uldjust
have to rise and bind her again. But we resolved, we i ejoined,
whatever might happen, that she should not be tied down in
that way to the filthy floor ; and ultimately we succeeded in
carrying our point. The song ceased for a moment ; the
maniac turned round, presenting full to the light the strongly-
marked, energetic features of a woman of about fifty -five ; and
surveying us with a kqpn scrutinizing glance, altogether ua
like that of the idiot, she emphatically repeated the sacred
text, " Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
She then began singing, in a low, mournful tone, an old Scotch
ballad ; and, as we left the cottage, we could hear her voice
gradually heightening as we retired, until it had at length at-
tained to its former pitch and wildness of tone.
Before daybreak the maniac succeeded in setting herself
free ; but the paroxysm of the fit had meanwhile passed over ;
and when she visited me next morning at the place where I
was hewing, — a little apart from the other workmen, who were
all engaged in building on the walls, — save for the strongly-
marked features I would scarcely have recognized her. She
was neatly dressed, though her gown was neither fine nor new ;
her clean white cap was nicely arranged ; and her air seemed
rather that of the respectable tradesman's wife or daughter,
than of the ordinary country woman. Forsome little time she
stood beside me without speaking, and then somewhat abrupt-
ly asked, — " What makes you work as a mason V I made
some commonplace reply ; but it failed to satisfy her. " All
your fellows are real masons," she said ; " but you are merely
in the disguise of a mason ; and I have come to consult you
about the deep matters of the soul," The matters she had
come to inquire regarding were really very deep indeed ; she
had; I found, carefully read Flavel's " Treatise on the Soul of
Man," — a volume which, fortunately for my credit, I also had
perused ; and we were soon deep togetlier in the rather l)ad
metaphysics promulgated on the suliject by the Schoolmen,
and n^published by the divine. It seemed clear, she said, that
ever} human soul was created, — not transmitted, — creatc<i
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 171
mayhap, at the time when it began to be ; but if so, how or
on what principle, did it come under the influence of the Fall 1
I merely remarked, in reply, that she was of course acquaint-
ed with the views of the old theologians, — such as Flavel, —
men who really knew as much about such things as could be
known, and perhaps a little more ; was she not satisfied with
them 1 Not dissatisfied, she said ; but she wanted more light.
Could a soul not derived from our fi^t parents be rendered
^rile simply by being put into a body derived from them 1 One
of the passages in Flavcl, on this special point, had luckily
struck me, from its odd obscurity of expression, and I was able
to quote it in nearly the original words. You know, I remark
ed, that a great authority on the question " declined confident-
ly to affirm that the moral infection canae by way of physical
agency, as a rusty scabbard infects and defiles a bright sword
when sheathed therein ; it might be," he thought, " by way
of natural concomitancy, as Estius will have it ; or, to speak as
Dr. Reynolds doth, by way of ineffable resultancy and emana
tion." As this was perfectly unintelligible, it seemed to sat-
isfy my new friend. I added, however, that, like herself, I
was waiting for more light on the difliiculty, and might set my-
self to it in right earnest, when I found it fully demonstrated
that the Creator could not, or did not make man equally the
descendant in soul as in body of the original progenitors of the
race. I believed, with the great Mr. Locke, that he could do
it; nor was 1 aware he had anywhere said that what he could
do in the matter he had not done. Such was the first of
many strange conversations with the maniac, who, with all
her sad brokemiess of mind, was one of the most intellectual
women I ever knew. Humble as were the circumstances in
which I found her, her brother, who was at this time about
two years dead, had been one of the best-known ministers of
the Scottish Church in the Northern Highlands. To quote from
an affectionate notice by the editor of a ^little volume of hi3
sermons, published a few years ago, — the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie
of North Leith, — he " was a profound divine, an eloquent
preacher, a deeply-experienced Christian, and, withal, a classi-
172 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
ca] scnolar, a popular poet, a man of original genius, and emi.
nently a man of prayer." And his poor sister Isabel, though
grieviously vexed at times by a dire insanity, seemed to have
received from nature powers mayhap not inferior to his.
We wero not always engaged with the old divines ; Isabel's
tenacious memory was stored with the traditions of the dis-
trict ; and many an anecdote could she tell of old chieftains,
forgotten on the lands which had once been their own, and of
Highland poets, whose songs had been sung for the last time.
The story of the " Raid of Gillie-christ" has been repeatedly
in print since I first heard it from her ; it forms the basis of
the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's powerful tale of " Allen
with the Red Tackct ;" and I have seen it in its more ordinary
traditionary dress, in the columns of the Invemess Courier,
But at this time it was new to me ; and on no occasion could
it have lost less by the narrator. She was herself a Macken-
zie ; and her eyes flashed a wild fire when she spoke of the
barbarous and brutal Macdonalds, and of the measured march
and unfaltering notes of their piper outside the burning cha^
pel, when her perishing ancestors were shrieking in their agony
within. She was acquainted also with the resembling story of
• that Cave of Eigg, in which a body of the Macdonalds them-
selves, consisting of men, women, and children, — the entire
population of the island, — had been siilfocated wholesale b
the Macleods of Skye ; and I have heard from her more goo'o
sense on the subject of the Highland character, " ere the gos
pel changed it," as illustrated by these passages in their his
tory, than from some Highlanders sane enough on other mat
ters, but carried away by a too indiscriminating respect for tin-
wild courage and half-instinctive fidelity of the old race. The
incient Highlanders were bold, faithful dogs, she has said,
ready to die for their masters, and prepared to do, at their bid-
ding, like otiier dogs, the most cruel and wicked actions; and
as dugs often were they treated ; nay, even still, after religion
had made them men (as if condemned to suffer for the sins of
their parents), they were frequently treated as dogs. Tho
pious martyrs of the south had contended in God's behalf;
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 173
whereas the poor Highlanders of the north had contended but
in behalf of their chiefs ; and so, while God had been kind to
the descendants of His servants, the chiefs had been very un-
kind to the descendants of theirs. From excellent sense, how-
ever, in these our conversations, my new companion used
often to wander into deplorable insanity. Her midnight
visits to the old chapel of Gillie-christ were made, she said,
in order that she might consult her father in her difficulties ;
and the good man, though often silem, for nights together,
rarely failed to soothe and counsel her from the depths of
his quiet grave, on every occasion when her unhaj)piness be-
came extreme. It was acting on his advice, however, that she
had set fire to a door that had for a time excluded her from
the burying-ground, and burnt it down. She had been mar-
ried in early life ; and I have rarely heard anything wilder or
more rngenious than the account she gave of a quarrel with
ber husband, that terminated in their separation.
After living happily with him for several years, she all at
once, she said, became most miserable, and everything in their
household went on ill. But though her husband seemed to
have no true conception of the cause of their new-born misery,
she had. He used, from motives of economy, to keep a pig,
which, when converted into bacon, was always useful in the
family ; and an occasional ham of the animal now and then
found its way to her brother's manse, as a sort of friendly ac-
knowledgment of the many good things received from him.
One wretched pig, however, — a little black thing, only a few
weeks old, — which her husband had purchased at a fair, was,
she soon discovered, possessed by an evil spirit, that had a
strange power of quitting the animal to do mischief in her
dwelling, and an ability of not only rendering her extremely
unhappy, but at times even of getting into her husband. The
husband himself, poor blinded man ! could see nothing of all
this; nor would he believe lier^ who could and did see it; nor
yet could she convince him that it was decidedly his duty to
get rid of the pig. She was not satisfied that she herself had
a clear right to kill the creature: it was undoubtedly her hus-
174 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
band's property, not hers ; but could she only succeed it
plachig it in circumstances in which it might be free either to
kill itself or not, and were it, in these circumstances, to de-
stroy itself, she was sure all the better divines would acquit
her of aught approaching to moral guilt in the transaction ;
and the relieved household would be free froili both the evil
spirit and the little pig. The mill-pond was situated imme-
diately beside her dwelling ; its steep sides, which were walled
with stone, were unscalcable by at least little pigs ; and among
the aged ashes which sprung up immediately at its edge, there
was one that shot out a huge bough, like a benf arm, diref.'tly
over it, far beyond the stonework, so that the boys of the neigh,
borhood used to take their seat on it, and fish for little trout
that sometimes found their way into the pond. On the pro-
jecting branch one day, when her husband's back was turned,
and there was no one to see or interfere, she placed the pig.
It stood for awhile : there was no doubt, therefore, it could
stand ; but, unwilling to stand any longer, it sprawled, — slip-
ped, — fell, — dropped into the water, in short, — and ultimate-
ly, as it could not make its way up the bank, was drowned.
And thus ended the pig. It would seem, however, as if the
evil spirit had got into her husband instead, — so extreme was
his indignation at the transaction. lie would accept of neither
apology nor explanation ; and unable, of course, to live any
longer under the same roof with a man so unreasonable, she
t6ok the opportunity, when he was quitting that part of the
country for employment at a distance, to remain behind in
her old cottage, — the same in which she at that time resided.
Such was the maniac's account of her quarrel with her hus-
band ; and, when listening to men chopping little familiar
logic on one of the profoundest mysteries of Revelation, — ft
mystery which, once received as an article of faith, serves to
unlock many a difliculty, but which is itself wholly irreihu'il)le
by the nmnaii iiilcilect, — I have been sometimes invoiiuitariiy
led to think of lu-r ingenious but not very sound argumenta-
tion on the fall of the pig. It is dangerous to attempt ex-
plaining, in the theological pi'ovince, what in reality cannot b*
CR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATKN. 175
explauicd. Some weak abortion of the human reason is al-
ways iL^ubstituted, in the attempt, for some profound mystery
hi the njoral government of God ; and men ill grounded in
the faith are led to confound the palpable abortion with the
inscrutable laystery, and are injured in consequence.
I succeeded in getting a bed in the mansion-house, without,
like Marsyas of old, perilling my skin ; and though there was
but little of interest in the immediate neighborhood, and not
much to be enjoyed within doors, — for I could procure neither
books nor congenial companionship, — with the assistance of
my pencil and sketch-book 1 got over my leisure hours toler-
ably well. My new friend Isabel would have given me as
much of her conversation as I liked ; for there was many a
point on which she had to consult me, and many a mystery to
state, and secret to communicate ; but, though always interest-
ed in her company, I was also always pained, and invariably
quitted her, after each lengthened tete-a-tete, in a state of low
spirits, which I found it difficult to shake off. There seems to
be something peculiarly unwholesome in the society of a strong-
minded maniac ; and so I contrived as much as possible — not
a little, at times, to her mortification — to avoid her. For
hours together, however, I have seen her perfectly sane ; and
on these occasions she used to speak much about her brother,
for whom she entertained a high veneration, and gave me many
anecdotes regaiding him, not uninteresting in themselves, which
she told remarkably well. Some of these my memory still re-
tains. " There were two classes of men," she has said, " for
whom he had a special regard, — Christian men of consistent
character; and men who, though they made no profession of
religion, were honest in their dealings, and of kindly disposi
tionf And with people of this latter kind he used to have a
great deal of kindly intercourse, cheerful enough at times, —
for he could both make a joke and take one, — but which usu
ally did his friends good in the end. So long as my father
and mother lived, he used to travel across the country once
every year to pay them a visit; and he was accompanied, on
or*} of these journeys, by one of this less religious „lass of his*
176 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
parishioners, who had, however, a great regard for km, and
whom he liked, in turn, for his blunt honesty and obliging dis-
position. They had baited for some time at a house in thft
outer skirts of my brother's parish, where there was a chilfl
to baptize, and where, I fear, Donald must have got an extra
dram ; for he was very argumentative all the evening after ;
and finding he could not agree with my brother on any one
subject, he suffered him to shoot a-head for a few hundred
yards, and did not again come up with him, until, in passing
through a thick clump of natural wood, he found him standing,
lost in thought, before a singularly-shaped tree. Donald liad
never seen such a strange looking tree in all his days before.
Tlie lower part of it was twisted in and out, and backwards
and forwards, like an ill-made cork-screw^ ; while the higher
shot straight upwards, direct as a line, and its taper top seem-
ed like a finger pointing at the sky. ' Come, tell me, Donald,
said my brother, ' what you think this tree is like V ' Indeed
I kenna, Mr. Lachlan,' replied Donald ; ' but if you let me
tcik' that straight bit aif the tap o't, it will be gey an' like the
wor))t o' a whisky still.' ' But I cannot want the straight bit,'
said my brother ; ' the very pith and point of my comparison
lies in the straight bit. One of the old fathers would perhaps
have sai<i, Donald, that the tree resembled the course of the
Christian. His early progress has turns and twists in it, just
like the lower part of that tree ; one temptation draws him to
the left, — another to the right : his upward course is a crooked
one ; but it is an upward course for all that ; for he lias, like
the tree, the principle of sky-dirocted growth within him: the
disturbing innuences weaken as grace strengthens and aj)pctite
and jiassion decay ; and so the early part of his career is not
more like the warped and twisted trunk of that tree, than hia
latter years resemble its taper top. He shoots olf heavenward
in a straight line.' " Such is a specimen of the anecdotes of
this poor woman. I saw her once afterwards, though for only
a short time ; when she told me that, though people could not
tindcrst^ind ?/», there was meaning in both her thoughts and
in mine ; aid some years sul)sequcntly, when I was engaged
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. l?*!
OS a journeyman mason in the south of Scotland, she walked
twenty miles to pay my mother a visit, and staid with her for
several days. Her death was a melancholy one. When
fording the river Conon in one of her wilder moods, she was
swept away by the stream and drowned, and her body cast
upon the bank a day or two after.
Our work finished at this place, my master and I returned
to Conon-side on a Saturday evening, where we found twenty
four workmen crowded in a rustic corn-kiln, 0])en from gablt
to gable, and not above thirty feet in length. A row of rude
beds, formed of undressed slabs, ran along the sides ; and
against one of the gables there blazed a line of fires, with what
are known as masons' setting-irons stuck into the stone-work
behind, for suspending over them the pots used in cooking the
food of the squad. The scene, as we entered, was one of wild
confusion. A few of the soberer workmen were engaged in
" baking and firing" oaten cakes, and a few more occupied,
with equal sobriety, in cooking their evening porridge ; but in
front of the building there was a wild party of apprentices, who
were riotously endeavoring to prevent a HigUand shepherd
from driving his flock past them, by shakmg their aprons at
the affrighted animals ; and a party equally bent on amuse-
ment inside were joining with burlesque vehemence in a song
which one of the men, justly proud of his musical talents, had
just struck up. Suddenly the song ceased, and with wild up-
roar a bevy of some eight or ten workmen burst out into the
green in full pursuit of a squat little fellow, who had, they
said, insulted the singer. The cry rose wild and high, " A
ramming ! a ramming !" The little fellow was seized and
thrown down ; and five men — one holding his head, and one
stationed at each arm and leg — proceeded to execute on hia
body the stern behests of barrack-law. He was poised like an
ancient battering-ram, and driven endlong against the wall of
the kiln, — that important part of his person coming in violent
contact with the masonry, " where," according to Butler, " a
kick hurts honor" very much. After the third blow, how-
ever, he was released, and the interrupted song went on as
178 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
before. I was astonished, and somewhat dismayed, by this spe
cimen of barrack-life ; but, getting quietly inside the building,
I succeeded in cooking for my uncle and myself some porridge
over one of the unoccupied fires, and then stole off, as early
as I could, to my lair in a solitary hay-loft,-^for there was no
room for us in the barrack ; where, by the judicious use of a
little sulphur and mercury, I succeeded in freeing my master
from the effects of the strange bed-fellowship which our re-
cent misery had laade, and of preserving myself from infec
tion. The following Sabbath was a day of quiet rest ; and ]
commenced the labors of the week, disposed to think that my
lot, though rather a rough one, was not altogether unendura-
ble ; and that, even were it worse than it was, it would be at
once wise and manly, seeing that winter would certainly come,
cheerfully to acquiesce in and bear up under it,
I had, in truth, entered a school altogether new, — at times,
as I have just shown, a singularly noisy and uproarious one,
for it was a school without master or monitor ; but its occa-
sional lessons were, notwithstanding, eminently worthy of be-
ing scanned. All know that there exists such a thing as pro-
fessional character. On some men, indeed, nature imprints so
strongly the stamp of individuality, that the feebler stamp of
circumstance and position fails to impress them. Such cases,
however, must always be regarded as exceptional. On the
average masses of mankind, the special employments which
they pursue, or the kinds of business which they transact, have
the effect of moulding them into distinct classes, each of which
bears an artificially induced character peculiarly its own.
Clergymen, as such, differ from merchants and soldiers, and
all three from lawyers and pliysicians. Each of these profess-
ions has long borne in our literature, and in common opinion
B character so clearly appreciable by the pul)lic generally, that
*vhen truthfully reproduced in some new work of fiction, or
exeniplified by some transaction in real life, it is at once recog-
nized as marked by the genuine class-traits and peculiarities.
But these professional characteristics descend much lower in
the scale than is usually supposed. There is scarce a trade or
OR, THE STORY OF MY iSDUCATION. 179
department of manual labor that does not induce jts own set
of peculiarities, — peculiarities which, though less within the
j-ange of the observation of men in the habit of recording what
they remark, arc not less real than those of the man of physio
or of law. The barber is as unlike the weaver, and the tailor
as unlike b »th, as the farmer is unlike the soldier, or as either
farmer or soldier is unlike the merchant, lawyer or minister.
And it is only on the same sort of principle that all men, when
seen from the top of a lofty tower, whether they be tall or
short, seem of the same stature, that these differences escape
the notice of men in the higher walks.
Between the workmen that pass sedentary lives within doors,
such as weavers and tailors, and those who labor in the open
air, such as masons and ploughmen, there exists a grand gen-
eric difference. Sedentary mechanics are usually less con-
tented than laborious ones ; and as they almost always work
in parties, and as their comparatively light, though often long
and wearily-plied employments do not so much strain their
respiratory organs but that they can keep up an interchange
of idea when at their toils, they are generally much better able
to state their grievances, and much more fluent in speculating
^n their causes. They develop more freely than the labor-
«ous out-of-door workers of the country, and present, as a class,
<i more intelligent aspect. On the other hand, when the open-
air worker does so overcome his difficulties as to get fairly
developed, he is usually of a fresher and more vigorous type
than the sedentary one. B\ rns, Hogg, Allan Cunningham, are
i,he literary representatives of the order ; and it will be found
that they stand considerably in advance of the Thoms, Bloom-
fields, and Tannahills that represent the sedentary workmen.
The silent, solitary, hard-toiled men, if nature has put no better
stuff in them than that of which stump-orators and Chartist
lecturers are made, remain silent, repressed by their circum-
stances ; but if of a higher grade, and if they once do get their
mouths fairly opened, they speak with power, and bear with
them into our literature the freshness of the green earth and
the freedom of the open sky.
9
180 MY SCHOOLS AND yCHOOLMASTERS '
The specific peculiarities induced by particular professiora
are not less marked than the generic ones. How different,
for instance, the character of the sedentary tailor, as such, from
that of the equally sedentary barber ! Two imperfectly-taught
young lads, of not more than the average intellect, are appren-
ticed, the one to the hair-dresser, the other to the fashionable
clothes-maker, of a large village. The barber has to entertain
his familiar round of customers, when operating upon their
heads and beards. He must have no controversies with them ;
— that might be disagreeable, and might atlect his command
of the scissors or razor : but he is expected to communicate
to them all he knows of the gossip of the place ; and as each
customer supplies him with a little, he of course comes to
know more than anybody else. And as his light and easy
work lays no stress upon his respiration, in course of time he
learns to be a fast and fluent talker, with a great appetite for
news, but little given to dispute. He acquires, too, if his
round of customers be good, a courteous manner ; and if they
be in large proportion Conservatives, he becomes, in all prob-
ability, a Conservative, too. The young tailor goes through
an entirely different process. He learns to regard dress as
the most important of all earthly things, — becomes knowing in
cuts and fashions, — is taught to appreciate, in a way no other
individual can, the aspect of a button, or the pattern of a
vest ; and as iiis work is cleanly, and does not soil his clothes,
and as he can get them more cheai)ly, and more perfectly in
the fashion than other mechanics, the chances are ten to one
that he tui-ns out a beau. He becomes great in that which he
refrards as of all things greatest, — dress. A young tailor may
be known by the cut of his coat an 1 the merits of his panta-
loons, among all other workmen ; and as even fine clothes aro
not enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also
have fine manners; and not having such advantages of seeing
])olite society as his neighbor the barber, his gentlemanly
manners are always less line than grotrscjue. Hence more
ridicule of taih^rs among working men tiian of any other class
of mechanic." ■ And sueh — if nature has sent them from hei
ORj THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 181
hand ordinary men, — for the extraordhiary rise above all the
modifying inflnt-nces of profession — are the processes through
which tailors and hair-dressers put on their distinctive charac-
ters as such, A village smith hears well nigh as much gossip
as a village barber ; but he develops into an entirely dillerent
sort of man. He is not bound to please his customers by his
talk ; nor does his profession leave his breath free enough to
talk fluently or much ; and so he listens in grim and swarthy
independence, — strikes his iron while it is hot, — and when,
after thrusting it into the fire, he bends himself to the bellows,
he drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again
falls sturdily to work. Again, the shoemaker may be deemed,
in the merely mechanical character of his profession, near of
kin to the tailor. But such is not the case. He has to work
amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and contracts a smell of
leather. He cannot kooj> himself particularly clean ; and,
although a nicely-finished shoe be all well enough in its way,
there is not much about it on which conceit can build. No
man can set up as a beau on the strength of a prettily-shaped
shoe ; and so a beau the shoemaker is not, but, on the con-
trary, a careless, manly fellow, who, when not overmuch
devoted to Saint Monday, gains, usually, in his course through
life, a considerable amount of sense. Shoemakers are often
in large proportions intelligent men ; and Bloomfield, the
poet, Giftbrd, the critic and satirist, and Carey, the mission-
ary, must certainly be regarded as thoroughly respectable
contributions from the profession, to the worlds of poetry,
criticism and religion.
The professional character of the mason varies a good deal
in the several provinces of Scotland, according to the n arious
circumstances in which he is placed. He is in general a blunt
manly, taciturn fellow, who, without nuich of the Radical or
(yhartist about him, especially if wages be good and employ-
ment abundant, rarely touches his hat to a gentleman. His
employment is less purely mechanical than many others: he
is not like a man carelessly engaged in pointing needles or
fashioning pin-heads. On the contrary, every stone he lays or
182 MY SCHOOLS AOT) SCHOOLMASTERS
hews demands the exercise of a certain amount of judgment
for itself; and so he cannot wholly suffer his mind to fall
asleep over his work. When engaged, too, in erecting some
fine building, he always experiences a degree of interest id
marking the effect of the design developing itself piecemeal,
and growing up under his hands ; and so he rarely wearies of
what he is doing. Further, his profession has this advantage,
that it educates his sense of sight. Accustomed to ascertain the
straightness of lines at a glance, and to cast his eye along plana
walls, or the mouldings of entablatures or architraves, in order
to determine the rectitude of the masonry, he acquires a sort
of mathematical precision in determining the true bearings and
position of objects, and is usually found, when admitted into
a rifle-club, to equal, without previous practice, its second-rate
shots. He only falls short of its first-rate ones, because unin-
itiated by the experience of his profession in the mystery of
the parabolic curve, he fails, in taking aim, to make the propei
allowance for it. The mason is almost always a silent man ;
the strain on his respiration is too great, when he is actively
employed, to leave the necessary freedom to the organs of
speech ; and so at least the provincial builder or stone-cutter
rarely or never becomes a democratic orator. I have mel
with exceptional cases in the larger towns ; but they were the
result of individual idiosyncrasies, developed in clubs and
caverns, and were not professional.
It is, however, with the character of our north-countrj
masons that I have at present chiefly to do. Living in smaU
villages, or in cottages in the country, they can vorv rarely
procure employment in the neighborhood of their dwellings
and so they are usually content to regard these as simply theii
homes for the winter and earlier spring months, when thcj
have nothing to do, and to remove for work to other parts of
the country, where briilijes, or harbors, ov farm-steadings, are
in the ct.ursc of building, — to be subjected there to the influ-
ences of what is known as the barrack, or rather bothy life,
These barracks or bothies are almost always of the most miser-
ble description, I have lived in hovels that were invariably
OR, THE STOKY OF MY EDUCATION. 183
flooded in wet weather by the overflowings of the neighboring
swamps, and through whose roofs I could tell the hour at night,
by marking fron'. my bed the stars that were passing over the
openings along the ridge: I have resided in other dwellings
of rither higher pretensions, in which I have been awakened
during every heavier night-shower, by the rain drops splash
ing upon my face where I lay a-bed. I remember that Uncle
James, in urging me not to become a mason, told me that a
neighboring laird, when asked why he left a crazy old build
ing standing beside a group of neat modern ofiices, informed
the querist that it was not altogether through bad taste the
hovel was spared, but from the circumstance that he found it
of great convenience every time his speculations brought a
drove of pigs or a squad of masons the way. And my after
experience showed me that the story might not be in the least
apocryphal, and that masons had reason at times for not.
touching their hats to gentlemen.
In these barracks the food is of the plainest and coarsest
description : oatmeal forms its staple, with milk, when milk
can be had, which is not always ; and as the men have to cook
by turns, with only half an hour or so given them in which to
light a fire, and prepare the meal for a dozen or twenty asso-
ciates, the cooking is invariably an exceedingly rough and sim-
ple affair. I have known mason-parties engaged in the central
Highlands in building bridges, not unfrequently reduced, by
a tract of wet weather, that soaked their only fuel the turf, and
rendered it incombustible, to the extremity of eating their
oatmeal raw, and merely moistened by a little water, scooped
by the hand from a neighboring brook. I have oftener than once
seen our own supply of salt fail us ; and after relief had been af^
forded by a Highland smuggler — for there was much smuggling
m salt in those days, ere the repeal of the duties — I have heard
i complaint from a young fellow regarding the hardness of our
fe,re, at once checked by a comrade's asking him whether he was
not an ungrateful dog to grumble in that way, seeing that, after
*iving on fresh poultices for a weelc, we had actually that morn
18-i MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ing got porridge with salt in it. One marked effect of the
annual change which the north-country mason had to undergo,
from a life of domestic comfort to a life of hardship in the bothy,
it' he has not passed middle life, is a great apparent increase in
his animal spirits. At home he is in all probability a quiet,
rather dull-looking personage, not much given to laugh or
joke ; whereas in the bothy, if the squad be a large one, he
becomes wild and a humorist, — laughs much, and becomes in
genious in playing off pranks on his fellows. As in all othei
communities, there are certain laws recognized in the barrack,
as useful for controlling at least its younger members the ap
prentices ; but in the general tone of merriment, even these
lose their character, and ceasing to be a terror to evil-doers,
become in the execution mere occasions of mirth. I never in
all my experience, saw a serious punishment inflicted. Shortly
after our arrival at Conon-side, my master chancing to remark
that he had not wrought as a journeyman for twenty-five years
before, was voted a " ramming," for taking, as was said, such
high ground with his brother workmen ; but, though sentence
was immediately executed, they dealt gently with the old man,
who had good sense enough to acquiesce in the whole as a
joke. And yet, amid all this wild merriment and license,
there was not a workman who did not regret the comforts of
his quiet home, and long for the happiness which was, he felt,
to be enjoyed only there. It has been long known that gaiety
is not solid enjoyment ; but that the gaiety should indicate
little else than the want of solid enjoyment, is a circumstance
not always suspected. My experience of barrack-life has
enabled me to receive without hesitation what has been said of
the occasional merriment of slaves in America and elsewhere,
and fully to credit the often-repeated statement that the abject
serfs of despotic Governments laugh more than the subjects of
a free country. Poor fellows ! If the British people were as
unhap[)y as slaves or serfs, they would, 1 dare say, learn in time
to be quite as merry. There are, however, two circumstances
that «ip.rve to prevent the bothy life of the north-country mason
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 185
from essentially injuring his character iu the way it almost
never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to
calculate on being part of every vrinter, and almost every
spring, unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying
economy^ the effect of which, when not carried to the extreme
of a miserly narrowness, is always good ; and IJullow-day re-
turns him every season to the humanizing iiifl*vances of hit
186 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
CHAPTER X.
"The muse, nae poet ever faiid her,
Till by himsel' he learned to wander
Adown some troltin' burn's meander,
An' no think lang:
O, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder
A heart-felt saiig 1"
Burns.
There are delightful walks in the immediate neighborhood
of Conon-side; and as the workmen — engaged, as I have
said, on day's wages — immediately ceased working as the hour
of six arrived, I had, during the summer months, from three
to four hours to myself every evening, in which to enjoy them.
The great hollow occupied by the waters of the Cromarty
Frith divides into two valleys at its upper end, just where the
sea ceases to flow. Tlicre is the valley of the Pefler, and the
valley of the Conon ; and a tract of broken hills lies between,
formed by the great conglomerate base of the Old Red Sys-
tem. The conglomerate, always a picturesque deposit, termi-
nates some four or five miles higher up the valley, in a range
of rough precipices, as bold and abrupt, though they front the
Ulterior of the country, as if they formed the terminal barrier
of some exposed sea-coast. A few straggling pines crest their
sumn^its; and the noble woods of Bnihau Castle, the ancient
Beat (»f the Earls of Seaforth, sweep downwards from their base
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlSr. 187
to the margin of the Conon, On our own side of the river,
the more immature but fresh and thickly-clustered woods of
Conon House rose along the banks ; and I was delighted to
find among them a ruinous chapel and ancient burying-ground,
occupying, in a profoundly solitary corner, a little green hil-
lock, once an island of the river, but now left dry by the grad-
ual wear of the channel, and the consequent flill of the water
to a lower level. A few broken walls rose on the highest peak
of the eminence ; the slope was occupied by the little mossy
hillocks and sorely-lichened tombstones that mark the ancient
grave-yard ; and among the tombs immediately beside the
ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its iron gnomon worn to
an oxydized film, and green with weather-stains and moss.
And around this little lonely yard sprang the young wood,
thick as a hedge, but just open enough towards the west to
admit, in slant lines along the tombstones and the ruins, the
red level light of the setting sun.
I greatly enjoyed these evening walks. From Conon-side
as a centre, a radius of six miles commands many objects of
interest; — StrathpefTer, with its mineral springs, — Castle Leod,
with its ancient trees, among the rest, one of the largest Span-
ish chestnuts in Scotland, — Knockferrel, with its vitrified
fort, — the old tower of Fairburn, — the old though somewhat
modernized tower of Kinkell, — the Brahan policies, with the
old Castle of the Seaforths, — the old Castle of Kilcoy, — and
the Druidic circles of the moor of Red-castle. In succession
I visited them all, with many a sweet scene besides ; but I
found that my four hours, when the visit involved, as it some-
times did, twelve miles walking, left me little enough time to
examine and enjoy. A half-holiday every week would be a
mighty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for
the quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affeo
tion for natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, " lovea
to look upon what is old." My recollections of this rich tract
of country, with its woods, and towers, and noble river, seem
as if bathed in the red light of gorgeous sunsets. Its uneven
188 MY SCHOOLS AND SUHOOLMASTEKS ;
plaiu ol Old Red Sandstone leans, at a few miles distance,
against dark Highland hills of schistose gneiss, that, at the
line where they join on to the green Lowlands, are low and
tame, but sweep upwards into an alpine region, where the old
Scandinavian Flora of the country, — that Flora which alone
flourished in the times of its boulder clay, — still mahitains its
place against the Germanic invaders which cover the lower
grounds, as the Celt of old used to maintain exactly the same
ground against the Saxon. And at the top of a swelling moor
just beneath where the hills rise rugged and black, stands the
pale tall tower of Fairburu, that, seen in the gloamin', as I
have often seen it, seems a ghastly spectre of the past, looking
from out its solitude at the changes of the present. The free-
booter, its founder, had at first built it, for the greater security,
without a door, and used to climb into it through the window
of an upper story by a ladder. But now unbroken peace
brooded over its shattered ivy-bound walls, and ploughed fields
were creeping up year by year along the moory slope on which
it stood, until at length all became green, and the dark heath
disappeared. There is a poetic age in the life of most indi-
viduals, as certainly as in the history of most nations ; and a
very happy age it is. I had now fully entered on it; and en-
joyed, in my lonely walks along the Conon, a happiness ample
enough to compensate for many a long hour of toil, and many
a privation. 1 have quoted, as the motto of this chapter, an
exquisite verse from Burns. There is scarce another stanza
in the wide round of British literature that so faithfully de-
scribes the mood which, regularly as the evening cjime, and
after I liad buried myself in the thick woods, or reached some
bosky recess of the river bank, used to couie stealing over me,
and in which I have felt my heart and intellect as thoroughly
•ji Keeping with the scene and hour as the still woodland pool
beside me, whose surface roflected in the calm every tree and
rock that ruse around it, and every hue of the heavens above.
And yet the mood, though a sweet, was also, as the j)oet ex-
Di esses it, a pensive one : it was steeped in the happy mclan'
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION'. 189
clioly sung so truthfully by an elder bard, who also muit nave
entered deeply into the feeling.
" When I goe musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things foreknowne, —
When I builde castles in the uir,
Voide of sorrow and voide of care,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,^—
Methinka the time runs very fleet ;
All my joyes to this are foUie ;—
None see sweet as inelanchollie.
When to myself I sit and smile,
With pleasing thoughts Ihe time beguile,
By a brook side or wood soe green.
Unheard, unsought for. and imseen,
A thousand pleasures doe me blesse.
And crowne my soul with happiness ;
All my joyes to this are follie ; —
None soe sweet as melanchollie."
When I remember how my happiness was enhanced by
every little bird that burst out into sudden song among the
trees, and then as suddenly became silent, or by every bright-
scaled fish that went darting through the topaz-colored depths
of the water, or rose for a moment over its calm surface, — how
the blue sheets of hyacinths that carpeted the openings in the
wood delighted me, and every golden-tinted cloud that gleam-
ed over the setting sun, and threw its bright flush on the river,
seemed to inform the heart of a heaven beyond, — I marvel, in
looking over the scraps of verse produced at the time, to find
how little of the sentiment in which I so luxuriated, or of the
nature which I so enjoyed, found their way into them. But
what Wordsworth well terms " the accomplishment of verse,"
given to but few, is as distinct from the poetic faculty vouch-
safed to many, as the ability of relishing exquisite music is
distinct from the power of producing it. Nay, there are cases
n which the " flxculty" may be very high, and yet the " ac
complishment" comparatively low, or altogether awanting. I
have been told by the late Dr. Chalmers, whose Astronomical
Discourses form one of the finest philosophical poems in any
lauGuatre, that he never succeeded v\ achieving a readable
190 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
stanza ; and Dr. Thomas Brown, whose metaphysics glow Avith
poetry, might, though "le produced whole volumes of verse,
have said nearly the same thing of himself. But, like the
Metaphysician, who would scarce have published his verses
unless he had thought them good ones, my rhymes pleased me
at this period, and for some time after, wonderfully well : they
came to be so associated in my mind with the scenery amid
which they were composed, and the mood which it rarely fail-
ed of inducing, that, though they neither breathed the mood
nor reflected the scenery, they always suggested both ; on the
principle, I suppose, that a pewter spoon, bearing the London
stamp, suggested to a crew of poor weather-beaten sailors in
one of the islands of the Pacific, their far-distant home and its
enjoyments. One of the pieces suggested at this time I shall,
however, venture on submitting to the reader. The few simple
thoughts which it embodies arose in the solitary churchyard
among the woods, beside the aged lichen-encrusted dial-stone.
ON SEEING A SUN-DIAL IN A CHURCHYARD.
Gray dial-stone, I fain wouM know
What motive placed thee here,
Where darkly opes the frequent grave,
And rests the frequent bier ;
Ah ! bootless creeps the dusky shade.
Slow o'er thy figured plain:
When niorlal life has passed away,
Time counts his hours in vain.
As sweep the clouds o'er ocean's breast.
When slirieks the winlry wind,
So doubtful thoughts, gray dial-slone.
Come sweeping o'er my mind.
I think of what could place Ihco here,
Of those beneath iheo laid ;
And ponder if thou wcr'l not raised
111 mockery o'er the dead.
Nay, man, whfn on life's stage they fret,
May muck his fcUow-men;
In sooth, their soberest freaks aObrd
Rare food for mockery thou.
OB. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 101
But ah ! when passed their brief sojourn.
When Heaven's dread doom is said, —
Beau there tliu hiiinan heart could pour
Light mockeries o'er the dead ?
The fiend unblesi, who still to harm
Directs his fol-in power.
May ope the book of grace to him
Whose day of grace is o'er ;
But never sure could mortal man,
Whale'er his age or clime.
Thus raise, in mockery o'er the dead.
The stone that measures time.
Gray dial-slone, I fain would know
What motive placed thee here.
Where sadness heaves the frequent sighj
And drops the frequent tear.
Like thy carved plain, gray dial-stone,
Grief's weary mourners be ;
Dark sorrow metes out time to them, —
Dark shade marks time on thee.
I know it now : wer't thou not plac'd
Tvy catch the eye of him
To whom, through glistening tears, earth's ^sOi
Worthless appear, and dim?
We think of time when time h:i3 fled,
The friend our tears deplore ;
The God whom pride-swollen hearts deny.
Grief-humbled hearts adore.
Gray slone, o'er thee the lazy night
Passes untold away ;
Nor were it lliine at noon to teach,
If failed the solar ray.
In death's dark night, gray dial-stone,
Cease all tlie works of men ;
In life, if Heaven withhold its aid,
Bootless these works and vain.
, Gray dial-stone while yet thy shade
Points out those hours are mine,—
While yet at early morn I rise,
And rest at day's decline, —
Would that the Xun that formed tbin^
His bright rays beamed on me.
That I, wise for the final day,
Might measure time, like thee I
192 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
These were happy evenings, — all the more happy from the
circumstance that I was still m heart and appetite a boy, and
could relish as much as ever, when their season came on, the
wild raspberries of the Conon Woods, — a very abundant fruit
in that part of the country, — and climb as lightly as ever, to
strip the guean-trees of their wild cherries. When the river
was low, I used to wade into its fords, in quest of its pearl
muscles [Unio Margaritiferus) ; and, though not very suo-
cessfiil in my pearl-fishing, it was at least something to see
how thickly the individuals of this greatest of British fresh-
water molluscs lay scattered among the pebbles of the fords, or
to mark them slowly creeping along the bottom, — when, in
consequence of prolonged droughts, the current had so mod-
erated that they were in no danger of being swept away, —
each on its large white foot, with its valves elevated over its
back, like the carpace of some tall tortoise. I found occasion
at this time to conclude, that the Unio of our r'.ver fords se-
cretes pearls so much more frequently than the llnionidce and
Anadouta of our still pools and lakes, not from any specific
peculiarity in tne constitution of the creature, but from the
effects of the habitat which it is its nature to choose. It re-
ceives in the fords and shallows of a rapid river many a rough
blow from sticks and pebbles, carried down in times of flood,
and occasionally from the feet of the men and animals "that
cross the stream during droughts ; and the blows induce the
morbid secretions of which pearls are the result. There seems
to exist no inherent cause why Anodon Ci/gnea, with its beau-
tiful silvery nacre, — as bright often, and always more delicate,
than that of Unio Margaritiferus, — should not be equally pro-
ductive of pearls; but, secure from violence in its still pools
and lakes, and unexposed to the circumstances that provoke
abnormal secretions, it docs not produce a single pearl for
every liinidred that are ripened into value and beauty liy the
exposed current-tossed Unio/iidaiof out rapid niountiiin rivers.
Would that hardsh.p and suflering bore always in a crcatu--e
of a greatly higher family similar results, and that the hard
bufll'ts di'ii': liim by fortune in the rough stream of life could
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 193
be transmuted, by some blessed internal predisposition of his
nature, into pearls of great price !
It formed one of my standing enjoyments at this time to
bathe, as the sun was sinlcing behind the woods, in the deeper
pools of the Couon, — a pleasure which, like all the more ex-
citing pleasures of youth, bordered on teri'or. Like that of the
poet, when he " wantoned with the breakers," and the " fresh-
ning sea made them a terror," " 'twas a pleasing fear." But
t was not current nor freshening eddy that rendered it such ;
J had acquired, long before, a complete mastery over all my
motions in the water, and, setting out from the shores of the
Bay of Cromarty, have swam round vessels in the roadstead,
when, among the many boys of a seaport town, not more than
one or two would venture to accompany me ; but the poetic age
is ever a credulous one, as certainly in individuals as in na-
tions ; the old fears of the supernatural may be modified and
etherealized, but they continue to influence it ; and at this
period the Conon still took its place among the haunted
streams of Scotland. There was not a river in the Highlands
that used, ere the erection of the stately bridge in our neigh-
borhood, to sport more wantonly with human life, — an evi-
dence, the ethnographer might perhaps say, of its purely Cel-
tic origin ; and as Superstition has her figures as certainly as
Poesy, the perils of a wild mountain-born stream, flowing be-
tween thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs
of the people by a frightful goblin, that took a malignant de-
light in luring into its pools, or overpowering in its fords, the
benighted traveller. Its goblin, the "water-wraith," used to
appear as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished
chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, ever distorted
by a malignant scowl. I knew all the various fords — always
dangerous ones- — where of old she used to start, it was said,
out of the river, before the terrified traveller, to point at him,
as in derision, with her skinny finger, or to beckon him in-
vitingly on ; and I was shown the very tree to which a poor
Highlander had clung, when, in crossing the river by niglit,
he was seized by tb^ goblin, and from which, desjite of his
194 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS *,
•
utmost exertions, though assisted by a young lad, his compan-
ion, he was dragged into the middle of the current, where he
perished. And when, in swimming at sunset over some dark
pool, where the eye failed to mark, or the foot to sound the
distant bottom, the twig of some sunken bush or tree has
struck against me as I passed, I have felt, with sudden start,
as if touched by the cold, bloodless fingers of the goblin.
The old chapel among the woods formed the scene, says tra-
dition, of an incident similar to that which Sir Walter Scott
relates in his '• Heart of Mid-Lothian," when borrowing, as
the motto of the chapter in which he describes the prepara-
tions for the execution of Porteus, from an author rarely
quoted, — Kelpie. " The hour's come," so runs the extract,
" but not the man ; " — nearly the same words which the
same author employs in his "Guy Mannering," in the cave
scene between Meg Merrilies and Dirk Hatterick. " There is
a tradition," he adds, in the accompanying note, " that while
a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent showers,
the discontented voice of the water-spirit was heard to pro-
nounce these words. At the same moment, a man urged on
by his fate, or, in Scottish language, fay, arrived at a gallop,
and prepared to cross the water. No remonstrance from the
bystanders was of power to stop him; he plunged into the
stream, and perished." So far, Sir AV alter. The Ross-shiro
story is fuller, and somewhat different in its details. On a
field in the near neighborhood of the chapel, now laid out
into the gardens of Conon House, there was a party of High-
landers engaged in an autumnal day at noon, some two or
three centuries ago, in cutting down their corn, when th(?
boding voice of the wraith was heard rising from the Conon
beneath, — " The hour's come, but not the man." Immediate-
ly after, a courier on horseback was seen spurring down tho
hill in hot haste, making directly for what is known as a
" fausc ford," that lies across tlie stream, just opposite the old
building, in the form of a rippling bar, which, indicating ap-
parently, though very falsely, little depth of water, is flanked
by a deep black pool above and below. The Highlanders
on THE STORY OP MY EDUCATION. 195
spiaiig forward to warn him of his danger, and keep him back ;
but he was unoelieving and in haste, and rqde express, he
said, on business that would brook no delay ; andf as for the
" fause ford," if it could not be ridden, it could be swam ; and,
whether by riding or swimming, he was resolved on getting
across. Determined, however, in saving him in his own de-
spite, the Highlanders forced him from his horse, and, thrust-
ing him into the little chapel, locked him in ; and then, throw-
ing open the door when the fatal hour had passed, they called
him that he might now pursue his journey. But there was
no reply, no one came forth ; and on going in, they found
him lying cold and stiff, with his face buried in the water of a
small stone font. He had fallen, apparently, in a fit, athwart
the wall ■; and his predestined hour having come, he was suf-
focated by the (ew pints of water in the projecting font. At
this time the stone font of the tradition — a rude trouirh, little
more than a foot in diameter either way — was still to be seen
among the ruins ; and, like the veritable cannon in the Castle
of Udolpho, beside which, according to Annette, the ghost
used to take its stand, it imparted by its solid reality a degree
of authenticity to the story in this part of the country, whi«;h,
if unfurnished with a " local habitation," as in Sir Walter's
note, it would have wanted. Such was one of the many
stories of the Conon with which I became acquainted at a
time when the beliefs they exemplified were by no means quite
dead, and of which I could think as tolerably serious realities,
when lying a-bed all alone at midnight, the solitary inmate of
a dreary barrack, listening to the roar of the Conon.
Besides the long evenings, we had an hour to breakfast, and
another to dinner. Much of the breakfast hour was spent in
cooking our food ; but as a bit of oaten cake and a drauglit
of milk usually served us for the mid-day meal, the greater part
of the hour assigned to it was available for the purpose of rest
or arrusement. And when the day was fine, I used to spend
it by the side -»f a mossy stream, within a few minutes walk of
the work-shed, or in a neighboring planting, beside a little
irregular 1 :)chan, fringed round with flags and rushes. The
196 MY SCHOOLS AJSID SCHOOLMASTERS;
mossy stream, black in its deeper pools, as if it were a rivulet
of tar, contained a good many trout, which had acquired a hue
nearly as deep as its own, and formed the very negroes of their
race. They were usually of small size, — for the stream itself
was small ; and, though little countries sometimes produce great
men, little streams rarely produce great fish. But on one oc-
casion, towards the close of autumn, when a party of the
younger workmen set themselves, in a frolic, to sweep it with
torch and spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-
o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in
length, and proportionately bulky, with a snout bent over the
lower jaw at its symphysis, like the beak of a hawk, and as
deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its complexion)
as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a
bull-trout, a visitor from the neighboring river ; but we all
concluded at the time, from the extreme dinginess of its coat,
that it had lived for years in its dark pool, a hermit apart from
its fellows. I am not now, however, altogether certain that
the inference was a sound one. Some fishes, like some men,
have a wonderful ability of assuming the colors that best suit
their interests for the time. I have been unable to determine
whether the trout was one of these conformists ; but it used to
strike me at this period as at least curious, tliat the fishes in
even the lower reaches of the dark little rivulet sliould ditler so
entirely in hue from those of the greatly clearer Conon, into
which its peaty waters fill), and whose scaly denizens are of
silvery brightness. No fisli seems to possess a more complete
power over its dingy coat than a very al)midant one in the
estuary of the Conon, — the common fk)undei'. Standing o
the l>ank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of
Dottom on which they lay, — visible to only a very sharp eye,
— by pitching a small i)ebl)le right over them. Was the patch
a pale one, — fur a minute or so they carried its pale color along
with them into some darker tract, where they remained dis-
tinctly visible from the contrjist, until, gradually acquiring the
accper hue, they Jigain became inconspicuous. But if startled
back to the same pale patch from wliicli they bad set out. I
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 197
nave then seen ttien visible for a minute or so, from their
over-dark tint, until, gradually losing it in turn, they paled
down, as at first, to the color of the lighter ground. An old
Highlander, whose suit of tartan conformed to the general hue
of the heather, was invisible at a little distance, when travers-
ing a moor, but came full into view in crossing a green field or
meadow ; the suit given by nature to the flounder, tinted ap-
parently on the same principle of concealment, exhibits a de
gree of adaptation to its varying circumstances, which the
tartan wanted. And it is certainly curious enough to find, in
one of our commonest fishes, a property which used to be re-
garded as one of the standing marvels of the zoology of those
remote countries of which the chameleon is a native.
The pond in the piece of planting, though as unsightly a
little patch of water as might be, was, I found, a greatly richer
study than the dark rivulet. Mean and small as it was, — not
larger in area inside its fringe of rushes than a fashionable
drawing-room, — its natural history would have formed an in-
teresting volume ; and many a half hour have I spent beside
it in the heat of the day, watching its numerous inhabitants, —
insect, reptilian, and vermiferous. There were two — apparent-
ly three — different species of libellula that used to come and
deposit their eggs in it, — one of the two, that large kind «)f
dr.igon-fly [Eshnagrandis), scarce smaller than one's middle-
finger, — which is so beautifully colored black and yellow, as
if adorned by the same taste one sees displayed in the chariots
and liveries of the fashionable world. The other fly was a
greatly more slender and smaller species or genus, rathei
Agrion ; and it seemed two, not one, from the circumstance,
that about one-half the individuals were beautifully varie-
gated blac-k and sky-blue, the other half black and bright
crimson. But the peculiarity was merely a sexual one; as if
in illustration of those fine analogies with which all nature
is charged, the sexes put on the complimentary colors, and
are mutually fascinating, not by resembling, but by corrC'
sponding to^ each other. I learned in time to distinguish the
disagreeat le looking larva> of these flies, both largerand smaller.
198 UY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
with their six hairy legs, and their grotesque formidable vizors,
and found that they were the very pirates of the water, as the
ipiendid inse>.ts into which they were ultimately developed
A^ere the very tyrants of the lower air. It was strange to see
ihe beautiful winged creature that sprang out of the pupae
mto which the repulsive looking pirate had been transformed,
launch forth into its new element, changed in everything save
*s nature, but still unchanged in that, and rendering itself as
formidable to the moth and the butterfly as it had been before
kO the newt and the tadpole. There is, I dare say, an analogy
Qerealso. It is in the first stages of our own species, as certain-
ty as in that of the dragon-fly, that the character is fixed.
Further, I used to experience much interest in watching the
progress of the frog, in its earlier stages from the egg to the
fish ; then from the fish to the reptile-fish, with its fringed
tail, and ventral and pectoral limbs ; and, last of all, from the
reptile-fish to the complete reptile, I had not yet learned —
nor was it anywhere Ivnown at the time — that the history of
the individual frog, through these successive transformations, is
a history in small of the animal creation itself in its earlier
stages, — that in order of time the egg-like mollusc had taken
precedence of the fish, and the fish of the reptile ; and that an
intermediate order of creatures had once abounded, in which,
as in the half-developed frog, the natures of both fish and rep-
tile were united. But, though unacquainted with this strange
analogy, the transformations were of themselves wonderful
enougli to fiL for a time my whole mind. I remember being
struck one afteruoon, after spending my customary spare half
hour beside the pond, and marking the peculiar style of color
ing in the yellow and black libellulidie in the common wasp,
and in a yellow and black species of ichneumon fly, to detect
in some lialf-dozen gentlemen's carriages that were standing
opposite our work-shed, — for the good old knight of Conon
House had a dinner party that evening, — exactly the same
style of ornamental coloring. The greater immbcr of the
veliicles were yellow and black, — just as these were the pre-
i'ailiiig colore among the wasps and libellulida) ; but there
OR, THE SrORY OF MY EDUCATION. 199
was a slight admixture of other colors among them too :
there was at least one that was black and green, or black and
blue, 1 forget which ; and another black and brown. And so
it was among the insects also : the same sort of taste, both in
color and the arrangements of color, and even in the propor-
tions of the various colors, seemed to have regulated the
style of ornament manifested in the carriages of the dinner
party, and of the insect visitors of the pond. Further, I
thought I could detect a considerable degree of resemblance
m form between a chariot and an insect. There was a great
abdominal body, separated by a narrow isthmus from a thoracic
coach-box, where the directing power was stationed ; while
the wheels, poles, springs, and general framework on which
the vehicle rested, corresponded to the wings, limbs, and
antennas of the insect. There was at least sufficient resem-
blance of form to justify resemblance of color ; and here was
the actual resemblance of color which the resemblance of
form justified. I remember that, in musing over the coinci
dence, I learned to suspect, for the first time, that it might be
no mere coincidence after all ; and that the fact embodied in
the remarkable text which informs us that the Creator made
man in his own image, might in reality lie at its foundation
as the proper solution. Man, spurred by his necessities, has
discovered for himself mechanical contrivances, which he has
afterwards found anticipated as contrivances of the Divine
Mind, in some organism, animal or vegetable. In the same
way, his sense of beauty in form of color originates some pleas-
ing combination of lines or tints ; and he then discovers that
it also has been anticipated. He gets his chariot tastefully
painted black and yellow, and lo ! the wasp that settles on its
wheel, or the dragon-fly that darts over it, he finds painted in
exactly the same style. His neighbor, indulging in a difier-
ent taste, gets his vehicle painted black and blue, and lo ?
some lesser libellula or ichneumon fly comes whizzing past,
to justify his style of ornament also, but at the same time to
show that it, too, had existed ages before.
The evenings gradually closed in as the season waned,— at
200 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS;
first abridging, and at length wholly mterdicting, my evening
walks ; and having no other place to which to retire, save the
dark, gousty hay-loft, into which a light was never admitted,
I had to seek the shelter of the barrack, and succeeded usually
in finding a seat within at least sight of the fire. The place
was greatly over-crowded ; and, as in all over-large companies,
it had commonly its four or five groupes of talkers, each group
furnished with a topic of its own. Tlie elderly men spoke
about the state of the markets, and speculated, in especial, on
the price of oatmeal ; the apprentices talked about lasses ;
while knots of intermediate age discussed occasionally both
markets and lasses too, or spoke of old companions, their pe-
culiarities and history, or expatiated on the adventures of
former work seasons, and the character of the neighboring
lairds. Politics proper I never heard. During the whole
season a newspaper never once entered the barrack door. At
times a song or a story secured the attention of the whole bar-
rack ; and there was in especial one story-teller whose powers
of commanding attention were very great. He was a middle-
aged Highlander, not very skilful as a workman, and but in-
differently provided with English ; and as there usually at-
taches a nickname to persons in the humbler walks that are
marked by any eccentricity of character, he was better known
amorig his brother workmen as Jock Mo-ghoal, i. e. John my
Darling, than by his proper name. Of all Jock Mo-ghoal's
storied Jock Mo-ghoal was himself the hero ; and certainly
most wonderful was the invention of the man. As recorded
in his nan-atives, his life was one long ejiic poem, filled with
strange and startling adventure, and furnished with an extra-
ordinary machinery of the wild and supernatural ; and though
ill knew that Jock made imagination supply, in his histories
he place of memory, noi even Ulysses or ii'^neas, — men who^
unless very much indebted to their poets, must have been of a
Bimilar turn, — could have attracted more notice at the courts
of Alcinous or Dido, than Jock in the barrack. The work-
men used, on the mornings after his greater narrativ(!s, to look
)i)e another full in 'lie flice, and ask, with a smile rather in-
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 201
eipient than fully manifest, whether " J >ck was na perfectly
wonderfu' last nicht ?"
He had several times visited the south of Scotland, as one
of a band of Highland reapers, for employment in his proper
profession very often failed poor Jock ; and these journeys
formed the grand occasions of his adventures. One of his nar-
ratives commenced, I remember, with a frightful midnight
scene in a solitary churchyard, Jock had lost his way in the
darkness ; and, after stumbling among burial-mounds, and
tombstones, he had toppled into an open grave, which was of
a depth so profound, that for some time he tailed to escape
from it, and merely pulled down upon himself, in his attempts
to climb its loose sides, musty skulls and great thigh-bones,
and pieces of decayed coffins. At length, however, he did
succeed in getting out, just as a party of unscrupulous resur-
rectionists were in the act of entering the burying-ground ; and
they, naturally enough preferring an undecayed subject that
had the life in it to preserve it fresh, to dead corpses the worse
for the keeping, gave him chase ; and it was with the extrem-
est difficulty that, after scudding over wild moors and through
dark woods, he at length escaped them by derning himself in
a fox-earth. The season of autumnal labor over, he visited
Edinburgh on his way north ; and was passing along the High
Street, when, seeing a Highland girl on the opposite side with
whom he was intimate, and whom he afterwards married,
he strode across to address her, and a chariot coming whirling
along the street at the time at full speed, he was struck by
the pole and knocked down. The blow had taken him full
on the chest ; but though the bone seemed injured, and the
integuments became frightfully swollen and livid, he was able
to get up ; and, on asking to be shown the way to a surgeon's
shop, his acquaintance the girl brought him to an under-
ground room in one of the narrow lanes off the street, which,
Bave for the light of a great fire, would have been pitch-dark
at mid-day, and in which he found a little wrinkled old
wom^n, as yellow as the smoke that filled the apartment.
"Choose," said the hag, as she looked at the injured part,
202 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
" one of two things, — a cure slow but sure, or sudden but im
perfect. Or shall I put back the hurt altogether till you get
home ?" " That, that." said Jock ; " if I were ance home 1
could bear it well enouch." The hag began to pass her hand
over the injured part, and to mutter under her breath some
potent charm; and as she muttered and manipulated, the
swelling gradually subsided, and the livid tints blanched, till
at length nought remained to tell of the recent accident save
a pale spot in the middle of the breast, surrounded by a thread-
like circle of blue. And now, she said, you are well for three
weeks ; but be prepared for the fourth. Jock prosecuted his
northward journey, and encountered the usual amount of ad-
venture by the way. He was attacked by robbers, but, as-
sistance coming up, he succeeded in beating them off. He lost
his way in a thick mist, but found shelter, after many hours'
wandering far among the hills, in a deserted shepherd's shielin'.
He was nearly buried in a sudden snow-storm that broke out
by night, but, getting into the middle of a cooped-up flock of
sheep, they kept him warm and comfortable amid tlui vast
drift-wreaths, till the light of morning enabled him to prose-
cute his journey. At length he reached home, and was prose-
cuting his ordinary avocations, when the third week came to
a close ; and he was on a lonely moor at the very hour he had
meet with the accident on the High Street, when he suddenly
heard the distant rattle of a chariot, though not a shadow of
the vehicle was to be seen ; the sounds came bearing down
upon him, heightening as they approached, and, when at the
loudest, a violent blow on the breast prostrated him on the
moor. The stroke of the High Stn'ct '' had come back," just
us the wise woman had said it would, though with accom-
paniments that Jock iiml not anticipated. It was with dilH
culty he reached his cottage that evening ; and there elapsci
fully six weeks ere he was able to quit it again. Such, in its
Dutiines, was one of the marvellous narratives of Jock Mo-
i;h<)al. He belonged to a curious class, known by specimen,
in, I suppose, almost every locality, especially in the more prim-
itive ones, — for the smart ridicule common in the artificial
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 203
states of society greatly stunt their growth ; and in our litera-
ture, — as represented by the Bobadils, Young Wildings,
Caleb Balderstons, and Baron Munchausens, — they hold a
prominent place. The class is to be found of very general
development among the vagabond tribes, I have listened to
wonderful personal narratives that had not a word of truth in
them " from gipsies brown in summer glades that bask," as I
took niy seat beside their fire, in a wild rock-cave in the neigh-
Dorhood of Rosemarkie, or at a later period in the cave of
Marcus ; and in getting into conversation with individuals of
the more thoroughly lapsed classes of our large towns, I have
found that a faculty of extemporary fiibrication was almost
the only on6 which I could calculate on finding among them in
a state of vigoi-ous activity. That in some cases the propen-
sity should be found co-existing with superior calibre and ac-
quirement, and with even a sense of honor by no means very
obtuse, must be regarded as one of the strange anomalies
which so often surprise and perplex the student of human
character. As a misdirected toe-nail, injured by pressure,
sometimes turns round, and, re-entering the flesh, vexes it
into a sore, it would seem as if that noble inventive facultv
to which we owe the parable and the epic poem, was liable,
when constrained by self-love, to similar misdirections ; and
certainly, when turned inwards upon its possessor, the moral
character festers or grows callous around it.
There was no one in the barrack with whom I cared much
to converse, or who, in turn, cared much to converse with me ;
and so I learned, on the occasion when the company got dull
and broke up into groupes, to retire to the hay-loft where I
slept, and pass there whole hours seated on my chest. The
loft was a vast apartment, some fifty or sixty feet in length,
with its naked rafters raised little more than a man's height
over the floor ; but in the starlit nights, when the openings in
the wall assumed the character of square patches of darkness-
visible stamped upon utter darkness, it looked quite as well
as any other unlightcd place that could not be seen ; and in
nights brightened by the moon, the pale oeams, which found
10
204 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS ;
access at openings and crevices, rendered its Avide a:ea qmta
picturesque enough for ghosts to walk in. But I never saw
any ; and the only sounds I heard were those made by the
horses in the stable below, champing and snorting c . er their
food. They were, I doubt not, happy enough in their dark
stalls, because they were horses, and had plenty to eat ; and
I was at times quite happy enough in the dark loft above, be
cause I was a man, and could think and imagine. It fs, I be
lieve, Addison who remarks, that if all the thoughts which
pass through n an's minds were to be made public, the great
difference which seems to exist between the thinking of the
wise and of the unwise would be a good deal reduced ; seeing
that it is a difference which does not consist in their not hav-
ing the same weak thoughts in. common, but merely in the
prudence through which the wise suppress their foolish ones.
I still possess notes of the cogitations of these solitary even-
nings, ample enough to show that they were extraordinary
combinations of the false and the true ; but I at the same time
nold them sufficiently in memory to remember, that I scarce,
if at all, distinguished between what was false and true in
them at the time. The literature of almost every people has
a corresponding early stage, in which fresli thinking is mingled
with little conceits, and in which the taste is usually false, but
the feeling true.
Let me present my younger readers, from my notes, with
the variously compounded cogitations of one of these quiet
evenings. What formed so long ago one of my exercises may
now form one of theirs, if they but set themselves to separate
the solid from the unsolid thinking contained in my abstract.
MUSINGS.
••1 stood Ittsl Bummer on the siimmll of Tor-Achllly [n pyrninUlnl hill nbciit sii
■nileH from Cotwu cidcj, iiiid occupied, when Ihorc, the cenlu^cf n wide circle, jiboul
Ony iniIcA iudiiiiiictcr. I am slill cull up its r<>ugli-i>d((cd sou or hills, willi llio deal
blue nrraatncnt nrchliig over, und thu Klnnl rnys of Iho setting ami gloiimliiis; nthwarU
Yes, nver that rirruliir tleld llfly iiillcs ncroH.H, llie tlniiiiineiit cloned all around iil llio
tiorixon. as u wulch glaiu cluseit round the diul-pluto ot tliu wutch. Sky uud eurlb
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 205
•oemea co - extensive ; and jel how incalculably vast their difference of area!
Thousands of systems seemed but commeiisiirate to the eye with a small dis
trict of eailh fifly miles each way. But capacious as the human imagination
has been deemed, can it conceive of an area of wi.ler field? Mine can-
not. My mind cannot take in more at a glance, if I may so speak, than is
taken in by the eye. I cannot conceive of a wider area than that which
the sight commands from the summit ol a lofly eminence. I can pass in im-
agination through many such areas. I can add field to field ad ivfiuitum ;
»ud thus conceive of infinite space, by conceiving of a space which can be
taflni'xily added to ; but all of space that 1 can take in at one process is an
area commensurate with that embraced .at c glance by the eye. How, then,
nave I my conception of the earth as a whole,— of the solar system as a whole,
—nay, of many systems as a whole? Just as 1 have my conceptions of a school-
globe or of an Orrery,— by diminution. It is through the diminution induced by
distance that the sidereal heavens only co-extend, as seen from the top of Tor
Achilly, with a portion of the counties of Ross and Inverness. The apparent area
is the same, but the coloring is different. Our ideas of greatness, then, are much
less dependent on actual area than on what painters term aerial perspective.
The dimness of distance and the diminution of parts are essential to right con-
ceptions of great magnitude.
" Of the various figures presented to me here, I seize strong hold of but
one. I brood over the picture of the solar system conjured up. I conceive
of the satellites as light shallops that continually sail round heavier vessels,
and consider how much moie of space they must traverse than the orbs to
which they are attached. The entire system is presented to me as an Orrery
of the apparent size of the area of landscape seen from the hill-top ; but
dimness and darkness prevent the diminution from communicating that ap-
pearance of litlleness to the whole which would attach to it were it, like
an actual Orrery, sharply defined and clear. As the picture rises before me,
the entire system seems to possess, what I suspect it wants, its atmosj)here
like that of the earth, which reflects the light of the sun in the different
degrees of excessive brightness, — noon-tide splendor, the fainter shades of even-
ing, and gray twilight obscurity. This veil of light is thickest towards the
centre of the system ; for when the glance rests on its edges, the suns of
other systems may be seen peeping through. I see Mercury sparkling to the
gun, with its oceans of molten glass and its fountains of liquid gold. I see
the ice mountains of Saturn, hoar through the twilight. 1 behold the earth
rolling upon itself, from darkness to light, and from light to darkness. I
Boe the clouds of winter seilling over one part of it, with the nether mantle
of snow shining through them ; I see in another a brown, dusky wa.ste of
sand lighted up by the glow of summer. One ocean appears smooth as a mir-
,-or, — another is black with tempest. I see the pyramid of shade which eai/o
of the j)lanets casts from its darkened side into the space behind ; and I per-
jeive the stars twinkling through each opening, as through the angular doors of
K pavilion.
** Such is the scene seen at right angles with the plane in which thr plaoet*
206 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
more; but what would be its aspect if I saw it in the iine of the planed
What wo\ild be its appearance if I saw it edgewise? There arises in my mind
one of those uncertainties which so frequently convince nie that I am igno-
rant. I cannot complete my picture, for 1 do not know whether all the plan-
ets move in one plane. How determine the point ? A ray of light breaks
in. Huzza ! I have found it. If the courses of the planets as seen in the
heavens form parallel lines, then must thry all move in one plane ; and vici
cersd. But hold! That would be as seen from the sun,— if the planets cvuld
be seen from the sun. The earth is but one of their own number, and from
it the point of view must be disadvantageous. The diurnal motion must pe^
plex. But no. The apparent motion of the heavens need not disturb the ot>
B^ration. Let the course of the planets through the fixed stars be maiKeu,
au'l though, from the peculiarity of the point of observation, their motion may
at one time seem more rapid, and at another more slow, yet if their plane be,
as a workman would say, out of twist, their lines will seem parallel. Siill in
some doubt, however: I long for a glance at an Orrery, to determine the point;
and then I remember that Ferguson, an untaucht man like myself, had made
more Orreries than any one else, and that mechanical contrivances of the kind
were the natural recourse of a man unskilled in the higlier geometry. But it
would be better to be a mathematician than skilful in contriving Orreries. A
man of the Newtonian cast of mind, and accomplished in the Newtonian learning,
could solve the problem where I sal, without an Urrory.
" From the thing conlcmplaled, I pass to the consideration of the mind
that contemplates. O! that wonderful Newton, respecting whom the French-
man inquired whether he ate and slept like other men. 1 consider how
one mind excels another ; nay, how one man excels a thousand ; and, by
way of illustration, 1 bethink me of the mode of valuing diamonds. A single
diamond that weighs filly carata is deemed ujore vahiahle than two thousiuid
diamonds each of which only weighs one. My illustration refers exclusively
to the native powers ; but may it not, I ask, bear also on the acquisition
Of knowledge ? Every new idea added to the stock already collected is a
carat added to the diamond ; for it is not only valuable to itself, but it also
lncreasi'8 the value of all the others, by giving to each of them a new link
of association.
"The thought links itself on to another, mayhap less sound: — Do not the
minds of men of exalted genius, such as Homer, .Milton, Shakspeare, seem to
partake of some of the qualities of infinitude Y Add a groat nuiny bricks
together, and they form a pyramid as huge as the peak of Tenerill'e. Add
all the common minds together that the world ever produced, and the mind
of a Shakspearo lowers over "the whole, in all the grandeur of unappriach
able infinity. That which is infinite admits of neither Increase nor diiniiui
t!on. Is it not so with genius of a certain alliludo V Homer, .Milton, Sliaks
peare, were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beg
gar ; Shnkspearu an illilcnilo wool-comber ; Milton skilled in all hiinian learn-
liur. Dili lh(-y have all ri^en to an equal heiifhl. Learning has a<l<l<ul no-
'htu^ to the illimitable genius of the one ; nor baa the want of it dvtiaut«d
OK. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 20'«
from th« infinite powers of the others. Bin it is time that I go and prepare
Buppiir."
I visited the policies of Conon House a full quarter of a ceu
tury after this time, — walked round the kiln, once our barrack,
— scaled the outside stone-stair of the hay-loft, to stand for
half a minute on the spot where I used to spend whole hours
seated on my chest, so long before ; and then enjoyed a quiet
stroll among the woods of the Conon. The river was big in
flood : it was exactly such a river Conon as I had lost sight of
in the winter of 1821, and eddied past dark and heavy, sweep-
uig over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that
rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in
the tide ; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current,
and rose and bent again ; and now a tuft of withered heath
came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How
vividly the past rose up before me ! — boyish day-dreams, for-
gotten for twenty years, — the fossils of an early formation
of mind, produced at a period when the atmosphere of feeling
was warmer than now, and the immaturities of the mental
kingdom grew rank and large, like the ancient cnjptogamia,
and bore no specific resemblance to the productions of a riper
time. The season 1 had passed in the neighborhood so long
before, — the first I had anywhere spent among strangers, — be-
longed to an age when home is not a country, nor a province
even, but simply a little spot of earth, inhabited by friends and
relatives ; and the verses, long forgotten, in which my joy had
found vent when on the eve of returning to that home, came
chiming as freshly into my memory as if scarce a month had
passed since I had composed them beside the Conon. Here
they are, with all the green juvenility of the home-sickness
still about them, — a true petrifaction of an extinct feeling ;
TO THE CONON.
Conon, fair flowed thy mountain stream,
Through blossomed heath and ripening fiold.
When, shrvmk by summer's fervid beam,
Thy peaceful waves I first beheld.
208 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
Calmly they swept thy winding shore,
When harvest's mirthful feast was nigh, —
When, breeze-borue, with thy hoarser roar
Came mingling sweet the reapers' cry.
But now I mark thy angry wave
Rush headlong to the stormy sea ;
Wildly the blasts of winter rave,
Sad rustling through the leafless tree.
Loose on its spray the alder leaf
Hangs wavering, trembling, sear and brown;
And dark thy eddies whirl beneath,
And white thy foam comes floating down,
Tliy banks with withered shrubs are spread ;
Thy fields confess stern winter's reign ;
And gleams yon thorn with berries red,
Like banner on a ravaged plain.
Hark I ceaseless groans the leafless wood;
Hark ! ceaseless roars thy stream below;
Ben-Vaichard's peaks are dark with cloud;
Ben-Weavis' crest is white with snow.
And yet, though red thy stream comes dowiy—
Though bleak th' encircling hills appear,—
Though field be bare, and forest brown.
And winter rule the waning year, —
Uumov'd I see each charm decay,
Unmourn'd the sweets of autumn die;
And fading flower and leafless spray
Court all ill vain the thoughtful sigh.
Not that dull grief delights to see
Vex'd Nature wear a kindred gloom ;
Not that she smiled in vain to nie.
When gaily prank'd in summer's bloom.
Nay, much 1 lov'd, at even tide,
Tliroiigh llrahaii's lonely woods to blmy
To nuirk tliv iicaccl'iil billows glide,
And watch the sun's declining ray.
But yet, though roll'd thy billows fair
As ero roll'd those of classic stream,—
ThouKl" green thy woods, now dark and bu%
IluHk'd beauteous in the woslorn beam;
To mark a scene that childhood loved,
Tlie anxious eye was lurn'd in vain ;
Wor could 1 HikI the friend approv'd,
That Blinr'd my Joy or soolli'd my pain.
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 20b
Now winter reigns : these hills no more
Shall sternly bound my anxious view ;
Soon, bent my course to Croma's shore,
Sliall I yon winding path pursue.
Fairer than here gay summer's glow
To me there wintry storms shall seem :
Then blow, ye bitter breezes, blow.
And lash the Conon's mountain straaia I
210 MY SCHOOLS ANT) RCHOOLMASTKKS ;
CHAPTER XI.
*»Thi bounding pulse, the languid limb,
The changius; spirit's rise and fall,—
We know that these were felt by him,
For these are felt by all."
MONTOOMERT.
The apprenticeship of my friend William Eoss had expired
during the working season of this year, when I was engaged
at Conon-side ; and he was now living in his mother's cottage
in the parish of Nigg, on the Ross-shire side of the Cromarty
Frith. And so, with the sea between us, we could no longer
meet every evening as before, or take long night-walks among
the woods. I crossed the Frith, however, and spent one happy
day in his society, in a little, low-roofed domicile, with a furze-
roughened ravine on the one side, and a dark fir-wood on the
other ; and which, though picturesque and interesting as a
cottage, must, I fear, have been a very uncomfortable home.
Ills father, whom I had not before seen, was sitting beside the
fire as I entered, hi all excci)t expression he was wonderfully
like my friend ; and yet he was one of the most vapid men 1
evei knew, — a man iiteniliy without an idea, and almost with-
out a recollection (jr a fact. And my friend's mother, though
she showed a certain kindliness of disposition which her hus-
band wanted, was locpiacious and weak. Had my (|Uoiidam
acqiiaiiitaiice, the vigorous-minded maniac of Ord, seen Wil-
liam and liis parents, slie would have triumphantly referred to
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 21 1
•Jiem ID evidence that Flavel and the Schoolmen were wnolly
in the right in holding that souls are not " derived through
parental traduction."
My friend had much to show me : he had made an inter-
esting series of water-color sketches of the old castles of the
neighborhood, and a very elaborate set of drawings of what
are known as the Runic obelisks of Ross : he had made some
first attempts, too, in oil-painting : but though his drawing
was, as usual, correct, there was a deadness and want of
transparency about his coloring, which characterized all his
after attempts in the same department, and which was, I sus-
pect, the result of some such deficiency in his perceptions of
the harmonies of color as that which, in another department
of sense, made me so insensible to the harmonies of sound.
His drawings of the obelisks were of singular interest. Not
only have the thirty years which have since elapsed exerted
their dilapidating effect on all the originals from which he drew,
but one of the number — the most entire of the group at that
time — has been since almost wholly' destroyed ; and so, what he
was then able to do there can be no such opportunity of doing
again. Further, his representations of the sculptured orna-
ments, instead of being (what those of artists too often are)
mere picturesque approximations, were true in every curve and
line. He told me he had spent a fortnight in tracing out the
involved mathematical figures — curves, circles, and right lines,
— on which the intricate fretwork of one of the obelisks was
formed, and in making separate drawings of each compart-
ment, before commencing his draught of the entire stone.
And, looking with the eye of a stone-cutter at his preliminary
sketches, from the first meagre lines that formed the ground-
work of some involved and difficult knot, to the elaborate knot
itself, I saw that, with such a scries of drawings before me, 1
myself could learn to cut Runic obelisks, in all the integrity
of the complsx ancient style, in less than a fortnight. JNIy
friend had formed some striking and original views regarding
the theology represented by symbol on these ancient stones, —
St that time regarded as Runic, but now held to be rather oi
212 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
Celtic origin. In the centre of each obelisk, on the more .m
portant and strongly relieved side, there always occurs a large
cross, rather of the Greek than of the Roman type, and usually
elaborately wrought into a fretwork, composed of myriads of
snakes, raised in some of the compartments over half-spheres
resembling apples. In one of the Ross-shire obelisks, — that
of Shadwiclv in the parish of Nigg, — the cross is entirely com-
prised of these apple-like, snake-covered protuberances ; and
It was the belief of my friend, that the original idea of the
wliole, and, indeed, the fundamental idea of this school of
sculpture, was exactly that so emphatically laid down by Mil-
ton in the opening argument of his poem, — man's Ml symbol-
ized by the serpents and the apples, and the great sign of his
restoration, by the cross. But in order to indicate that to the
Divine Man, the Restorer, the cross itself was a consequence
of the Fall, even it was covered over with symbols of the
event, and, in one curious specimen, built up of them. It was
the snakes and apples that had reared, i. e. rendered impera-
tive, the cross. My friend further remarked, that from this
main idea a sort of fretwork had originated, which seemed
more modern in some of its specimens than the elaborately.
carved snakes and strongly-relieved apples, but in which the
twistings of the one and the circular outlines of the others
might be distinctly traced ; and that it seemed ultimately to
have passed from a syml)ol into a mere ornament ; as, in
earlier instances, hieroglyphic pictures had passed into more ar-
bitrary signs or characters. I know not what may be thought
of the theory of William Ross; but when, in visiting, sever-
al years ago, the ancient ruins of lona, I marked, on the more
ancient crosses, the snakes and apjiaroiit apples, and then saw
how the same combination of figures appeared as mere ormv-
mental fretwork on some of the later tombs, I regarded it aa
tnorc probably tlie right one than any of tlie others I have
yet seen broached on this subject. 1 dined with my friend
this day on potatoes and salt, flanked by a jug of water; nor
were the potatoes l)y any means very good ones ; l»ut they
formed the only article of food in the household at the time
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 213
He had now dined and breakfasted upon them, he said, for
(several weeks together ; but though not very strengthening
they kept in the spark of life ; and he had saved up money
enough to carry him to the south of Scotland in the spring,
where he trusted to find employment. A poor friendless lad
3f genius, diluting his thin consumptive blood on bad pota
toes and water, and at the same time anticipating the labors
of our antiquarian societies by his elaborate and truthful
drawings of an interesting class of national antiquities, must
DC regarded as a melancholy object of contemplation ; but
such hapless geniuses there are in every age in which art is
cultivated and literature has its admirers ; and shrinkingly
modest and retiring in their natures, the world rarely finds
them out in time.
I found employment enough for my leisure during this win-
ter in my books and walks, and in my Uncle James's work-
shop ; which, now that Uncle James had no longer to lecture
me about my Latin, and my carelessness as a scholar in general,
was a very pleasant place, where a great deal of sound remark
and excellent information were always to be had. There was
another dwelling in the neighborhood in which I sometimes
spent a not unpleasant hour. It was a damp underground
room, inhabited by a poor old woman who had come to the
town from a country parish in the previous year, brmgiug with
her a miserably deformed lad, her son, who, though now turned
of twenty, more resembled, save in his head and face, a boy of
ten, and who was so helpless a cripple, that he could not move
from off his seat. " Poor lame Danie," as he was termed,
was, notwithstanding the hard measure dealt him by nature,
ac even-tempered, kindly-dispositioned lad, and was, in conse
quence, a great fiivorite with the young people in the neigh
borhood, especially with the humbly taught young women,
who — regarding him simply as an intelligence, coupled with
sympathies, that could write letters — used to find him employ-
ment, which he liked not a little, as a sort of amanuensis and
adviser-general in their affairs of the heart. Richardson tells
that he learned to write his Pamela by the practice he ao
214 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
quired in writing love-letters, when a very young lad, for half
a score love-sick females, who trusted and employed him.
" Poor Danie," though he bore on a skeleton body, wholly
unfurnished with muscle, a brain of the aver^age size and ac-
tivity, was not born to be a novelist ; but he had the necessa-
ry materials in abundance ; and, though secret enough to
all his other acquaintance, I, who cared not a great deal about
the matter, might, I found, have as many of his experiences
as I pleased. I enjoyed among my companions the reputa-
tion of being what they termed " close-minded ;" and Danie,
satisfied, in some sort, that I deserved the character, seemed
CO find it a relief to roll over upon my shoulders the great
weight of confidence which, rather liberally, as would seem,
for his comfort, had been laid upon his own. It is recorded
of himself by Burns, that he " felt as much pleasure in being
in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as
ever did statesman in knowing the intrigues of half the
Courts of Europe." And, writing to Dr. Moore, he adds that
it was " with difficulty " his pen was " restrained from giving
him a couple of paragraphs on the love-adventures of his com-
peers, the humble inmates of the farm-house and cottage."
I, on the other hand, bore my confidence soberly enough, and
kept them safe and very close, — regarding myself as merely
a sort of back-yard of mind, in which Danie might store up
at pleasure the precious commodities entrusted to his charge,
which, from want of stowage, it cumbered him to keep, but
which were his property, not mine. And though, I dare say,
I could still fill more than "a couple of paragraphs " with the
love-atfairs of townswomen, some of whose daughters were
courted and married ten years ago, I feel no inclination what-
ever, after having kept their secrets so long, to begin l)lal)I)ing
them now. D.inie kejit a draft-board, and used to take a
pride in beating all his neighbors ; but in a short time he
l;i„„l,t m(. — too palpably to his chagrin — to beat himself; and
finding the game a rather engrossing one besides, and not
fairing to look on the woe-begone expression that used to
cloud the meek pale face of my poor acquaintance, every
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 215
■jiirie he found his men swept off the board or cooped up into
a corner, I gave vp drafts, the only game of the kind of
which I ever knew anything, and in the course of a few years
succeeded in unlearning pretty completely all the moves. Jt
appeared wonderful that the processes essential to life could
have been carried on in so miserable a piece of frame-work
as the person of poor Danie : it was simply a 'human skeleton
bent double, and covered with a sallow skin. But they were
not carried on in it long. About eighteen months after the
first commencement of our acquaintance, when I was many
miles away, he was seized by a sudden illness, and died in a
few hours. I have seen, in even our better wjrks of fiction,
less interesting characters portrayed than poor, gentle-spirited
Panic, the love-depository of the young dames of the village ;
and I learned a thing or two in his school.
It was not until after several weeks of the working season
had passed, that my master's great repugnance to doing nothing
overcame his almost equally great repugnance again to seek
work as a journeyman. At length, however, a life of inac-
tivity became wholly intolerable to him ; and, applying to his
former employer, he was engaged on the previous terms, —
full wages for himself, and a very small allowance for his ap-
prentice, who was now, however, recognized as the readier and
more skilful stone-cutter of the two. In cutting mouldings of
the more difficult kinds, I had sometimes to take the old man
under charge, and give him lessons in the art, from which,
however, he had become rather too rigid in both mind and
body greatly to profit. We both returned to Conon-side,
where there was a tall dome of hewn rock to be erected over
the main archway of the steading at which we had been en-
gaged during the previous year ; and as few of the workmen
had yet assembled on the spot, we succeeded in establishing
ourselves as inmates of the barrack, leaving the hay-loft, with
its inferior accommodation, to the later-comers. We con
structed for ourselves a bed-frame of rough slabs, and filled it
\yith hay ; placed our chests in front of it ; and, as the rats
mustered by thousands in the place, suspended our sack of
216 ai^ SCHOOLS and schoolmasters;
oatmeal by a rope, from one of the naked rafters, &t rathei
more than a man's height over the floor. And, having both
pot and pitcher, our household economy was complete. Though
resolved not to forego my evening walks, I had determined to
conform also to every practice of the barrack ; and as the
workmen drafted from various parts of the country, gradually
increased around us, and the place became crowded, I soon
"bund myself engaged in the rolicking barrack-life of the north-
•ountry mason. The rats were somewhat troublesome. A
comrade who slept in the bed immediately beside ours had
one of his ears bitten through one night as he lay asleep, and
remarked that he supposed it would be his weasand they
would attack next time ; and on rising one morning, I found
that the four brightly plated jack-buttons to which my braces
had been fastened, had been iairly cut from off my trousers,
and carried away, to form, I doubt not, a portion of some
miser hoard in the wall. But even the rats themselves be-
came a source of amusement to us, and imparted to our rude
domicile, in some little degree, the dignity of danger. It was
not likely that they would succeed in eating us' all up, as they
had done wicked Bishop Hatto, of old ; but it was at least
something that they had begun to try.
The dwellers in the hay-loft had not been admitted in the
previous season to the full ])rivileges of the barrack, nor had
they been required to sliare in all its toils and duties. They
nad to provide their quota of wood for the fire, and of water
for general household purposes ; but they had not to take their
turn of cooking and baking for the entire mess, but were per-
mitted, as convenience served, to cook and bake for thenv
selves. And so, till now, 1 had made cakes and porridge,
with at times an occasional mess of broso or brochan, for only
my master and myself, — a li:i))py arrangement, whicli, I dare
say waved mi! a few ramminffs ; seeing that, in at least my
earlier cfTorls, I had been rather unlucky as a cook, and not
<'erv tortiniate as a baker. My experience in the Cromarty
3ft»'p,s had rendered mo skilful in both boiling and roasting
rotatoes, and in preparing shell-fish for the table, whether
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 217
molluscous or crustacean, according to the most approved
methods ; hut the exigencies of our wild life had never brought
me fairly in contact with the ceralia ; and I had now to spoil
a meal or two, in each instance, ere my porridge became pal-
atable, or my cakes crisp, or my brose free and knotty, or my
brochan sufficiently smooth and void of knots. My master,
poor man, did grumble a little at first ; but there was a gene-
ral disposition in the barrack to take part rather with his ap-
prentice than with himself; and after finding that the cases
were to be given against him, he ceased making complaints.
My porridge was at times, I must confess, very like leaven ;
but then, it was a standing recipe in the bai'rack, that the cook
should continue stirring the mess and adding meal, until, from
its first wild ebullitions in full boil, it became silent over the
fire ; and so I could show that I had made my porridge like
leaven, quite according to rule. And as for my brochan. I suc-
ceeded in proving that I had actually failed to satisfy, though
I had made two kinds of it at once in the same pot. I pre-
ferred this viand when of a thicker consistency than usual,
whereas my master liked it thin enough to be drunk out of
the bowl ; but as it was I who had the making of it, I used
more instead of less meal than ordinary, and unluckily, in my
first experiment, mixed up the meal in a very small bowl. It
became a dense dough-like mass ; and on emptying it into the
pot, instead of incorporating with the boiling water, it sank in
a solid cake to the bottom. In vain I stirred, and manipu-
lated, and kept up the fire. The stubborn mass refused to
separate or dilute, and at length burnt brown against the bot-
tom of the pot, — a hue which the gruel-like fluid which float-
ed over also assumed ; and at length, in utter despair of se-
curing aught approaching to an average consistency for the
whole, and hearing my master's foot at the door, I took the
pot from off the fire, and dished up for supper a portion of
the thinner mixture which it contained, and which, in at least
coloi and consistency, not a little resembled chocolate. The
poor man ladled the stuff" in utter dismay. " Od, laddie," he
said, " what ca' ye this 1 Ca' ve this brochan ^" " Onything
218 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ye like master," I replied ; " but there are two kinds in the
pot, and it will go hard if none of them please you." I then
dished him a piece of the cake, somewhat resembling in size
and consistency a small brown dumpling, which he of course
found wholly unedible, and became angry. But this bad earth
of ours " is filled," according to C!owper, " with wrong and
outrage ;" and the barrack laughed and took part with the de-
faulter. Experience, however, that does so much for all, did
a little for me. I at length became a tolerably fair plain cook,
and a not very bad baker ; and now, when the exigencies re-
quired that I should take my full share in the duties of the
barrack, I was found adequate to their proper fulfilment. 1
made cakes and porridge of fully the average excellence ; and
my brose and hrochan enjoyed at least the negative happiness
of escaping animadversion and comment.
Some of the inmates, however, who were exceedingly nice
in their eating, were great connoisseurs in porridge ; and it
was no easy matter to please them. There existed unsettled
differences — the results of a diversity of tastes — regarding the
time that should be given to the l^oiling of the mess, respect-
ing the proportion of salt that should be allotted to each indi-
vidual, and as to whether the process of" mealing," as it was
termed, should be a slow or a hasty one ; and, of course, ag
in all controversies of all kinds, the more the matters in dis-
pute were discussed, the more did they grow in importance.
Occasionally the disputants had their porridge made at the
same time in the same pot ; there were, in especial, two of the
workmen who differed upon the degree-of-salt question, whoso
bickers were siij)plied from the same general preparation ; and
as these had usnally opposite complaints to urge against the
cook'ng, their objections served so completely to neutralize
each other, that they in no degree told against the cook. One
morning the cook, — a wag and a favorite, — in making por-
ridge for both the controversialists, made it so exceedingly
fresh as to be but little removed from a poultice; and, filling
with the prujftiration in this stivte the bicker of the salt-loving
ftinnoisseur, he then took a handfiil of salt, and mixing it with
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 21S
the portion which remained in the pot, poured into the bicker
of the fresh-man, porridge very much akin to a pickle. Both
entered the barrack sharply set for breakfast, and sat down
each to his meal ; and both at the first spoonful dropped their
spoons. " A ramming to the cook !' cried the one, — " he has
given me porridge without salt !" " A ramming to the cook !"
roared out the other, — " he has given me porridge like brine !"
•' You see lads," said the cook, stepping out into the middle of
the floor, with the air of a much-injured orator, — " you see,
lads, what matters have come to at last ; there is the very pot
in which I made in one mess the porridge in both their bickers.
I don't think we should bear this any longer ; we have all had
our turn of it, though mine happens to be the worst ; and I
now move that these two fellows be rammed." No sooner said
than done. There was a terrible struggling, and a burning
sense of injustice ; but no single man in the barrack was match
for half-a-dozen of the others. The disputants, too, instead of
making common cause together, were prepared to assist in
ramming each the other •, and so rammed they both were.
And at length, when the details of the stratagem came out,
the cook — by escaping for half an hour into the neighboring
wood, and concealing himself there, like some political exile
under ban of the Government — succeeded in escaping the
merited punishment.
The cause of justice was never, I found, in greater danger
hi our little community, than when a culprit succeeded in get-
ting the laughers on his side. I have said that I became a
not very bad baker. Still less and less sorely, as I improved
in this useful art, did my cakes try the failing teeth of my
master, until at length they became crisp and nice ; and he
began to find that my new accomplishment was working se-
rious effects upon the contents of his meal-chest. With a
keenly whet appetite, and in vigorous health, I was t ating a
great deal of bread ; and, after a good deal of grumbling, ho
at length laid it down as law that I should restrict myself for
the future to two cakes per week. I at once agreed ; but the
general barrack, to whose ears some of my master's romon-
220 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
strances had found their way, was dissatisfied; and it wculd
probably have overturLed in conclave our agreement, and
punished the old man, my master, for the niggardly stringency
of his terms, had I not craved, by way of special favor, to be
permitted to give them a week's trial. One evening early
in the week, when the old man had gone out, I mixed up the
better part of a peck of meal in a pot, and, placing two of
the larger chests together in the same plane, kneaded it out
into an enormous cake, at least equal in area to an ordinary-
sized Newcastle grindstone. I then cut it up into about twenty
pieces, and, forming a vast semicircle of stones round the fire,
raised the pieces to the heat in a continuous row, some five or
six feet in length, I had ample and ready assistance vouch-
safed me in the " firing," — half the barrack were engaged in
the work, — when my master entered, and, after scanning our
employment in utter astonishment, — now glancing at the ring
of meal which still remained on the united chests, to testify to
the huge proportions of the disparted bannock, — and now at
the cones, squares, rhombs, and trapeziums of cake that har-
dened to the heat in front of the fire, he abruptly asked, —
" What's this, laddie ? — are ye baking for a wadding ?" " Jv st
baking one of the two cakes, master," I replied ; •' I don't
think we'll need the other one before Saturday night." A
roar of laughter from every corner of the l)arrack precluded
reply ; and in the laugliter, atler an embarrassed pause, the
poor man had the good sense to join. And during the rest
of the season I baked as often and as much as I pleased. It
is, I believe. Goldsmith who remarks, that " wit generally suc-
ceeds more from being happily addressed, than from its na-
tive poignancy," and that " a jest calculated to spread at a
gaming table, may be received with perfect indificrence should
it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat." On Goldsmith's prin-
ciple, the joke of what was termed, from the well-known fairy
tale, "the big baiuiock wi' the Malison," could have prrhapji
succeeded in only a masons' baiTack ; but never there at least
'X)uld joke have been more successful.
As I had not y^.t asctTlainod that the Old Red Sandston«
OR, THE STORY OF MY jSDUCATION. 221
of the north of Scotland is richly fossiliferous, Conon side and
its neighborhood furnished mc with no very favorable field
for geological exploration. It enabled me, however, to extend
my acquaintance with the great conglomerate base of the sys-
tem, which forms here, as I have already said, a sort of miniar
ture Highlands, extending between the valleys of the Conon
and the Peffer, and which, — remarkable for its picturesque
cliffs, abrupt eminences, and narrow steep-sided dells, — bear
n its centre a pretty wood-skirted loch, into which the old
Celtic prophet Kenneth Ore, when, like Prospero. he relin-
quished his art, buried " deep beyond plummet sound" the
magic stone in which he was wont to see both the distant and
the future. Immediately over the pleasure-groimds of Brahan,
the rock forms exactly such cliffs as the landscape gardener
would make, if he could, — cliffs with their rude prominent
pebbles breaking the light over every square foot of surface,
and furnishing footing, by their innumerable projections, to
many a green tuft of moss, and many a sweet little flower ;
while far below, among the deep woods, there stand up enor-
mous fragments of the same rock, that must have rolled down
in some remote age from the precipices above, and which,
mossy and hoar, and many of them ivy -bound, resemble arti-
ficial ruins, — obnoxious, however, to none of the disparaging
associations which the make-believe ruin is sure always to
awaken. It was inexpressibly pleasant to spend a quiet even-
ing hour among these wild cliffs, and imagine a time when the
far distant sea beat against their bases ; but though their en-
closed pebbles evidently owed their rounded form to the attri-
tion of water, the imagination seemed paralyzed when it at-
tempted calling up a still earlier time, when these solid rocks
existed but as loose sand and pebbles, tossed by waves or scat'
tered by currents ; and when, for hundreds and thousands of
square miles, the wild tract around existed as an ancient ocean,
skirted by unknown lands. I had not yet collected enough of
geologic fact to enable me to grapple with the difficulties of a
restoration of the more ancient time. There was a later
period, also represented in the immediate neighborhood by a
222 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
thick de])Osit of stratified sand, of which I knew as little as of the
conglomerate. We dug into it, in founding a thrashing-mill, for
about ten feet, but came to no bottom ; and I could see that it
formed the subsoil of the valley all around the policies of Conon •
side, and underlay most of its fields and woods. It was white
and pure, as if it had been washed by the sea only a few weeks
previous ; but in vain did I search its beds and layers for a frag-
ment of shell by which to determine its age. I can now, how
ever, entertain little doubt that it belonged to the boulder-clay
period of submergence, and that the fauna with which it was
associated bore the ordinary sub-arctic character. When this
stratified sand was deposited, the waves must have broken
against the conglomerate precipices of Brahan, and the sea
have occupied, as friths and sounds, the deep Highland valleys
of the interior. And on such of the hills of the country as had
their heads above water at the time, that interesting but some-
what meagre Alpine Flora must have flourished, which we now
find restricted to our higher mountain suinmits.
Once every six weeks I was permitted to visit Cromarty,
and pass a Sabbath there ; but as my master usually accom-
panied me, and as the way proved sufficiently long and weary
to press upon his failing strength and stiffening limbs, we had
to restnct ourselves to the beaten road, and saw but little.
On, however, one occasion this season, I journeyed alone, and
spent so happy a day in finding my homeward road along
blind paths, — that ran now along the rocky shores of the Cro-
marty Frith in its upper reaches, now through brown, lonely
moors, mottled with Danish encampments, and now beside
quiet, tomb-besprinkled burying-grounds.and the broken walls
of deserted churches, — that its memory still lives freshly in my
mind, as one of the happiest of my life. I passed whole hours
among the ruins of Craighouse, — a gray fantastic rag of a
castle, consisting of four heavily-arched stories of time-eaten
stone, piled over each other, aiid still bearing atop its stone
roof and its ornate turrets and i)artizans, —
"A (<l'ii'>"y liriwiti, that eternnlly
lliuiKH '» blind visHK" "ot lo t'lo luue rea."
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 22b
(t was said in these days to be haunted by its goblin, — a mis-
erable-looking, gray-headed, gray-bearded, little old man, that
might occasionally be seen late in the evening, or early in the
morning, peering out through some arrow-slit or shoUiole at
the chance passenger. I remember getting the whole history
of the goblin this day from a sun-burnt herd-boy, whom 1
found tending his cattle under the shadow of the old castle-
wall. I began by asking him whose apparition he thought it
was that could continue to haunt a building, the very name
of whose last inhabitant had been long since forgotten. " 0,
they're saying^''' was the reply, " it's the spirit of the man that
was killed on the foundation-stone, just after it was laid, and
then built intil the wa' by the masons, that he might keep the
castle by coming back again ; and tJiey're saying that a' the
verra auld houses in the kintra had murderit men builded intil
them in that way, and that they have a' o' them their bogle."
I recognized in the boy's account of the matter an old and
widely-spread tradition, which, whatever may have been its
original basis of truth, seems to have so far influenced the
buccaneers of the 17th century, as to have become a reality in
their hands. " If time," says Sir Walter Scott, " did not per-
mit the buccaneers to lavish away their plunder in their usual
debaucheries, they were wont to hide it, with many supersti-
tious solemnities, in the desert islands and keys which they
frequented, and where much treasure, whose lawless owners
perished without reclaiming it, is still supposed to be concealed.
The most cruel of mankind are often the most superstitious ;
and those pirates are said to have had recourse to a horrid
ritual, in order to secure an unearthly guardian to their treas-
ures. They killed a negi'o or Spaniard, and buried him with
the treasure, believing that his spirit would haunt the spot,
and terrify away all intruders." There is a figurative peculi
arity in the language in which Joshua denounced the man who
should dare rebuild Jericho, that seems to point at some an-
cient pagan rite of this kind. Nor does it seem improbable
that a practice which existed in times so little remote as those
of the buccaneers may have fiist begun in the dark -and crue^
224 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEKS ;
ages of human saci lice. "Cursed be the man before the
Lord," said Joshua, " that riseth up and buildeth this city of
Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born,
and in his youngest son shall he set ip the gates of it.''"'
The hirge-farm system had been already introduced into
the part of the country in which I at this time resided, on the
richer and more level lands ; but many a Gaelic-speaking cot-
ter and small tenant still lived on the neighboring moors and
hill-sides. Though Highland in their surnames and language,
they bore a character considerably different from that of the
simpler Highlanders of the interior of Sutherland, or of a class
I had shortly afterwards an opportunity of studying — the High-
landers of the western coast of Ross-shire. Doors were not left
unbarred at night in the neighborhood ; and there were wretch-
ed hovels among the moors, very zealously watched and guard-
ed indeed. There was much illicit distillation and smuggling
at this time among the Gaelic-speaking people of the district ;
and it told upon their character with the usual deteriorating
effect. Many of the Highlanders, too, had wrought as labor-
ers at the Caledonian Canal, where they had come in contact
with south-country workmen, and had brought back with them
a confident, loquacious smartness, that, based on a ground-
work of ignorance, which it rendered active and obtrusive, had
a T)izarre and disagreeable eflH-ct, and formed but an indifferent
substitute for the diffident and taciturn simplicity which it had
supplanted. But I have ever found the people of those border
districts of the Highlands which join on to the low country, oi
that inhabit districts much traversed by tourists, of a com-
panitiwly inferior cast: the finer qualities of the Highland
character seem easily injured: the hosj)itality, the simplicity,
the juisuspecting honesty disappear ; and wo find, instead, a
people rapacious, suspicious, and unscrupulous, considerably
beni-ath the Lowland average. In all the unopened districts
of the ri'inote Highlands into which I have penetrated, I have
t'oiiud the people strongly engage my sympathies and affec-
tions, — much more strongly than in any part cf the Lowlands ;
whereas, on the contrary, iu the detericrat^id districts I have
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 225
been sensible of an involuntary revulsion of feeling, when in
contact with the altered race of which, among the low-coun-
try Scotch or the English, I have had no experience. I re-
member being impressed, in reading, many years ago, one of
Miss Ferrier's novels, with the truth of a stroke that brought
out very practically the ready susceptibility of injury mani-
fested by the Celtic character. Some visitors of condition
from the Highlands are represented as seeking out, in one of
our larger towns of the south, a simple Highland lad, who
had quitted a remote northern district only a few months bo-
fore ; and when they find him, it is as a prisoner in Bridewell.
Towards the end of September, my master, who had wholly
failed in overcoming his repugnance to labor as a mere jour
neyman, succeeded in procuring a piece of work by contract,
in a locality about fourteen miles nearer our home than Co-
non-side, and I accompanied him to assist in its completion.
Our employment in our new scene of labor was of the most
disagreeable kind. Burns, who must have had a tolerably ex-
tensive experience of the evils of hard work, specifies in his
" Twa Dogs" three kinds of labor in especial that give poor
" cot-folk" " fash enough."
"Trowth, Csesar, whiles they're fash'd enough;
A cottiir howkin in a sheiigh,
Wi' dirty stanes biggiu a dyke.
Baring a qiiaary, and sic like."
All very disagi'eeable employments, as I also can testify ; and
our work here unfortunately combined the whole three. We
were engaged in rebuilding one of those old-fashioned walls of
gentlemen's pleasure-grounds known as " ha has,^^ that line the
sides of deep ditches, and raise their tops to but the level of
the sward ; and as the ditch in this special instance was a wet
one, and as we had to clear it of the old fallen materials, and
to dig it out for our new line of foundation, while at the same
time we had to furnish ourselves with additional materials
from a neighboring quarry, we had at once the " baring of
the parry," the "howkin in the sheugh," and the 'biggin of
226 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
the dyke wi' dirty stanes," to " fash" us. The hist-named em
ployment is by far the most painful and tiding. In most kinds
of severe labor the skin thickens, and the hand hardens, through
a natural provision, to suit the requirements of the task im-
posed, and yield the necessary protection to the integuments
below ; but the " dirty stanes" of the dyke-builder, when wet
as well as dirty, try the reproductive powers of the cuticle
too severely, and wear it off, so that under the rough fi-iction
the quick is laid bare. On this occasion, and on at least one
other, when engaged in building in a wet season in the West-
ern Highlands, I had all my fingers oozing blood at once ; and
those who think that in such circumstances labor protracted
throughout a long day can be other than torture, would do
well to try. How these poor hands of mine burnt and beat
at night at this time, as if an unhappy heart had been station-
ed in every finger ! and what cold chills used to run, sudden
as electric shocks, through the feverish frame !
My general health, too, had become far from strong. As I
had been almost entirely engaged in hewing for the two pre-
vious seasons, the dust of the stone, inhaled at every breath,
had exerted the usual weakening effects on the lungs, — those
effects under which the life of the stone cutter is restricted to
about forty-five years ; but it was only now, when working
day after day with wet feet in a water-logged ditch, that I be-
gan to be sensibly informed, by a dull, depressing pain in the
chest, and a blood-stained, mucoidal substance, expectorated
with difficulty, that I had already caught harm from my em-
ployment, and that my term of life might fall far short of the
average one. I resolved, however, as the last year of my ap-
prenticeship was fiist drawing to its close, to complete, at all
hazards, my engagement with my master. It had been mere
ly a verl)al agreement, and I miglit have broken it withou*
blame, when, unable to furnish me with work in his character
as a master-mason, he had to transfer my labor to another ;
but I had determined not to break it, all the more doggedly
from the circumstance that my Uncle James, in a moment of
irritation, had said at its commencement, that he feared I
OE
THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 227*
would no more persist in being a mason than I had done in
being a scholar ; and so I wrought perseveringly on ; and
slowly and painfully, rood after rood, the wall grew up under
our hands. My poor master, who suffered even more from
chopped hands and bleeding lingers than I did, was cross and
fretful, and sometimes sought relief in finding fault with his
apprentice ; but, sobered by my forebodings of an early death,
I used to make no reply ; and the hasty, ill-tempered express-
ions in which he gave vent virtually to but his sense of pain
and discomfort, were almost always followed by some concilia-
tory remark. Superstition takes a strong hold of the mind in
circumstances such as those in which I was at this time placed.
One day, when on the top of a tall building, part of which we
were throwing down to supply us with materials for our work,
I raised up a broad slab of red micaceous sandstone, thin as a
roofing slate, and exceedingly fragile, and, holding it out at
arm's length, dropped it over the wall. I had been worse
than usual all that morning, and much depressed ; and, ere
the slab parted from my hand, I said, — looking forward to but
a few months of life, — I shall break up like that sandstone
slab, and perish as little known. But the sandstone slab did
not break up ; a sudden breeze blew it aslant as it fell ; it
(leared the rough heap of stones below, where I had antici-
pated it would have been shivered to fragments ; and, light-
ing on its edge, stuck upright like a miniature obelisk, in the
soft green sward beyond. None of the Philosophies or the
Logics would have sanctioned the inference which I immedi-
ately drew ; but that curious chapter in the history of humau
belief which treats of signs and omens abounds in such postu-
lates and such conclusions. I at once inftrred that recovery
awaited me ; I was " to live and not die ;" and felt lighter,
during the few weeks I afterwards toiled at this place, under
the cheering influence of the conviction.
The tenant of the farm on which our work was situated, and
who had been both a great distiller and considerable farmer in
his da}', had become bankrupt shortly before, and was on the
eve of quitting the place, a broken man. And his forlorn cir-
1
528
MY SCHOOLS AIs^D SCHOOLMASTERS
cumstanoes seemed stamped on almost every field and cat
house of his farm. The stone fences were ruinous ; the hedges
gapped by the almost imtended cattle ; a considerable sprink
ling of corn-ears lay rotting on the lea ; and here and there an
entire sheaf, that had fallen from the " leading-cart" at the
close of harvest, might be seen still lying among the stubble
fastened to the earth by the germination of its grains. Some
of the outhouses were miserable beyond description. There
was a square of modern offices, in which the cattle and horses
of the farm — appropriated by the landlord, at the time, under
the law of hypothec — were tolerably well lodged ; but the
hovel in which three of the farm-servants lived, and in which,
for want of a better, my master and I had to cook and sleep,
was one of the most miserable tumble-down erections I ever
saw inhabited. It had formed part of an ancient set of offices
that had been condemned about fourteen yeai'S before ; but the
proprietor of the place becoming insolvent, it had been spired,
in lack of a better, to accommodate the servants who wrought
on the farm ; and it had now become not only a comfortless,
but also a very unsafe dwelling. It would have formed no
bad subject, with its bulging walls and gapped roof, that
showed the bare ribs through the breaches, for the pencil of
my friend William Ross ; but the cow or horse that had no
better shelter than that which it afforded, could not be re-
garded as other than indilferontly lodged. Every heaviei
shower found its way through the roof in torrents : I could
even tell the hour of the night by the stars which passed over
the long opening that ran along the ridge from gable to gable ;
and in stormy evenings I have paused at every ruder blast, in
the expectation of hearing the rafters crack and give way over
my head. The distiller had introduced ujton his farm, on a
small scale, what has since been extensively known as tiie
bothy system ; and tliis hovel was the bothy. There were,
as I have said, but three farm-servants who lived in it at the
time, — young, UMiiiarricd lads, extremely ignorant, and of gay,
reckless dispositions, whose care for their master's interests
might be read in the germinating sheaves that lay upon ni»
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 229
fields, and who usually sp^ke of him, when out of his hear-
ing, as " the old sinner." He too evidently cared nothing for
them, and they detested him ; and regarded the ruin which
had overtaken him, and which their own recklessness and in-
differency to his welfare must have at least assisted to secure,
with open satisfaction. " It was a'e comfort anyhow," they
said, " that the blastit old sinner, after a' his near-goiiigness
wi' them, was now but a dyvour bankrupt." Bad enough,
certainly ; and yet natural enough, and, in a sense, proper
ei.ough, too. The Christian divine would have urged these
men to return their master good for evil. Cobbett, on the
contrary, would have advised them to go out at nights a rick-
burning. The better advice will to a certainty not be taken
by ninety -nine out of every hundred of our bothy -men ; for it
is one of the grand evils of the system, that it removes its
victims beyond the ennobling influences of religion ; and, on
the other hand, at least this much may be said for the worse
counsel, that the system costs the country every year the
price of a f^reat many corn-ricks.
The thr'je lads lived chiefly on brose, as the viand at all
edible into which their oatmeal could be most readily convert-
ed ; and never baked or made for themselves a dish of porridge
or gruel, apparently to avoid trouble, and that they might be
as little as possible in the hated bothy. I always lost sight
of them in the evening ; but towards midnight their talk
frequently awoke me as they were going to bed ; and I heard
them tell of incidents that had befallen them at the neiijhborina
farm-houses, or refer to blackguard bits of scandal which
they had picked up. Sometiines a fourth voice mingled in
the dialogue. It was that of a reckless poacher, who used to
come in, always long after nightfall, and fling himself down
on a lair of straw in a corner of the bothy ; and usually ere
day broke he was up and away. The grand enjoyment of the
three farm-lads, — the enjoyment which seemed to counter-
balance, with its concentrated delights, the comfortless monou-
ony of weeks, — was a rustic ball, which took place once every
month, and sometimes of*:ener, at a public-house in a nei^h
280 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ,
boring village, and at which they used to meet some of the
farm-lasses of the locality, and dance and drink whisky till
morning. I know not how their money stood such frequent
carousals ; but they were, I saw, bare of every necessary ar^
tide of clothing, especially of underclothing and linen ; and I
learned from their occasional talk about justice-of-peace sum-
monses, that the previous term-day had left in the hands of
their shoemakers and drapers unsettled bills. But such mat-
ters were taken very lightly : the three lads, if not happy, were
at least merry ; and the monthly ball, for which they sacri-
ficed so much, furnished not only its hours of pleasure while
it lasted, but also a week's talking in anticipation ere it came,
and another week's talking over its various incidents after it
had passed. And such was my experience of the bothy sys-
tem in its first beginnings. It has since so greatly increased,
that there are now single counties in Scotland in which there
are from five to eight hundred farm-servants exposed to its
deteriorating influences ; and the rustic population bids fair in
those districts fully to rival that of our large towns in profli-
gacy, and greatly to outrival them in coarseness. Were I
a statesman I would, I think, be bold enough to try the cflicacy
of a tax on bothies. It is long since Goldsmith wrote regard-
ing a state of society in which " wealth accumulates and men
decay," and since Burns looked with his accustomed sagacity
on that change for the worse in the character of our rural
people which the large fiirm-systcm has introduced. " A fertile
improved country is West Lothian," we find the latter poet
remarking, in one of his journals : " but the more elegance
and luxury among the farmers I always observe in equal pro-
portion the rudeness and stupidity of the peasantry. This
remark I have made all over the Lothians, Merse, Roxburgh,
&c; and for this, among other reasons, I think that a man of
omantic taste — 'a man of feeling' — M'ill be better pleased with
the poverty but intelligent minds of the peasantry of Ayrshire
(peasantry they all are below tin; Justice of PcAce), than the
o|Mjlcnce of a club of Merse farmers, when lie at the same time
cusiders the N'undulisin of their ]ilongIi-fulks." The det»
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 231
rioriiting effect of the large-farm system, remarked by the poet,
is inevitable. It is impossible that the modern firm-servant,
in his comparatively irresponsible situation, and with his fixed
wages of meagre amount, can be rendered as thoughtful and
provident a person as the small firmer of the last age, who,
thrown on his own resources, had to cultivate his fields and
drive his bargains with his Martinmas and Whitsunday settle
ment with the landlord full before him ; and who often suo
ceeded in saving money and in giving a classical education to
some promising son or nephew, which enabled the young man
to rise to a higher sphere of life. Farm-servants, as a class,
must be lower in the scale than the old tenant-farmers, who
wrought their little farms with their own hands ; but it is pos-
sible to elevate them far above the degraded level of a bothy ;
and unless means be taken to check the spread of the ruinous
process of brute-making which the system involves, the Scottish
people will sink, to a certainty, in the agricultural districts, from
being one of the most provident, iutelligent and moral in
Europe, to be one of the most licentious, reckless and ignorant.
Candle-light is a luxury in which no one ever thinks of in-
dulging in a barrack ; and in a barrack such as ours at this
time, riddled with gaps and breaches, and filled with all man-
ner of cold draughts, it was not every night in which a candle
would have burnt. And as our fuel, which consisted of sorely
decayed wood, — the roofing of a dilapidated outhouse which
we were pulling down, — formed but a dull fire, it was with
difficulty I could read by its light. By spreading out my
book, however, within a foot or so of the embers, I was en-
abled, though sometimes at the expense of a headache, to pros-
ecute a new tract of reading which had just opened to me,
and in which, for a time, I found much amusement. There
was a vagabond pedlar who travelled at this time the northern
counties, widely known as Jack from Dover, but whose true
name was Alexander Knox, and who used to affirm that he
was of the same flimily as the great Reformer. The pedlar
liimself was, however, no reformer. Once every six weeks or
two months, he go madly drunk and not only " perished the
232 IMT SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS ;
pack," as he used to say, but sometimes got into prison to boot.
There were, however, some kind relations in the south, who
always set him up again ; and Jack from Dover, after a fort-
night of misery, used to appear with the ordinary bulk of
merchandize at his back, and continue thriving until he again
got drunk. He had a turn for buying and reading curious
books, which, after mastering their contents, he always sold
again ; and he learned to bring them, when of a kind which no
one else would purchase, to my mother, and recommend them
as suitable for me. Poor Jack was always conscientious in hia
recommendations. I know not how he contrived to take the
exact measure of my tastes in the matter, but suitable for me
they invariably were ; and as his price rarely exceeded a shil
ling per volume, and sometimes fell below a sixpence, my
mother always purchased, when she could, upon his judgment.
I owed to his discrimination my first copy of " Bacon's Wis.
dom of the Ancients," " done into English by Sir Arthur
Gorges," and a book to which I had long after occasion to
refer in my geological writings, — IMaillet's " Telliamed," —
one of the earlier treatises on the development hypothesis ; and
he had now procured for me a selection, in one volume, of the
Poems of Gawin Douglas and Will Dunbar, and another col-
lection in a larger volume, of " Ancient Scottish Poems," from
the MS. of George Bannatyne. I had been previously almost
wholly unacquainted with the elder Scottish poets. M}- Uncle
James had introduced me, at a very early age, to Burns and
IJamsay, and I had found out Fergusson and Tannahill for
myself; but that school of Scottish literature which flourished
between the reigns of David the Second and James the Sixth
had remained to me, until now, well-nigh a terra incognita ;
and 1 found no little pleasure in exploring the antique recesses
which it opened ii[>. Shortly after, 1 read Kamsay's "Ever-
green," the " King's Qiiair," and the true " Actes and Deidia
of ye illusler and vailyoaiid campioun Shyr William Wallace,"
not modernized, as in my lirst copy, but in the tongue in which
they had been recited of old by Henry the Minstrel : I had
previo'isiy gloated o' er Barbour's Bruce; and thus my ao
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 2od
quaintance with the old Scots poets, if not very profound, be
came at least so respectable, that not until many years after
did I meet with an individual who knew them equally well.
The strange picturesque allegories of Douglas, and the terse
sense and racy humor of Dunbar, delighted me much. As 1
had to con my way slowly amid the difficulties of a language
whifh was no longer that spoken by my country folk, I felt aa
if I were creating the sense which I found : it came gradually
out like some fossil jf the rock, from which I had laboriously
to chip away the enveloping matrix; and in hanging admir-
mgly over it, I thought I perceived how it was that some of
my old schoolfellows, who were prosecuting their education at
college, were always insisting on the great superiority of the old
Greek and Roman writers over the writers of our own coun-
try. I could not give them credit for much critical discern-
ment : they were indilTerent enough, some of them, to both
verse and prose, and hardly knew in w hat poetry consisted ;
and yet I believed them to be true to their perceptions when
they insisted on what they termed the high excellence of the
ancients. With my old schoolfellows, I now said, the process
of perusal, when reading an English work of classical standing,
is so sudden, compared with the slowness with which they
imagine or understand, that they slide over the surface of their
author's numbers, or of his periods, without acquiring a due
sense of what lies beneath ; whereas, in perusing the works of
a Greek or Latin author, they have just to do what I am doing
in deciphering the " Palice of Honour," or the " Goldin Terge,"
— they have to proceed slowly, and to render the language of
their author into the language of their own thinking. And so,
losing scarce any of his meaning in consequence, and not re^
fleeting on the process through which they have entered into it,
they contrast the little which they gain from a hurried peru-
sal of a good English book, with the much which they gain
from the very leisurely perusal of a good Latin or Greek one ;
and term the little the poverty of modern writers, and the much
the fertility of the ancients. Such was my theory, and it was
at least not an uncharitable one to my acquaintance. I waa
234 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
however, arrested in the middle of ray studies by a day of
soaking rain, which so saturated with moisture the decayed
spongy wood, our fuel, that, though I succeeded in making with
some difficulty such fires .of it as sufficed to cook our victuals,
it defied my skill to make one by which I could read. At
length, however, this dreary season of labor — ^by far the
gloomiest I ever spent — came to a close, and I returned with
my master to Cromarty about Martinmas, — our heavy job of
wc rk completed, and my term of apprenticeship at a close.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 28R
CHAPTER Xll.
•*rar let me wander down thy craggy shore,
With rocks and trees bestrewn, dark Loch Maree."
Small.
The restorative powers of a constitution which at this time
it took much hard usage to injure, came vigorously into opera-
tion on my removal from the wet ditch and the ruinous hovel ;
and ere the close of winter I had got once more into my ordi-
nary state of robust health. I read, wrote, drew, correspond-
ed with my friend William Eoss (who had removed to Edin-
burgh), re-examined the Eathie Lias, and re -explored the
Eathie Burn, — a noble Old Red Sandstone ravine, remarkable
for the wild picturesqueness of its cliffs and the beauty of its
cataracts. I spent, too, many an evening in Uncle James's
workshop, on better terms with both my uncles than almost
ever before, — a consequence, in part, of the sober complexion
which, as the seasons passed, my mind was gradually assum-
ing, and, in part, of the manner in which I had completed my
engagement with my master. "Act always," said Uncle
James, " as you have done in this matter. In all your deal-
ings, give your neighbor the cast of the bauk, — ' good meas-
ure heaped up and running over,' — and you will not lose by
it in the end." I certainly did not lose by faithfully serving
out my term of apprenticeship. It is not uniustructive to ob-
serve how strangely the public are led at times to attach para
236 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTEKS! :
mount importance to what is in reality only subordinatelj im
portant, and to pass over the really paramount without thought
or notice. The destiny in life of the skilled mechanic is much
more influenced, for in>tance, by his second education — that
of his apprenticeship — than by his first — that of the school ;
and yet it is to the education at the school that the importance
is generally regarded as attaching, and we never hear of the
other. The careless, incompetent scholar has many opportu
nities of recovering himself; the careless, incompetent appren-
tice, who either fails to serve out his regular time, or who,
though he fulfils his term, is discharged an inferior workman,
has very few ; and ferther, nothing can be more certain than
that inferiority as a workman bears much more disastrously
on the condition of the mechanic than inferiority as a scholar.
Unable to maintain his place among brother journeymen, or
to render himself worthy of the average wages of his craft, the
ill-taught mechanic falls out of regular employment, subsists
precariously for a time on occasional jobs, and either, forming
idle habits, becomes a vagabond tramper, or, getting into the
toils of some rapacious task -master, becomes an enslaved
sweater. For one workman injured by neglect of his school
education, there are scores ruined by neglect of their appren-
ticeship-education. Three-fourths of the distress of the coun-
try's mechanics (of course not reckoning that of the unhappy
class who have to compete with machinery), and nine-tenths
of their vagabondism, will be found restricted to inferior work-
men, wlif), like Hogarth's ''careless apprentice," neglected the
opportunities of their second term of education. The sagacious
painter had a truer insight into the matter than most of oui
modern cduciitionists.
My friend of the Doocot Cave hud l)een serving a short ap-
prenticeship to a grocer in London during the hitter years in
which I had been working out mine as a stone-mason in the
north country ; and I now learned that he hail just returned
to his nativt! jilace, with tiie intention ol' setting up in busi-
ness for himself. To tiiost^ who move in the upper walks, the
superi rily in status of the village shop-keeper over the jour
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDD CATION. 237
neyman mason may not be very perceptible ; but, surveyed
from the lower levels of society, it is quite considerable enough
to be seen ; even Gulliver could determine that the Emperor
of Lilliput was taller by almost the breadth of a nail than any
of his Court; and, though extremely desirous of renewing my
acquaintanceship with my old friend, I was sensible enough of
his advantage over me in point of position, to feel that the ne-
cessary advances should be made on his part, not on mine. I,
however, threw myself in his way, though after a manner so
fastidiously proud and jealous, that even yet, every time the
recollection crosses me, it provokes me to a smile. On learn-
ing that he was engaged at the quay in superintending the
landing of some goods, for, I suppose, his future shop, I assum
ed the leathern apron, which I had thrown aside for the wintet
at Martirunas, and stalked past him in my v/orking dress, — a
veritable operative mason, — eyeing him steadfastly as I passed.
He looked at me for a moment ; and then, without sign of re-
cognition, turned indifferently away. I failed taking into ac-
count that he had never seen me girt with a leathern apron be-^
fore, — that, since we had last parted, I had grown more than
half a foot, — and that a young man of nearly five feet eleven
inches, with an incipient whisker palpably visible on his check,
might be a different-looking sort of person from a smooth-
chinned strippling of little more than five feet three. And
certainly my friend, as I learned from him nearly three years
after, failed on this occasion to recognize me. But believing
that he did, and that he did not choose to reckon among his
friends a humble working man, I returned to my home very
sad, and, I am afraid, not a little angry ; and, locking up the
supposed slight in my breast, as if of too delicate a nature to
be communicated to any one, for more than two years from
this time I did not again cross his path.
I was now my own master, and commenced work as a jcmr-
neyman in behalf of one of my maternal aunts, — the aunt who
had gone so many years before to live with her aged relative,
the cousin of my father, and the mother of his first wife.
A.unt Jerny had resided for many years after this tim.e with
238 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
an aged widow lady, who had lived apart in quiec gentility oc
very small means ; and, now that she was dead, ray aunt saw
her vocation gone, and wished that she too could live apart, a
life of humble independency, supporting herself by her spin-
ning-wheel, and by now and then knitting a stocking. She
feared, however, to encounter the formidable drain on her
means of a half-yearly room-rent ; and, as there was a little
bit of ground at the head of the strip of garden left me by my
father, which bordered on a road that, communicating between
town and country, bore, as is common in the north of Scotland,
the French name of the Pays, it occurred to me that I might
try my hand, as a skilled mechanic, in erecting upon it a cot-
tage for Aimt Jenny. Masons have, of course, more in their
power in the way of house-building than any other class of
mechanics. It was necessary, however, that there should be
money provided for the purchase of wood for the roof, and for
the carting of the necessary stones and mortar ; and I had none.
But Aunt Jenny had saved a few pounds, and a very few
proved sufficient ; and so I built a cottage in the Pmjs, of a
single room and a closet, as my first job, which, if not very
elegant, or of large accommodation, came fully up to Aunt
Jenny's ideas of comfort, and which, for at least a quarter of
a century, has served her as a home. It was completed before
Whitsunday, and I then deliberated on setting myself to seek
after employment of a more remunerative kind, with just a
little of the feeling to which we owe one of the best known
elegiac poems in the language, — the "Man was made to
Mourn" of Burns. "I'here is nothing that gives me a more
mortifying picture of human life," said the poet, "than a man
seeking work." The rcr|uiR'd work, however, came direct in
my way without solicitation, and exactly at the proper time.
I was engaged to assist in hewing a Gothic gateway among
the woods of my old haunt, C*<iion-side ; and was then de-
spatched, when the work was on the eve of beijig finished, to
provide materials for building a house on the western coast
of Ross-shire. My n(>w master had found ine eng;iged in the
previous season, amid the wild turmoil of the barrack, in
OR, THE STORif OF UY EDUCATION. 239
Studying practical geometry, and had glanced approvingly over
a series of architectural drawings, which I had just complet-
•■»d ; and he now sought me out in consequence, and placed
me in charge of a small party which he despatched in advance
of his other workmen, and which I was instructed to inciease,
by empl ^ying a laborer or two on arriving at the scene of our
future enjployment.
We were to be accompanied by a carter from a neighbor
ing town ; and on the morning fixed for the commencemen
of our journey, his cart and horse were early at Conon-side
to carry across the country the tools required at our new job ;
but of himself we saw no trace, and about ten o'clock we set
off without him. Ascertaining, however, when about two
miles on our way, that we had left behind us a lever useful in
the setting of large stones, I bade my companion wait for me
at the village of Contin, where we expected meeting the carter ;
and, returning for the tool, I quitted the high road on finding
it, and, to save time, and avoid a detour of about three miles,
struck across the country direct on the village. My way was,
however, a very rough one ; and in coming upon the Conon,
which it was necessary I should ford, — for, by avoiding the
detour, I had missed the bridge, — I found it tolerably heavj
in flood. Save for the iron lever which I carried, I would
have selected, as my point of crossing, one of the still, deep
pools, as much safer to a vigorous swimmer than any of the
apparent fords, with their powerful currents, whirling eddies,
and rough bottoms. But though the heroes of antiquity —
men such as Julius Caesar and Horatius Coccles — could swim
across rivers and seas in heavy armor, the specific gravity of
the human subject in these latter ages of the world forljids
such feats ; and concluding that I had net levity enough in my
framework to float across the. lever, I selected, with some hes-
itation, one of the better-looking fords, and, with my trous-
ers dangling from the iron-beam on my shoulder, entered the
river. Such was the arrowy swiftness of the cm rent, how-
ever, that the water had scarce reached my middle when it
began to hollow out the stones and gravel from under my feet,
240 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
and to bear me do^vn per force in a slanting directicii Ther«
was a foaming rapid just at hand ; and immediately beyond,
a deep, dark pool, in which the chafed current whirled around,
as if exhausting the wrath aroused by its recent treatment
among rocks and stones, ere recovering its' ordinary temper ;
and had I lost footing, or been carried a little further down, I
know not how it might have fiired with me in the wild foam-
inor descent that lay betweet the ford and the pool. Curious-
ly enough, however, the one idea which, in the excitement of
the moment, filled my mind, was an intensely ludicrous one.
I would, of course, lose not only the lever in the torrent, but
my trousers also ; and how was I ever to get home without
them 1 Where, in the name of wonder, would I get a kilt to
borrow ? I have ofteuer than once experienced this strange
sensation of the ludicrous in circumstances with which a dif-
ferent feeling would have harmonized better. Byron repre-
sents it as rising in extreme grief: it is, however, I suspect,
greatly more common in extreme danger ; and all the in-
stances which the poet himself gives in his note, — Sir Tliomas
More on the scaffold, Anne Boleyn in the Tower, and those
victims of the French Revolution " with whom it became a
fashion to leave some mot as a legacy," — were all jokers
rather in circumstances of desperate and hopeless peril than
of sorrow. It is, however, in danger, as certainly as in grief,
a joyless sort of mirth.
"That playfulness of sorrow ne'er beguiles;
11 smiles in bitterness ; but still it smiles,
And Hometiinos with the wisest and the best,
Till even the scaffold echoes with their jest."
The feeling, however, though an inharmoniously toned, is not
a weakening one. 1 laughed in the stream, but 1 did not yield
to it •, and, making a violent effort, when just on the edge of
the rapid, I got into stiller water, and succeeded in making
my way to the opposite liank, drenched to the arm-pits. It
was in nearly the same reach of the Conon that my poor
friend the maniac of Ord lost her life a few years after.
1 found my companion in charge of the cart with our tools.
ORj THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 241
baiting at an inn a little beyond Contin ; but there was no
sign of the carter ; and we were informed by the innkeeper,
to whom he was well known, that we might have to wait for
him all day and perhaps not see him at night. Click-Clack, —
a name expressive of the carter's fluency as a talker, by which
he was oftener designated than by the one in the parish register,
— might no doubt have purposed in the morning joining us at
an early bnir, but that was when he was sober; and what his
intention might be now, said the innkeeper, when in all probar
bility he was drunk, no living man could say. This was rather
startling intelligence to men who had a long journey through
a rough country before them ; and my comrade — a lad a year
or two older than myself, but still an apprentice — added to my
dismay by telling me he had been sure from the first there was
something wrong with Click-Clack, and that his master had
secured his services, not from choice, but simply because, hav-
ing thoughtlessly become surety for him at a sale for the price
of a horse, and being left to pay for the animal, he had now em-
ployed him, in the hope of getting himself reimbursed. I re-
solved, however, on waiting for the carter until the last moment
after which it would be impossible for us to reach our ultimate
stage without perilously encroaching on the night ; and, taking
it for granted that he would not very soon join us, I set out for
a neighboring hill, which commands an extensive view, to take
note of the main features of a district with which I had formed,
during the two previous years, not a few interesting associa-
tions, and to dry my wetted clothes in the breeze and the
sun. The old Tower of Fairburn formed one of the most
striking objects in the prospect ; and the eye expatiated beyond
from where the gneiss region begins, on a tract of broken hill
and brown moor, uncheered by a single green field or tuman
dw elling. There are traditions that, in the'r very peculiarity,
and remoteness from the tract of ordinary invention, give
evidence of their truth ; and I now called up a traditiun, which
I owed to my friend the maniac, respecting the manner in
wh'?h the Mackenzies of Fairburn and the Chisholms of Strath-
242 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
glass had divided this barren tract between them. It had laia
from the first settlement of the country, an unappropriated
waste, and neither proprietor could tell where his own lands
terminated, or those of his neighbor began ; but finding that
the want of a proper line of demarcation led to quarrels be-
tween their herdsmen when baiting in their summer shielings
with their cattle, they agreed to have the tract divided. The
age of land-surveyors had not yet come ; but, selecting two old
wonien of seventy-five, they sent them out at the same hour, to
meet among the hills, the one from Fairburn Tower, the other
from Erchless Castle, after first binding themselves to accept
their place of meeting as the point at which to set up the bound-
ary-stone of the two properties. The women, attended by a
bevy of competent witnesses, journeyed as if for life and death;
but the Fairburn woman, who was the laird's foster-mother,
either more zealous or more active than the Chisholm one,
travelled nearly two miles for her one ; and when they came
in sight of each other in the waste, it was far from the fields of
Fairburn, and comparatively at no great distance from those
of the Chisholm. It is not easy knowing why they should
have regarded one another in the light of enemies ; but at a
mile's distance, their flagging pace quickened into a run, and,
meeting at a narrow rivulet, they would fiiin have fought ;
but lacking, in their utter exhaustion, strength for lighting
and Itreath for scolding, they could only seat themselves on
the opposite banks, and girn at one another across the stream.
George Cruikshank hjis had at times worse subjects for his
pencil. I' is, I believe, Landnr, in one of his " imaginary
conversations," who makes a Highland laird inform Adam
Smith that, desirous to ascertain, in some sort of conceivable
degree, the size of his property, he had placed a. line of pipers
around it, each at such a distance from his nearest neighbor
that he could barely catch the sound of his bag-pipe; and
that fron. the mimbcr of pipers required he was able to li)nn
an approxiiiuvte estimate of the extent of his estate. And
aere, in a llighlan 1 traditi< n, genuine at least as such, are wii
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 243
introduced to an expedient of the kind scarce less ludicrous oi
inadequate than that which Landor must, in one of his humor-
cur moods, have merely imagined.
I returned to the inn at the hour from which, as I have said,
it would be possible for us, and not more than possible, to
complete our day's journey ; and finding, as I had anticipated,
no trace of Click-Clack, we set off without him. Our way
led us through long moory straths, with here and there a blue
lake and birch w^ood, and here and there a group of dingy
cottages and of irregular fields ; but the general scenery was
that of the prevailing schistose gneiss of the Scotch Highlands,
in which rounded confluent hills stand up over long withdraw-
ing valleys, and imposing rather from its bare and lonely
expansiveness, than from aught bold or striking in its features.
The district had been opened up only a few seasons previous
by the Parliamentary road over which we travelled, and was
at the time little known to the tourist ; and the thirty years
which have since passed, have in some respects considerably
changed it, as they have done the Highlands generally. Most
of the cottages, when I last journeyed the way, were repre-
sented by but broken ruins, and the fields by mossy patches
that remained green amid the waste. I marked at one spot
an extraordinary group of oak trees, in the last stage of decay,
which would have attracted notice from their great bulk and
size in even the forests of England. The largest of the group
lay rotting upon the ground, — a black, doddered shell, fully
six feet in diameter, but hollow as a tar-barrel ; while the others,
some four or five in number, stood up around it, totally di-
vested of all their larger boughs, but green with leaves, that,
from the minuteness of the twigs on which they grew, wrap-
ped them around like close-fitting mantles. Their period of
" tree-ship " — to borrow a phrase from Cowper — must have
extended far into the obscure past of Highland history, — to a
time, I doubt not, when not a few of the adjacent peat-mosses
still lived as forests, and when some of the neighboring clans
'-Frasers, Bissets, and Chisholms — had, at least under the, ex
244 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEKS ;
isiing names (French and Saxon in their derivation), not yet
begun to be. Ere we reached the solitary inn of Auchen-
Dasheen, — a true Highland clachan of the ancient type, — the
night had fallen dark and stormy for a night in June ; and a
gray mist which had been descending t\)r hours along the hills,
— blotting ofFtheir brown summits bit by bit, as an artist might
his pencilled hills with a piece of hidia rubber, but which,
methodical in its encroachments, had preserved in its advances
a perfect horizontality of line, — had broken into a heavy, con-
tinuous rain. As, however, the fair weather had lasted us till
we were within a mile of our journey's end, we were only
partially wet on our arrival, and soon succeeded in drying
ourselves in front of a noble turf fire. My comrade would fliin
have solaced himself, after our weary journey, with something
nice. He held that a Highland inn should be able to furnish
at least a bit of mutton-ham or a cut of dried salmon, and
ordered a few slices, first of ham, and then of salmon ; but his
orders served merely to perplex the landlord and his wife, whose
stores seemed to consist of only oatmeal and whisky ; and,
coming down in his expectations and demands, and intimating
that he was very hungry, and that anything edible would do,
we heard the landlady inform, with evident satisfaction, a red-
armed wench, dressed in blue plaiding, that " the lads would
take porridge," The porridge was accordingly i)rcpared ; and
when engaged in discussing this familiar viand, a little before
midnight, — for we had arrived late, — a tall Highlander enter-
ed the inn, dropping like a mill-wheel. He was charged, he
said, with messages to the landlord, and to two mason lads in
i,he inn, fr:)m a forlorn carter with whom he had travelled
about twenty miles, but who, knocked up by the " drap drink"
and a pair of bad shoes, had been compelled to shelter for the
night in a cottage about seven miles short of Auchcn-nashecn,
The carter's message to the landlord was simply to the cllect
that, the two mason lads having stolen his horse and cart, he
mstructed him to detain his property for him, until he himself
should corae up in the morning. As for his message to the
OR, THE STORr OF MY EDUCATION. 245
lads said the Highlander, " it was no meikle worth gaun o'er
again ; but if we liked to buckle on a' the Gaelic curses to a'
the English ones, it would be something like that."
We were awakened next morning by a tremendous hubbub
in the adjoining apartment. It is Click-Clack, the carter, said
my comrade : O, what shall we do ? We leaped up ; and
getting into our clothes m doubly-quick time, set ourselves to
reconnoitre through the crannies of a deal partition, and saw the
carter standing in the middle of the next room, storming furi-
ously, and the landlord, a smooth-spoken, little old man, striv
ing hard to conciliate him. Click-Clack was a rough-looking
fellow, turned of forty, of about five feet ten, with a black, un-
shaven beard, lik.e a shoe-brush, stuck under his nose, which
was red as a coal, and attired in a sadly-breached suit of Aber-
deen-gray, topped by a brimless hat, that had been borrowed,
apparently, from some obliging scare-crow. I measured him
in person and expression ; and, deeming myself his match,
even unassisted by my comrade, on whose discretion I could
calculate with more certainty than on his valor, I entered
the apartment, and taxed him with gross dereliction of duty.
He had left us to drive his horse and cart for a whole day, and
had broken, for the sake of his wretched indulgence in the pub-
lic-house, his engagement with our master; and I would report
him to a certainty. The carter turned upon me with the fierce-
ness of a wild beast ; but, first catching his eye, as I would
that of a maniac, I set my face very near his, and he calmed
down in a moment. He could not help being late, he said :
he had reached the inn at Contin not an hour after we had left
it ; and it was really very hard to have to travel a long day's
journey in such bad shoes. We accepted his apology ;'"and,
ordering the landlord to bring in half a nmtchkin of whisky,
the storm blew by. The morning, like the previous night, had
been thick and rainy ; but it gradually cleared up as the day
rose ; and after breakfast we set out together along a broken
footpath, never before traversed by horse and cart. We passed
a solitary lake, on whose shores the only human dwelling waa
a dark turf shieling, at which, however, Click Clack ascer
246 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS;
tained there was whisky to be sold; and then entered upm &
tract of scenery wholly different in its composition and chai
acter from that through which our journey had previously lain.
There runs along the west coast of Scotland, from the island
of Rum to the immediate neighborhood of Cape Wrath, a
formation laid down by Macculloch, in his Geological Map of
the Kingdom, as Old Red Sandstone, but which underlies for
mations deemed primary, — two of these of quartz rock, and a
third of that unfossiliferous limestone in which the huge Cave
of Smoo is hollowed, and to which the Assynt marbles belong.
The system, which, taken as a whole, — quartz-rock, lime, and
sandstone, — corresponds bed for bed with the Lower Old Red
of the east coast, and is probably of a highly metamorphic ex-
ample of that great deposit, exhibits its fullest development
in Assynt, where all its four component beds are present. In
the tract on which we now entered, it presents only two of
these, — the lower quartz-rock, and the underlying red sand-
stone ; but wherever any of its members appear, they present
unique features, — marks of enormous denudation, and a bold
style of landscape altogether its own ; and in now entering
upon it for the first time, I was much impressed by its extra-
ordinary character. Loch Maree, one of the wildest of our
Highland lakes, — and at this time scarce at all known to the
tourist, — owes to it all that is peculiar in its appearance, — its
tall pyramidal quartz mountains, that rise at one stride, steep,
and well nigh as naked as the old Pyramids, from nearly the
level of the sea, to heights on which at midsummer the snows
of winter gleam white in streaks and patches, and a picturesque
sandstone tract of precipitous hills, which flanks its western
shore, and bore at this period the remains of one of the old
pine forests. A continuous wall of gneiss mountains, that runs
along the eastern side of the lake, sinks sheer into its brown
depths, save at one point, wlicro a level tract, hair-eucircled
by precij)ices, is occupied by fields and copsewood, and bears
in the, midst a white mansion-house; the blue expanse of the
lake greatly broadens in its lower reaches ; and a group of par-
tially submerged hillocks, that resemble the forest-covered one»
OR, IHE STORY OP MY EDUCATION. 247
on its western shores, but are of lower altitude, rise over its
waters, and form a miniature archipelago, gray with lichened
stone, and bosky with birch and hazel. Finding at the head
of the loch that no horse and cart had ever forced their way
along its sides, we had to hire a boat for the transport of at
least cart and baggage ; and when the boatmen were getting
ready for the voyage, which was, with the characteristic dila-
toriness of the district, a work of hours, we baited at the
clachan of Kinlochewe, — a humble Highland inn, like that in
which we had passed the night. The name — that of an old
■farm which stretches out along the head or upper end of Loch
Maree — has a remarkable etymology : it means simply the
head of Loch Ewe^ — the salt-water loch into which the waters
of Loch Maree empty themselves by a river little more than
a mile in length, and whose present head is some sixteen or
twenty miles distant from the farm which bears its name. Ere
that last elevation of the land, however, to whic.i our country
owes the level marginal strip that stretches between the pres-
ent coast-line and the ancient one, the sea must have found its
way to the old farm. Loch Maree (Mary's Loch), a name
evidently of medijBval origin, would then have existed as a
prolongation of the marine Loch Ewe, and Kinlochewe would
have actually been what the compound words signify, — the
head of Loch Ewe. There seems to be reason for holding that,
ere the latest elevation of the land took place in our island, it
had received its first human inhabitants, — rude savages, who
employed tools and weapons of stone, and fashioned canoes
out of single logs of wood. Are we to accept etymologies
such as the instanced one — and there are several such in the
Highlands — as good, in evidence that these aboriginal savages
were of the Celtic race, and that Gaelic was spoken in Scot-
land at a time when its strips of grassy links, and the sites
of many of its seaport towns, such as Leith, Greenock, Mus
selburgh, and Cromarty, existed as oozy sea-beaches, covered
twice every day by the waters of the ocean ?
It was a delightful evening, — still, breathless, clear, — as we
swept slowly across the broad breast of Loch Maree; and the
248 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
red light of the sinking sun fell on many a sweet wild reces^
amid the labyriiith of islands purple with heath, and overhung
by the birch and mountain-ash ; or slanted along the broken
glades of the ancient forest ; or lighted up into a blush the
pale stony faces of the tall pyramidal hills. A boat bearing
a wedding party was crossing the lake to the white house on
the opposite side, and a piper, stationed in the bows, was dis-
coursing sweet music, that, softened by distance, and caught
up by the echoes of the rocks, resembled no strain I had ever
heard from the bagpipe before. Even the boatmen rested on
their oars, and I had just enough of Gaelic to know that they
were remarking how very beautiful it was. " I wish," said
my comrade, " you understood those men : they have a great
many curious stories about the loch, that I am sure you would
like. See you that large island 1 It is Island-Maree. There
is, they tell me, an old burying-ground on it, in which tb»
Danes used to bury long ages ago, and whose ancient tomb
stones no man can read. And yon other island beside it is
famoiJs as the place in which the f/ood people meet every year
to make submission to their queen. There is, they say, a little
loch in the island, and another little island in the loch; and
it is under a tree on that inner island that the queen sits and
gathers kain for the Evil-One, They tell me that, for certain,
the fairies have not left this part of the country yet." Wo
landed, a little after sunset, at the point trom which our road
led across the hills to the sea-side, but found that the carter
had not yet come up ; and at length, despairing of his appear-
ance, and unable to carry oft' his cart and the baggage with us,
as we had succeeded in bringing oil' cart, horse, and baggage
on the previous day, we were preparing to take up our night's
lodging under the shelter of an overlianging crag, when we
heard him coming solilooiizing through the wood, in a man
ner worthy of his name, as if he were not one, Init twenty cart
era. " What a perfect shame of a country !" he exclaimed,—
" perfect shame ! J\oad Ibr a horse, ibi'sooth ! — more like a
turnpike stair. And not a feed of corn for llit- jioor beast;
uid not a public house ntween this and Kiniochi'We ; and not
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 2-i9
a drop of whisky ; perfect, perfect shame of a country !" On
his coming up In apparently very bad humor, we found him
disposed to transfer the shame of the country to our shoulders.
What sort of people were we, he asked, to travel in such a
land without whisky ! Whisky, however, there was none to
produce ; there was no whisky nearer, we told him, than the
public house at the sea-side, where we proposed spending the
night ; and, of course, the sooner we got there the better. And
after assisting hiir to harness his horse, we set off in the dark-
ening twilight, amid the hills. Eough gray rocks, and little
blue lochans, edged with flags, and mottled in their season
with water-lilies, glimmered dim and uncertain in the imper-
fect light as we passed; but ere we reached the inn of Flower-
dale in Gairloch, every object stood out clear, though cold, in
the increscent light of morning ; and a few light streaks of
cloud, poised in the east over the unrisen sun, were gradually
exchanging their gleam of pale bronze for a deep flush of
mingled blood and fire.
After the refreshment of a few hours' sleep and a tolerable
breakfast, we set out for the scene of our labors, which lay on
the sea-shore, about two miles further to the north and west ;
and were shown an outhouse, — one of a square of dilapidated
offices, — which we might fit up, we were told, for our barrack.
The building had been originally what is known on the north-
western coast of Scotland, with its ever-weeping climate, as a
hay-barn ; but it was now merely a roof-covered tank of greeu
stagnant water, about three-quarters of a foot in depth, which
nad oozed through the walls from an over-gorged pond in the
adjacent court, that in a tract of recent ruins had overflowed
its banks, and not yet subsided. Our new house did look ex-
ceedingly like a beaver-dam, with this disadvantageous differ-
ence, that no expedient of diving could bring us to better
■chambers on the other side of the wall. My comrade, setting
nimself to sound the abyss with his stick, sung out in sailoi
Btyle, " three feet water in the hold ;" Click-Clack broke intfc
a rage. That a dwelling for human creatures!" he said.
" If I waa to put my horse intil't, poor beast ! the very hoo6
250 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
would rot off him in less than a week. Are we eels or pad
docks, that we are sent to live in a loch?" Marking, however
a narrow portion of the ridge which dammed up the waters
of the neighboring pool, whence our domicile derived its sup-
ply, I set myself to cut it across, and had soon the satisfaction
of seeing the general surface lowered fully a foot, and the
floor of our future dwelling laid bare. Click-Clack, gathering
courage as he saw the waters ebbing away, seized a shovel,
and soon showed us the value of his many years' practice in
the labors of the stable ; and then, despatching him for a few
cart-loads of a dry shell-sand from the shore, which I had
marked by the way as suitable for mixing with our lime, we
had soon for our tank of green water a fine white floor. " Man
wants but little here below," especially in a mason's barrack.
There were two square openings in the apartment, neither of
them furnished with frame or glass ; but the one we filled-
up with stone, and an old unglazed frame, which, with the as-
sistance of a base and border of turf, I succeeded in fitting
into the other, gave at least an air of respectability to the
place. Boulder stones, capped with pieces of mossy turf,
served us for seats ; and we had soon a comfortable peat fire
blazing against the gable ; but we were still sadly in want of
a bed : the fundamental damp of the floor was, we saw, fast
gaining on the sand ; and it would be neither comfortable nor
safe to spread our dried grass and blankets over it. My com-
rade went out to see whether the place did not furnish mate-
rials enough of any kind to make a bedstead, and soon return-
ed in triumph, dragging after him a pair of harrows which he
placed side by side in a siuig corner beside the fire, with of
course the teeth downwards. A good Catholic prepared to
win heaven for himself by a judicious use of sharp points
niiglit have preferred having them turned the other way ; bu
my c^'mnwle was an enlightened Protestant; and besides, like
Goldsmith's sailor, he loved to lie sofl. The second piece of
luck was mine. I found lying unclaiiiied in the yard, an old
barn-door, which a recent gale had blown from oil* its hinges;
and by placing it above the harrows, and driving a row of
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 251
stakes around it into the floor, to keep the outer sleeper from
rolling off, — for the wall served to secure the position of the
inner one, — we succeeded in constructing, by our joint efforts,
a luxurious bed. There was but one serious drawback on its
comforts : the roof overhead was bad, and there was an obsti-
nate drop that used, during every shower which fell in the
season of sleep, to make a dead set at my face, and try me at
times with the water-torture of the old story, mayhap half a
dozen times in the course of a single night.
Our barrack fliirly fitted up, I set out with my comrade,
whose knowledge of Gaelic enabled him to act as my inter-
preter, to a neighboring group of cottages, to secure a laborer
for the work of the morrow. The evening was now beginning
to darken ; but there was still light enough to show me that
the little fields I passed through on my way resembled very
much those of Lilliput, as described by Gulliver. They were,
however, though equally small, greatly more irregular, and had
peculiarities, too, altogether their own. The land had orig-
inally been stony ; and as it showed, according to the High-
land phrase, its " bare bones through its skin," — ^large bosses
of the rock beneath coming here and there to the surface, —
the Highlanders had gathered the stones in great pyramidal
heaps on the bare bosses ; and so very numerous were these in
some of the fields, that they looked as if some malignant sor-
cerer had, in the time of harvest, converted all their shocks into
stone. On approaching the cottage of our future laborer, I
was attracted by a door of very peculiar construction that lay
against the wall. It had been brought from the ancient pine
forest on the western bank of Loch Maree, and was formed of
the roots of trees so curiously interlaced by nature, that when
cut out of the soil, which it had covered over like a piece of
I et-work, it remained firmly together, and now formed a door
which the mere imitator of the rustic might in vain attempt to
rival. We entered the cottage, and plunging downwards two
feet or so, found ourselves upon the dunghill >f the establish-
ment, which in this part of the country usually occupied at the
time an ante-chamber which corresponded to that occupied by
12
252 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
the cattle a few years earlier, in the midland districts of Suth
erlaud. Groping in this foul outer chamber through a stifling
atmosphere of smoke, we came to an inner door raised to the
level of the soil outside, through which a red umbery gleam
escaped into the darkness ; and, climbing into the inner apart-
ment, we found ourselves in the presence of the inmates of
the mansion. The fire, as in the cottage of my Sutherland
shire relative, was placed in the middle of the floor ; the mas-
ter of the mansion, a red haired, strongly-built Highlander,
)f the middle size and age, with his son, a boy of twelve, sat
on the one side ; his wife, who, though not much turned of
thirty, had the haggard, drooping cheeks, hollow eyes, and
^ale, sallow complexion of old age, sat on the other. We
6roke our business to the Highlander through my companion,
— for, save a few words caught up at school by the boy, there
was no English in the household, — and found them disposed
to entertain it favorably. A large pot of potatoes hung sus-
pended over the fire, under a dense ceiling of smoke; and he
hospitably invited us to wait supper, which, as our dinner had
consisted of but a piece of dry oaten-cake, we willingly did.
As the conversation went on, I became conscious that it turn-
ed upon myself, and that I was an object of profound commis-
eration to the inmates of the cottage. " What," I inquired
of my companion, " are these kind people pitying me so very
much for?" "For your want of Gaelic, to be sure. How
can a man get on in the world that wants Gaelic?" " But do
not they themselves," I asked, "want English ?" "O yes,"
he said, "but what does that signify? What is the use of
English in Gairloch ?" The potatoes, with a little ground
salt, and much unbrf)ken luuigcr as sauce, ate remarkably
well. Our host regretted that lie had no fish to ofier us ; bul
a tract of rough weather had kept him from sea, and he had
just exhausted his previous supply ; and as for bread, he hiwl
used up the last of his grain crop a little after Christmas, and
had been living, with his family, on potatoes, with fish when
ho could get them, ever since.
Thirty years have now passed since I shared in the High-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION.
25a
lander's evening meal, and during the first twenty of these,
the use of the potatoe — unknown in the Highlands a century
before— greatly increased. I have been told by my maternal
grandfather, that about the year 1740, when he was a boy of
about eight or nine years of age, the head gardener at Balna-
gown Castle used, in his occasional visits to Cromarty, to bring
him in his pocket, as great rarities, some three or four potatoes;
and that it was not until some fifteen or twenty years after
this time that he saw potatoes reared in fields in any part of
the Northern Highlands. But, once fairly employed as food,
every season saw a greater breadth of them laid down. In the
North- Western Highlands, in especial, the use of these roots
increased from the year 1801 to the year 1846 nearly a hun-
dredfold, and came at length to form, as in Ireland, not merely
the staple, but in some localities, almost the only food of the
people ; and when destroyed by disease in the latter year,
famine immediately ensued in both Ireland and the Highlands.
A writer in the Witness, whose letter had the effect of bring-
ing that respectable paper under the eye of Mr. Punch, rei)re-
sented the Irish famine as a direct judgment on the Maynooth
Endowment ; while another writer, a member of the Peace
Association, — whose letter did not find its way into the Wit-
ness, though it reached the editor, — challenged the decision on
the ground that the Scotch Highlanders, who were greatly op-
posed to Maynooth, suffered from the infliction nearly as much
as the Irish themselves, and that the oflence punished must
have been surely some one of which both Highlanders and Irish
had been guilty in common. He, however, had found out, he
said, what the crime visited actually was. B»^th the Irish and
Highland famines were judgments upon the people for thcvT
great homicidal efficiency as soldiers in the wars of the empire,
an efficiency which, as he truly remarked, was almost equally
characteristic of both nations. For my own part, I have been
unable hitherto to see the steps which conduct to such pro-
found conclusions ; and am content simply to hold, that the
superintending Providence who communicated to man a cal-
3ulating. forseeing nature, does occasionally get angry with
254 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS
him, and inflict judgments upon him, when, instead of exer
cising his faculties, he sinks to a level lower than his own,
and becomes content, like some of the inferior animals, to live
on a single root.
There are two periods favorable to observation, — an earlj
and a late one. A fresh eye detects external traits and pecu-
liarities among a people, seen for the first time, which disap
Dear as they become familiar; but it is not until after repeat
cd opportunities of study, and a prolonged acquaintanceship,
that internal characteristics and conditions begin to be riglitly
known. During the first fortnight of my residence in this
remote district, I was more impressed than at a later stage by
certain peculiarities of manner and appearance in the inhabit-
ants. Dr. Johnson remarked that he found fewer very tall
or very short men among the people of the Hebrides, than in
England : I was now struck by a similar mediocrity of size
among the Highlanders of Western Ross; five-sixths of the
OTOwn men seemed to average between five feet seven and five
feet nine inches in height, and either tall or short men I found
comparatively rare. The Highlanders of the eastern coast
were, on the contrary, at that period, mayhap still, very vari-
ous of stature, — some of them exceedingly diminutive, others
of great bulk and height ; and, as might be seen in the con-
gregations of the parish churches removed by but a few miles,
there were marked ditlerences in this respect between the
people of contiguous districts, — certain tracts of plain or valley
producing larger races than others. I was inclined to believe
at the time that the middle-sized Highlanders of the west
roast were a less mixed race than the uni>qually-sizod High-
landers of the cast : I at least found corresponding inequalities
among the higher-born Highland tiunilies, that, as shown ]»y
their genealogies, blended the Norman and Saxon with the
Celtic blood ; and as the unequally-sizod Highland race l)or.
dered on that Scandinavian one which fringes the greati-r part
of th<' eastern coast of Scotland, I inferred that there iiad been
a similar blending of blood among them. I have since seen in
Gust'vv Kombst's Ethnographic Map of the British Islands,
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOIS. 255
the diffei ence, which I at this time but inferred, inaicateJ by
a different sliade of color, and a different name. The High-
landers of the east coast Kombst terms " Scandinavian-Gaelic :"
those of the west, " Gaelic-Scandinavian-Gaelic," — names in-
dicative, of course, of the proportions in which he holds that
they possess the Celtic blood. Disparity of bulk and size
appears to be one of the consequences of a mixture of races ;
nor does the induced inequality seem restricted to the phys-
ical framework. Minds of large calibre, and possessed of the
kingly faculty, come first into view, in our history, among the
fused tribes, just as of old it was the mixed marriages that
first produced the giants. The difference in size which I re-
marked in particular districts of the Scandinavian Gaelic re-
gion, separated, in some instances, by but a ridge of hills or
an expanse of moor, must have been a result of the old clan
divisions, and is said to have marked the clans themselves
very strongly. Some of them were of a greatly more ro-
bust, and some of a slimmer type, than others.
1 was struck by another peculiarity in the west coast High-
landers. I found the men in general greatly better-looking
than the women, and that in middle life they bore their years
much more lightly. The females seemed old and haggard at
a period when the males were still comparatively fresh and
robust. I am not sure whether the remark may not in some
degree apply to Highlanders generally. The " rugged form "
and " harsher features," which, according to Sir Walter, " mark
the mountain band," accord worse with the female than with
the male countenance and figure. But I at least found this
discrepancy in the appearance of the sexes greatly more
marked on the west than on the eastern coast ; and saw only
too much reason to conclude, that it was owing in great part t>'i
the disproportion ably large share of crushing labor laid, in
the district, in accordance with the practice of a barbarous
time, on the weaker frame of the female. There is, however,
a stylo of female loveliness occasionally though rarely exem-
plified in the Highlands, which far transcends the Saxon or
Scandinavian type. It is nianifested usually in extreme youth,
256 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS :
— at least bet\^ een the fourteenth and eighteenth year ; and
its effect we find happily indicated by Wordsworth, — who
seems to have met with a characteristic specimen, — ^in his
lines to a Highland girl. He describes her as possessing as
her " dower," " a very shotver of beauty." Further, however
he describes her as very young.
"Twice seven consenting: years bad shed
Their utmost bounty on her head."
f was, besides, struck at this time by finding, that while al-
most all the young lads under twenty, with whom I came in
contact, had at least a* smattering of English, I foiuid only a
single Highlander turned of forty with whom I could exchange
a word. The exceptional Highlander was, however, a curi-
osity in his way. He seemed to have a natural turn for ac-
quiring languages, and had derived his English, not from con-
versation, but, in the midst of a Gaelic-speaking people, from
the study of the Scriptures in our common English version.
His application of Bible language to ordinary subjects told at
times with rather ludicrous effect. Upon enquiring of him,
on one occasion, regarding a young man whom he wished to
employ as an extra laborer, he described him in exactly the
words in which David is described in the chapter that records
the combat with Goliath, as " but a youth, and ruddy, and of
a fair countenance ;" and on asking where he thought we could
get a few loads of water-rolled pebbles for causewaying a
floor, he directed us to the bed of a neighboring rivulet, where
we might " choose us," he said, " smooth stones out of tho
brook." He spoke with great deliberation, translating cvi'
dcntly his Gaelic-thinking, as he went on, into Scriptural
fcjigl'sh
UU. THE STORY OP MY KDUCATIOW 2'^'?
CHAPTER XIII.
" A man of glee,
With hair of glittering gray,
As blythe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday."
Wordsworth
There existed at this time no geological map of Scotland.
Macculloch's did not appear until about six or seven years
after (in 1829 or in 1830), and Sedgwick and Murchison's in-
teresting sketch of the northern formations* not until at least
five years after (1828). And so, on setting out on the morn-
ing after that of my arrival, to provide stones for our future
erection, I found myself in a terra incognita, new to the quar-
rier, and unknown to the geologist. Most of the stratified
primary rocks make but indifferent building materials ; and in
the immediate neighborhood of our work I could find only one
of the worst of the class, — the schistose gneiss. On consulting,
however, the scenery of the district, I marked that at a certain
[loint both shores of the open sea-loch on whose margin we
were situated, suddenly changed their character. The abrupt
• Appended to their joint paper on the " Deposits contained between the Scottish
Primary Rocks and Oolitic Series," and interesting, as the lirst puljlished geologioaJ
map of Scotland to the north of the Friths of Forth and Clyde.
25« ai"V vSJHOOLS AKJ) SCHOOLMASTERS.
rugged hills of gneiss that, viewed from an eminence, re
sembled a tumbling sea, suddenly sank into low brown pro
montories, unbroken by ravines, and whose eminences were
meni flat swellings ; and in the hope of finding some change
of formation coincident with the change of scenery, I set out
with my comrade for the nearest point at which the broken
outline passed into the rectilinear or merely undulatory one.
But though I did expect a change, it was not without some
degree of surprise that, immediately after passing the point of
junction, I found myself in a district of red sandstone. It
was a hard, compact, dark-colored stone, but dressed readily
to pick and hammer, and made excellent corner-stones and
ashlar ; and it would have furnished us with even hewn work
for our building, had not our employer, unacquainted, like
every one else at the time, with the mineral capabilities of
the locality, brought his hewing stone in a sloop, at no small
expense, through the Caledonian Canal, from one of the quar-
ries of Moray, — a circuitous voyage of more than two hun
dred miles.
Immediately beside where we opened our quarry, there was
a little solitary shieling : it was well-nigh such an edifice as I
used to erect when a boy, — some eight or ten feet in length,
and of so humble an altitude, that, when standing erect in the
midst, I could lay my hand on the roof-tree. A heath-bed
jocupied one of the corners; a few gray embers were smoul-
dering in the middle of the floor ; a pot lay beside them, ready
for use, half-filled with cockles and nizor-fish, the spoils of the
morning ebb; and a cog of milk occupied a small shelf that
projected from the gal)le above. Such were the contents of
'iio shieling. Its only inmate, a lively little old man, sat out-
side, at once tending a few cows grouped on the mooi-. and
employed in stripj)iiig with a pocket-knife, long slender fila-
ments from oil" a |)iec(' of moss fir; and as he wrought and
watched, hi; crooned a Gaelic song not very niusieally, may-
hap, hut, like the happy song of the humble bee, there was
perfect content in every tone, lie had a great many curious
questions to ask in his native Gaelic, of my comrade, regard-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 25?
irigj our employment and our employer ; and when satisfied,
he began, I perceived, like the Highlander of the previous
evening, to express very profound commiseration for me. "Is
that man also pitying me "?" I asked. " O yes, very much,"
was the reply : " he does not at all see how you are to live in
Gairloch without Gaelic." I was reminded by the shieling
and its happy inmate, of one of my father's experiences, as
communicated to me by Uncle James, hi the course of a
protracted kelp voyage among the Hebrides, he had lauded in
his boat, before entering one of the sounds of the Long Island,
to procure a pilot, but found in the fisherman's cottage on which
he had directed his course, only the fisherman's wife, — a young
creature of not more than eighteen, — engaged in nursing her
child and singing a Gaelic song, in tones expressive of a light
heart, till the rocks rang again. A heath bed, a pot of baked
clay, of native manufacture, fashioned by the hand, and a heap
of fish newly caught, seemed to constitute the only wealth of
the cottage ; but its mistress was, notwithstanding, one of the
happiest of women ; and deeply did she commiserate the poor
sailors, and earnestly wish for the return of her husband, that
he might assist them in their perplexity. The husband at
length appeared. " O," he asked, " after the first greeting.
" have ye any salt V " Plenty," said the master ; " and you,
I see, from your supply of fresh fish, want it very much ; but
come, pilot us through the sound, and you shall have as much
salt as you require." And so the vessel got a pilot and the
fisherman got salt ; but never did my father forget the light-
hearted song of the happy mistress of that poor Highland cot-
tage. It was one of the palpable characteristics of our Scottish
Highlanders, for at least the first thirty years of the century,
that they were contented enough, as a people, to find more to
pity than to envy in the condition of their neighbors ; and i
remember that at this time, and for years after, I used to deem
the trait a good one. I have now, however, my doubts on the
subject, and am not quite sure whether a content so general
as to be national may not, in certain circumstances, be rather
% vice tluvn a virtue. It is certainly no virtue when it has tho
260 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
eflect of arresting either individuals or peoples in their course
of development ; and is perilously allied to great suffering,
w^hen the men who exemplify it are so thoroughly happy amid
the mediocrities of the present, that they fail to make provi*
ion for t^e contingencies of the future.
We were joined in about a fortnight by the other workmen
from the low country, and I resigned my temporary charge
(save that I still retained the time-book in my master's be-
half) into the hands of an ancient mason, remarkable over the
north of Scotland for his skill as an operative, and who, thc»ugh
he was now turned of sixty, was still able to build and hew
considerably more than the youngest and most active man in
the squad. He was at this time the only survivor of three
brothers, all masons, and all not merely first-class workmen, but
of a class to which, at least to the north of the Grampians, only
they themselves belonged, and very considerably in advance
of the first. And on the removal of the second of the three
brothers to the south of Scotland, it was found that, amid the
stone-cutters of Glasgow, David Fraser held relatively the
same place that he had done among those of the north. I have
been told by Mr. Kenneth Mathcson, — a gentleman well known
as a master-builder in the west of Scotland, — that in erecting
some hanging stairs of polished stone, ornamented in front
and at the outer edge by the common fillet and torus, his or-
dinary workmen used to Cfunjilete for him their one step apiece
per day, and David Fraser his three steps, finished equally well.
It is easily conceivable how, in the higher works of art, one
man should excel a thousand, — nay, how he should have nei-
ther competitor when living, nor successor when dead. The
English gentleman who, after the death of Canova, asked a
surviving brother of the sculptor whether he proposed carry-
ing on Canova's buniness, found that lie had achieved in the
query an unintentional joke. But in the commoner avocations
there appear no such differences between man and man ; and
It mav seem strange how, in oi-dinary stone-cutting, one man
could thus perform the work of three. ]My acquaintance with
old Jolui Fraser showed me how very much the ability dft-
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOiSr. 26l
pendfid on a natural faculty. John's strength had nevei been
above the average of that of Scotchmen, and it was now consid-
erably reduced ; nor did his mallet deal more or ..eavier blows
than that of the common workman. He had, however, an ex-
traordinary power of conceiving of the finished piece of work,
as lying Avithin the rude stone from which it was his business
to disinter it ; and while ordinary stone-cutters had to repeat
and re-repeat their lines and draughts, and had in this way
virtually to give to their work several surfaces in detail ere
hey reached the true one, old John cut upon the true figure
at once, and made one surface serve for all. In building, too,
he exercised a similar power : he hammer-dressed his stones
with fewer strokes than other workmen, and in fitting the in-
terspaces between stones already laid, always picked from out
the heap at his feet the stone that exactly fitted the place ;
while other operatives busied themselves in picking up stones
that were too small or too large ; or, if they set themselves
to reduce the too large ones, reduced them too little or too
much, and had to fit and fit again. Whether building or hew
ing, John never seemed in a hurry. He has been seen, when
far advanced in life, working very leisurely, as became his
years, on the one side of a wall, and two stout young fellows
buildhig against him on the other side, — toiling, apjiarently,
twice harder than he, but the old man always contriving to
keep a little ahead of them both.
David Fraser I never saw ; but as a hewer he was said con
siderably to excel even his brother John. On hearing that it
had been remarked among a party of Edinburgh masons, that,
though regarded as the first of Glasgow stone-cutters, he
would find in the eastern capital at least his equals, he attired
himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of tartan, and,
looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little
Celt, he presented himself one Monday morning, armed with
a letter of introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the
foreman of an Edinburgh squad of masons engaged upon one
of the finei buildings at that time in the course of erection.
The letter specified neither his qualifications nor his name : it
262 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS ;
had bee\ . written merely to secure for him the necessary eiu-
ployment, and the necessary employment it did secure. The
better workmen of the party were engaged, on his arrival, in
hewins columns, each of which was deemed sufficient work for
a week ; and David was asked, somewhat incredulously, by the
foreman, " if he could hew 1" " O yes, he thought he could
hew." " Could he hew columns such as these V " O yes, he
thought he could hew columns such as these," A mass of
stone, in which a possible column lay hid, was accordingly
placed before David, not under cover of the shed, which was
already occupied by workmen, but, agreeably to David's own
request, directly in front of it, where he might be seen by all,
and where he straightway commenced a most extraordinary
course of antics. Buttoning his long tartan coat fast around
him, he would first look along the stone from the one end,
anon from the other, and then examine it in front and rear ;
or, quitting it altogether for the time, he would take up his
stand beside the other workmen, and, after looking at them
with great attention, return and give it a few taps with the
mallet, in a style evidently imitative of theirs, but monstrously
a caricature. The shed all that day resounded with roars of
laughter ; and the only thoroughly grave man on the ground
was he who occasioned the mirth of all the others. Next
morning David again buttoned his coat ; but he got on much
better this day than the former-: he was less awkward and loss
idle, though not less observant than before ; and he succeeded
ere evening in tracing, in workman-like fashion, a few draught"*
along the future column. He was evidently greatly improv-
ing. On the morning of Wednesday he threw ofl' his coat;
and it was seen that, though l)y no means in a hurry, he was
seriously at work. There were no more jokes or laughter; and
it was whispered in the evening that the strange Highlander had
raatle astonishing progress during the day. By the middle of
Thursday he had nuide up for his two days' trifling, and was
abreast of ihc otlic-i workmen ; before night he was tiir ahead
of them; and ere the evening of Friday, when they had still
« full day's work on cacli of l-licir columns, David's was com-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION 263
pleted 111 a style that defied criticism ; and, his tartan coat
again buttoned around him, he sat resting himself beside it.
The foreman went out, and greeted him. " Well," he said,
" you have beaten us all : you certainly can hew !" " Yes,"
said David ; " I thought 1 could hew columns. Did the othei
men take much more than a week to learn '?" '' Come, come,
David Fraser" replied the foreman ; " we all guess who you
are : you have had your joke out ; and now, I suppose, we
must give you your week's wages, and let you away." "Yes,'
said David ; " work waits for me in Glasgow ; but I just
thought .it might be well to know how you hewed on this
east side of the country."
John Fraser was a shrewd, sarcastic old man, much liked,
however, by his brother workmen ; though his severe sayings
—which, never accompanied by any ill nature, were always tol-
erated in the barrack — did both himself and them occasional
harm when repeated outside. To men who have to live for
months together on oatmeal and salt, the difference between
porridge with and porridge without milk is a very grave dif-
ference indeed, both in point of salutariness and comfort ; and
I had succeeded in securing, on the ordinary terms, ere the
arrival of John, what was termed a set of skimmed milk from
the wife of the gentleman at whose dwelling-house we were
engaged in working. The skimmed milk was, however, by
no means good ; it was thin, blue, and sour ; and we received
it without complaint only because we knew that, according to
the poet, it was " better just than want aye," and that there
was no other dairy in that part of the country. But old John
was less prudent ; and, taking the dairy-maid to task in his
quiet ironical style, he began by expressing wonder and regret
that a grand lady like her mistress should be unable to distin-
guish the difference between milk and wine. The maid in
dignantly denied the fact in toto : her mistress, she said, did
know the difference. Oh no, replied John ; wine always gets
better the longer it is kept, and milk always the worse ; but
your mistress, not knowing the dilference, keeps her milk very
'ong, in order to make it better, and makes it so very bad in
264 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEKS ;
consequence, that there are some days we can scarce eat it tl
all. The dairy-maid bridled up, and, communieatir.g the re-
mark to her mistress, we were told next morning that we might
go for our milk to the next dairy, if we pleased, but that we
would get none fi-om her. And so, for four months thereafter,
we had to do penance for the joke, on that not very luxurious
v\iind " dry porridge." The pleasures of the table had occu-
pied but small space amid the \ery scanty enjoyments of our
oarrack even before, and they were now so considerably re-
duced, that I could have almost wished at meal-times that —
like the inhabitants of the moon, as described b}'^ Baron Mun-
chausen — I could open up a port-hole in my side, and lay in
at once provisions enough for a fortnight ; but the infliction
told considerably more on our constitutions than on our appe-
*iites ; and we all became subject to small but very painful
boils in the muscular parts o<^ the body, — a species of disease
A'hich seems to be scarce less certainly attendant on the ex-
clusive use of oatmeal, than sea-scurvy on the exclusive use
of salt meat. Old John, however, though in a certain sense
\he author of our calamity, escaped all censure, while a dou
*)le portion fell to the share of the gentleman's wife.
I never met a man possessed of a more thoroughly mathe-
matical head than this ancient mason. I know not that ho
ever saw a copy of Euclid ; but the principles of the work
eeemed to lie as self-evident truths in his mind. Li the abil-
ity, too, of drawing shrewd inferences from natural pheno-
mena, old John Fraser excelled all the other untaught men I
ever knew. Until my acquaintance with him commenced, I
had been accustomed to hear the removal of what was widely
known in the north of Scotland as " the travelled stone of
Petty," attributed to supernatural agency. An enormous boul-
der had been carried in the night-time, by the fairies, it was
said, from its resting-jilace on the sea-beach, into the middle
of a little bay, — a journey of several hundred feet ; but old
John, though he had not been on the spot at the time, at onc«
iiilcrrci] that it had been carried, not by the fiirics, but by a
thick cuke of icm, considerable enough, when firmly clasped
OR, THE 5T0KY OF MY EDUCATION. 265
round it, to float it away. He had seen, he told me, stonea
of very considerable size floated off" by ice on the shore opposite
his cottage, in the upper reaches of the Cromarty Frith : ice
was an agent that sometimes " walked off" with great stones ;'•
whereas he had no evidence whatever that the fairies had any
powers that way ; and so he accepted the agent A'hich he knew,
as the true one in the removal of the travelled stone, and not
the hypothetical agents, of which he knew nothing. Such was
the natural philosophy of old John ; and in this special in-
stance geologic science has since fully confirmed his decision.
Ho was chiefly a favorite among us, however, from his even
and cheerful temper, and his ability of telling humorous sto-
ries, that used to set the barrack in a roar, and in which he
never spared himself, if the exhibition of a weakness or absurd-
ity gave but point to the fun. His narrative of a visit to hiver-
ness, which he had made when an apprentice lad, to see a
sheep-steal er hung, and his description of the terrors of a night-
journey back, in which he fancied he saw men waiving in the
wind on almost every tree, till, on reaching his solitary bar-
rack, he was utterly prostrated by the ajjparition of his own
great-coat suspended from 3 pin, has oftener than once con
vulsed us with laughter. But John's humorous confessions,
based as they always were on a strong good sense, that always
saw the early folly in its most ludicrous aspect, never lowered
him in our eyes. Of his wonderful skill as a workman, much
was incommunicable ; but it was at least something to know
the principles on which he directed the operations of what a
phrenologist would perhaps term his extraordinary fliculties
o^form and size ; and so I recognize old John as one of not the
least useful nor able of my many teachers. Some of his
professional lessons were of a kind which the south and east
country mason would be the better for knowing. In that rainy
district of Scotland of which we at this time occupied the cen
tral tract, rubble walls built in the ordinary style leak like the
bad roofs of other parts of the country ; and mansion-houses
constructed within its precincts by qualified workmen from
Edinburgh and Glasg'^w hj>ve been found to admit the watei
266 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
in such torrents as to be uninhabitable, until their more ( \
posed walls had been slated over like their roofs. Old John,
however, always succeeded in building water-tight walls. De
parting from the ordinary rule of the builder elsewhere, and
which on the east coast of Scotland he himself always respect-
ed, he slightly elevated the under beds of his stones, instead
of laying them, as usual, on the dead level ; while along the
edges of their upper beds he struck off a small rude champer*
and by these simple contrivances, the rain, though driven witl
violence against his work, coursed in streams along its face,
without entering into the interior and soaking through.
For about six weeks we had magnificent weather, — clear
sunny skies and calm seas; and I greatly enjoyed ray even-
ing rambles amid the hills, or along the sea-shore. I was
struck, in these walks, by the amazing abundance of the wild
flowers which covered the natural meadows and lower hill-
slopes, — an abundance, as I have since remarked, equally char-
acteristic of both the northern and western islands of Scot-
land. The lower slopes of Gairloch, of western Sutherland,
of Orkney, and of the northern Hebrides generally, — though
for the purposes of the agriculturist, vegetation languishes,
and wheat is never reared, — are by many degrees richer in
wild flowers than the fat loamy meadows of England. They
resemble gaudy pieces of carpeting, as abundant in petals as in
leaves. Little of the rare is to be detected in these meadows,
save, pcrhajis, that in those of western Sutherland a few Alpine
plants may be found at a greatly lower level than elsewhere in
Britain ; but the vast profusion of blossoms borne by species
common to almost every other i)art of the kingdom, inijiarta
totiiem an ai)p:ircntly novel character. We nuiy detect, 1 am
inclined to think, in this singular floral j)rofiision, the opera-
tion of a law not less influential in the animal than in the
vegetable world, which, when hardship presses upon tlie life
of the indivi<lnal shrub or (piadrupt'd, so as to threaten its
vitality, renders it fruitful in behalf of its species. 1 have seen
the principle strikingly exemplified in the conmion tobaiM^c
plant, will n rehired in a northern country in the open air.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 267
lifear after year it continued to degenerate, and to exhibit a
smaller leaf and shorter stem, until the successors of what in
the first year of trial had been vigorous plants, of some three
to four feet in height, had in the sixth or eighth become mere
weeds of scarce as many inches. But while the as yet uude
generate plant had merely borne atop a few florets, which pro
duced a small quantity of exceedingly minute seeds, the stunted
weed, its descendant, was so thickly covered over in its season
with its pale yellow bells, as to present the appearance of a
nosegay ; and the seeds produced were not only bulkier in the
mass, but also individually of much greater size. The tobacco
had grown productive in proportion as it had degenerated.
In the common scurvy-grass, too, — remarkable, with some
other plants, for taking its jilace among both the productions
of our Alpine heights and of our sea-shores, — it will be found
that, in proportion as its habitat proves ungenial, and its leaves
and stems become dwarfish and thin, its little white cruciform
flowers increase, till, in localities where it barely exists, as if
on the edge of extinction, we find the entire plant forming a
dense bundle of seed-vessels, each charged to the full with
seed. And in the gay meadows of Gairloch and Orkney,
crowded with a vegetation that approaches its northern limit
of production, we detect what seems to be the same principle
chronically operative ; and hence, it would seem, their extra-
ordinary gaiety. Their richly blossoming plants are the poor
productive Irish of the vegetable world ; for Doubleday
seems to be quite in the right in holding, that the law extends
to not only the inferior animals, but to our own species also.
The lean, ill-fed sow and rabbit rear, it has been long known,
a greatly more numerous progeny than the same animals
when well cared for and fat ; and every horse and cattle breeder
knows that to over-feed his animals proves a sure mode of
rendering them sterile. The sheep, if tolerably well pastured,
brings forth only a single lamb at a birth ; but if half-starved
and lean, the chances are that it may bring forth two or three.
And so it is also wit) the greatly higher human race. Place
them in cir'*umstance of degradation and hardship so extreme
268 MY scr.ooLS and schoolmasters;
as almost to threaten their existence as individuals, and they
increase, as if in behalf of the species, with a raj^idity without
precedent in circumstances of greater comfort. The aristo-
cratic families of a country are continually running out; and
it requires frequent creations to keep up the House of Lords,
whereas our poorer people seem increasing in more than the
arithmetical ratio. In Syke, though fully two-thirds of the
populatiou emigrated early in the latter half of the last cen-
tury, a single generation had scarce passed ere the gap was
completely filled ; and miserable Ireland, as it existed ere the
famine, would have been of itself sufficient, had the human
family no other breeding-place, to people in a few ages the
world. Here, too, in close neighborhood with the flower-
covered meadows, were there miserable cottages that were
swarming with children, — cottages in which, for nearly the
half of every twelvemonth, the cereals were unknown as food,
and whose over-toiled female inmates did all the domestic
work, and more than half the work of the little fields outside.
How exquisitely the sun sets in a clear, calm, summer even-
ing over the blue Hebrides ! Within less than a mile of our
barrack there rose a tall hill, whose bold summit commanded
all the Western Isles, from Sleat in Skye, to the Butt of the
Lewis. To the south lay the trap islands ; to the north and
west, the gneiss ones. They formed, however, seen from ihis
hill, one great group, which, just as the sun had sunk, and sea
and sky were so equally bathed in gold as to exhibit on the
horizon no dividing line, seemed in their transparent purple, —
darker or lighter according to the distance, — a group of lovely
clouds, that, though moveless in the calm, the first light breeze
might sweep away. Even the flat promontories of sandstone
which, like outstretched arms, enclosed the outer reaches of
tlie foreground, — promontories edged with low red dills, and
covered with l)rown heath, — used to borrow at these tinr.MS,
from th<; sf>ft y«'ll<>w l)caiii, a beauty not their own. Amid
the inequalities of the gneiss region within, — a region more
broken and precipitous, l)ut of humbler altitude, than the great
^leiss trsct of llic midland Highlands, — the chequered light
OB , THE STOBY OF MY EDUCATION. 269
and shade lay, as the sun declined, in strongly-contrasted
patches, that betrayed the abrupt inequalities of the ground,
and bore, when all around was warm, tinted and bright, a hue
of cold neutral gray ; while immediately over and beyond thi?
rough sombre base there rose two noble pyramids of red sand-
stone, about two thousand feet in height, that used to flare tc
the setting sun in bright crimson, and whose nearly horizontal
strata, deeply scored along the lines, like courses of ashlar in
an ancient wall, added to the mural efiect communicated by
their bare fronts and steep rectilinear outlines. These tall
pyramids form the terminal members, towards the south, of an
extraordinary group of sandstone hills, of denudation unique
in the British islands, to which I have already referred, and
which extends from the northern boundary of Assynt to neai
Applecross. But though I formed at this time my first ac-
quaintance with the group, it was not until many years after
that I had an opportunity of determining the relations of
their component beds to each other, and to the fundamental
rocks of the country.
At times my walks were directed along the sea-shore. Nat-
aralists well know how much the western coasts of Scotland
difi'er in their productions from its eastern ones ; but it was a
difference wholly new to me at this time ; and though my
limited knowledge enabled me to detect it in but compar-
atively few particulars, I found it no uninteresting task to trace
it for myself in even these few. I was first attracted by one of
the larger sesrweeds, Ilima/ithalia lorea, — with its cup-shaped
disc and long thong-like receptacles, — which 1 found vcr;y
abundant on the rocks here, but which I had never seen in
the upper reaches of the Moray Frith, and which is by no
means very common on any portion of the east coast. From
the sea-weeds I passed to the shells, among which I detected
not only a difference in the proportions in which tne various
species occurred, Init also species that were new to me, — such
as a shell, not rare in Gairloch, Nassa reticulata, but rarely it
ever seen in the Moray or Cromarty Friths ; and three other
shell* which I saw here for the first time, Trochus uinbilicaf.u<i
270 MY SCHOOLS ANL SCHOOLMASTERS ;
Trochns magus, and Pecten niveus* I found, too, that th\
common edible oyster, ostrea edulis, which on the ejist coast
lies always in comparatively deep water, is sometimes found
in the Gairloch, as, for instance, in the little bay opposite
riowerdale, in beds laid bare by the ebb of stream-tides. It
is always interesting to come unexpectedly either upon a new
species oi a striking peculiarity in an old one ; and I deemed
it a curious and suggestive fact, that there should be British
shells still restricted to our western shores, and that have not
yet made their way into the German Ocean, along the coasts
of either extremity of the island. Are we to infer that they
are shells of more recent origin than the widely-ditfused ones 1
or are they merely feebler in their reproductive powers 1 and
is the German Ocean, as some of our geologists hold, a com-
paratively modern sea, into which only the hardier mollusca
of rapid increase have yet made their way 1 Further, I found
that the true fishes differ considerably in the group on the
opposite sides of the island. The haddock and whiting are
greatly more common on the east coast : the hake and horse
mackerel very much more abundant on the west. Even where
the species are the same on both sides, the varieties are differ-
ent. The herring of the west coast is a short, thick, richly-
flavored fish, greatly superior to the large lean variety so
abundant on the east ; whereas the west-coast cod are large-
headed, thin-bodied, pale-colored fishes, inferior, even in theii
best season, to the darker-colored, small-headed variety of
the east. In no respect do the two coasts differ more, at leasi
to the north of the GrampijWis, than in the transparency of the
water. The bottom is rarely seen on the east coast at a depth
• Tliere are only two of these exclusively west-const shells, — Vrochus umbUita-
tut and Vecten nivtus. A» neither of them lias yet been delecteil In any Tor
Mary formation, Ihcy are In all probability shells of conitiaratively recent origin,
that cum ) Into existence In some western centre of creation ; whereiis speoU
mens of TVochut ma/run and JVasta reticulata, which occasionally occur on th«
eastuni coasts of the kingdom, I have also foiMid in a PleiMtoceno <leposit. Thiia
'Jie more widely-spread shells Rt«m to bi^ also the vhells of more ancient stand
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 271
01 more than twenty feet, and not often at more than twelve ;
whereas on the west I have seen it very distinctly, durinfr a
tract of dry v/eather, at a depth of sixty or seventy feet. The
handles of the spears used in Gairloch in spearing flat fish and
the common edible crab [Cancer Pa^urus), are sometimes five-
and-twenty feet in length, — a length which might in vain be
given to spear-handles upon the east coast, seeing that there,
at such a depth of water, flat fish or crab was never yet seen
from the surface.
Deceived by this transparency, I have plunged oftener than
once over head and ears, when bathing among the rocks, in
pools where I had confidently expected to find footing. From
a rock that rose abrupt as a wall from the low-water level of
stream -tides to a little above the line of flood, 1 occasionally
amused myself, when the evenings were calm, in practising
the Indian method of diving, — that in which the diver carries a
weight with him, to facilitate his sinking, and keep him stead-
ily at the bottom. I used to select an oblong-shaped stone,
of sixteen or eighteen pounds weight, but thin enough to be
easily held in one hand ; and after grasping it fast, and quit
ting the rock edge, I would in a second or two find myself" on
the gray pebble-strewed ooze beneath, some twelve or fifteen
feet from the surfiice, where I found I could steadily remain,
picking up any small objects I chanced to select, until, breath
failing, I quitted my hold of the stone. And then two or
three seconds more were always sufficient to bring me *o the
surface again. There are many descriptions, in the works of
the poets, of submarine scenery, bift it is always scenery sucTi
as may be seen by an eye looking down into the water, — not
by an eye enveloped in it, — and very diflferent from that with
which I now became acquainted. I found that m these hasty
trips to the bottom I could distinguish masses and colors, but
that I always failed to determine outlines. The minuter ob-
jects—pebbles, shells, and the smaller bunches of sea-weed —
always assumed the circular form ; the larger, such as detach-
ed rocks and patches of sand, appeared as if described by ir
"egular curves. The dingy gneiss rock rose behind and over
272 MY SCHJOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
me like a lark cloud, thickly dotted with minute circular spots
of soiled white, — the aspect assumed, as seen through the
water, by the numerous specimens of univalve shells {^Purpu-
ra lapilli.s and Patella vulgata) with which it was speckled;
beneath, the irregular floor seemed covered by a carpet that
somewhat resembled in the pattern a piece of marbled paper,
save that the circular or oval patches of which it was com-
posed, and which had as their nuclei, stones, rocks, shell-fish,
bunches of fuci, and fronds of laminaria, were greatly larger.
There spread around a misty groundwork of green, intensely
deep along its horizon, but comparatively light overhead, in
its middle sky, which had always its prodigy, — wonderful cir-
clets of light, that went widening outwards, and with whose
delicate green there mingled occasional flashes of pale crim-
son. Such was the striking though somewhat meagre scenery
of a sea-bottom in Gairloch, as seen by a human eye sub-
merged m from two to three fathoms of water.
There still continued to linger in this primitive district, at
the time, several curious arts and implements, that had lung
become obsolete in most other parts of the Highlands, and of
which the remains, if found in England or the Low country,
would have been regarded by the antiquary as belonging to
very remote periods. During the previous winter I had read
a little work descriptive of an ancient ship, supposed to be
Danish, which had been dug out of the silt of an linglish river,
and which, among other marks of antiquity, exhibited seams
caulked with moss, — a peculiarity which had set at fiiult, it
was said, the modern shi]l«-carp(ntcr, in the chronology of Ills
art, as he was unaware there had ever been a time when moss
was used for such a purpose. On visiting, however, a boat-
yard at (jtairloch, I found the Highland builder engaged in
laying a layer of dried moss, steeped in tar, along one of his
sejiMis, and learned that such had l)een ihe practice of boat-
carpenters in that locality from lime imincuu>rial. I have
said that the little old Highlander of the solitary shieling,
whom ve niet on llrst commencing our quarrying labors be-
lido his hut, wjis engaged in stripping with a jK^'kct-knife
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 273
{ong slender filaments from off a piece of moss-fir. He waa
employed in preparing these ligneous fibres for the manufac-
ture of a primitive kind of cordage, in large use among the
fishermen, and which possessed a strength and flexibility that
could scarce have been expected from materials of such vener-
able age and rigidity as the roots and trunks of ancient trees,
that had been locked up in the peat-mosses of the district for
mayliap a thousand years. Like the ordinary cordage of the
rope-maker, it consisted of three strands, and was employed
for haulsers, the cork-bauks of herring nets, and the lacing of
sails. Most of the sails themselves were made, not of canvass,
but of a woollen stuff, the thread of which, greatly harder and
stouter than that of common plaic had been spun on the dis-
taff and spindle. As hemp and flax must have been as rare
commodities of old in the western Highlands, and the He-
brides generally, as they both were thirty years ago in Gair-
loch, whereas moss-fir must have been abundant, and sheep,
however coarse their fleeces, common enough, it seems not
improbable that the old Highland fleets that fought in the
" Battle of the Bloody Bay," or that, in troublous times, when
Donald quarrelled with the king, ravaged the coasts of Arran
and Ayrshire, may have been equipped with similar sails and
cordac;e. Scott describes the fleet of the " Lord of the Isles,"
in the days of the Bruce, as consisting of " proud galleys,"
" streamered with silk and tricked with gold." 1 suspect he
would have approved himself a truer antiquary, though, may-
hap, worse poet, had he described it as composed of very rude
carvels, caulked with moss, furnished with sails of dun-color-
ed woollen stuff" still redolent of the oil, and rigged out with
brown cordage formed of the twisted fibres of moss-fir. The
distaff and spindle was still, as I have said, '.n extensive use
hi the district. In a scattered village in the ..eighborhood of
our barrack, in which all the adult females were ceaselessly en-
gaged in the manufacture of yarn, there was not a single spin-
ning-whccl. Nor, though all its cottages had their little pieces
of tillage, did it boast its horse or plow. The cottars turned
up the soil with the old Highland implement, the cass chrotn ,
274 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
and the necessary manure was carried to the fields in spring
and the produce brought home in autumn, on the oacks of the
women, in square wicker-work panniers, with slip-bottoms.
How these poor Highland women did toil ! I have paused
amid my labors under the hot sun, to watch them as they
passed, bending under their load of peat or manure, and at
the same time twirling the spindle as they crept along, and
drawing out the never-ending thread from the distaff stuck in
their girdles. Their appearance in most cases betrayed their
e of hardship. I scarce saw a Gairloch woman of the
imbler class turned of thirty, who was not thin, sallow, and
prematurely old. The men, their husbands and brothers, were
by no means worn out with hard work. I have seen them,
time after time, sunning themselves on a mossy bank, when
the females were thus engaged ; and used, with my brother-
workmen, — who were themselves Celts, but of the industrious,
hardworking type, — to feel sufficiently indignant at the lazy
fellows. But the arrangement which gave them rest, and
their wives and sisters hard labor, seemed to be as much the
offspring of a remote age as the woollen sails and the moss-fir
cordage. Several other ancient practices and implements had
at this time just disappeared from the district. A good meal-
mill of the modern construction had superseded, not a genera-
tion before, several small mills M'ith horizontal water-wheels,
of that rude antique type which first suj)j)lanted the still more
ancient handmill. These horizontal mills still exist, however,
— ^at least they did so only two years ago, — in the gneiss re-
gion of Assynt. The anti(]uiiry sometimes forgets that, tested
ny his special rules for dcterniiiiing periods, several ages may
be foiind contemporary in contiguous districts of the same
country. I am old enough to have seen the hnndmill at work,
in the north of Scotland ; and the traveller into the High
lands of western Sutliei'laiid might have witnessed the hori-
zontal mill in action only two years ago. But to the riinaiiis
pf either, if dug out oi' the mosses or sand-hills of the southern
counties, we would assign an antiquity of centuries. In the
same way, the unglazod earthen pipkin, fashioned by the hand
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 275
without the assistance of the potter's wheel, is held to belong
to the '• broi'ie and stone periods" of the antiquary ; and yet
m/ friend of^be Doocot Cove, when minister of Small Isles,
found the remi\ins of one of these pipkins in the famous char-
nel cave of Ligg, which belonged to an age not earlier than
that of Mary, arid more probably pertained to that of her son
James; and I have since learned that in the southern portions
rf the Long Island, this same hand-moulded pottery of the
bronze period has been fashioned for domestic use during the
early part of the present century. A chapter devoted to these
lingering, or only recently departed, arts of the primitive ages,
would be a curious one ; but I fear the time for writing it is
now well-nigh past. My few facts on the subject may serve
to show that, even as late as the year 1823, some three days'
journey into the Highlands might be regarded as analagous in
some respects to a journey into the past of some three or four
centuries. But even since that comparatively recent period
the Highlands have greatly changed.
After some six or eight weeks of warm sunny days and
lovely evenings, there came on a dreary tract of rainy weather,
with strong westerly gales ; and for three months together,
while there was scarce a day that had not its shower, some
days had half-a-dozen. Gairloch occupies, as I have said,
exactly the focus of that great curve of annual ruin which,
impinging on our western shores from the Atlantic, extends
from, the north of Assynt to the south of Mull, and exhibits
on the rain-gauge an average of thirty-five yearly inches, — an
average very considerably above the medium quantity that
falL in any other part of Great Britain, save a small tract at
the Land's End, included in a southern curve of equal fall.
The rain-flill of this year, however, must have stood very con-
siderably above even this high average ; and the corn crops of
the poor Highlanders soon began to testify to the fact. There
had been a larger than ordinary promise during the fine
weather ; but in the darker hollows the lodged oats and bar-
ley now lay rotting on the ground, or, on the more exposed
heights, stood up, shorn of the ears, as mere naked spikes of
13
276 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
Straw. Tlie potatoes, to:), had become soft and watery, anv*
must have form^ed but indifferent food to the poor Higlilanders ;
condemned even in better seasons to feed upo« them during
tho greater part of the year, and now thrown upon them a]-
tr )st exclusively by the failure of the corn crop. The cot
tars of the neighboring village were on other accounts in more
than usually depressed circumstances at the time. Each
family paid to the laird for its patch of corn-land, and the
pasturage of a wide upland moor, on which each kept three
cows a-piece, a small yearly rent of three pounds. The males
were all fishermen as well as crofters ; and, small as the rent
was, they derived their only means of paying it from the sea, —
chiefly, indeed, from the herring-fishery, — which, ever>' where
an uncertain and precarious source of supply, is more so here
than in most other places on the north-western coasts of Scot-
land. And as for three years together the herring-fishing had
failed in the Loch, they had been unable, term after term, to
meet with the laird, and were now three years in arrears. For-
tunately for them, he was a humane, sensible man, comfortable
enough in his circumstances to have, what Highland proprietors
often have not, the complete command of his own affairs ; but
they all felt that their cattle were their own only by sufferance,
and so long as he forbore urging liis claim against them ; and
they entertained but little hope of ultimate extrication. I saw
among these poor men much of that indolence of which the
country has heard not a little; and could not doubt, from the
peculiar aspects in which it presented itself, that it was, as 1
have said, a long-derived hereditary indolence, in which their
(ill hers and grandfathers had indulged fo'- centuries. But there
was certainly little in their circumstances to lead to the forma
tion of new habits of industry. Even a previously industrious
i->eople, were they to be located with! i the great north-western
curve of thirty-five inch rain, to raise corn and jtotatoes for the
nulumnal storms to blast, and to fish in the laird's liilialf her-
rings that year aft«'r year refused to come to l)e caught, would,
I suspect, in a short time get nearly as indolent as themselves.
And certainly, judging from the contrast which my brother
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 277
workmen presented to these Highlanders of the west coast, the
indolence which we saw, and for which my comrades had no
tolerance whatever, could scarce be described as inherently
Celtic. I myself was the only genuine Lowlander of our
party. John Fraser, who, though now turned of sixty, would
have laid or hewn stone for stone with the most diligent Saxon
mason in Britain or elsewhere, was a true Celt of the Scandina^
7ian-Gaelic variety ; and all our other masons, — Macdonalds,
M'Leods, and Mackays, hard-working men, who were con-
tent to toil from season to season, and all day long, — were true
Cc'ts also. But they had been bred on the eastern border of
the Highlands, in a sandstone district, where they had the op-
portunity of acquiring a trade, and of securing in the working
season regular well-remunerated employment ; and so they
had developed into industrious, skilled mechanics, of at least
the ordinary efficiency. There are other things much more
deeply in fault as producing causes of the indolence of the
west-coast Highlander than his Celtic blood.
On finishing the dwelling-house upon which we had been
engaged, nearly one half the woi-kmen quitted the squad for
the low country, and the remainder removed to the neighbor-
hood of the inn at which we had spent our first night, or
rather morning, in the place, to build a kitchen and store-room
for the inn-keeper. Among the others, we lost the society of
Click-Clack, who had been a continual source of amusement
and annoyance to us in the barrack all the season long. We
soon found that he was regarded by the Highlanders in our
neighborhood with feelings of the intensest horror and dread :
they had learned somehow that he used to be seen in the low
country flitting suspiciously at nights about churchyards, and
was suspected of being a resurrectionist ; and not one of the
ghouls or vampires of eastern story could have been more
feared or hated in the regions which they were believed to infest,
than a resurrectionist in the Western Highlands. Click-Clack
had certainly a trick of wandering about at nights; and not
unfrequently did he bring, on his return from some ncctur-
Dal ramble, dead bodies with him into the barrack ; but they
278 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS;
were invariably the dead bodies of cod, gurnard, and hake,
know not where his fishing-bank lay, or what bait he employ-
ed ; but I observed that almost all the fish which he caught
were ready dried and salted. Old John Fraser was not with-
out suspicion that there were occasional interferences on the
part of the carter with the integrity of our meal-barrel ; and
I have seen the old man smoothing the surflice of the meal,
just before quitting the barrack for his work, and inscribing
upon it with his knife-point the important moral injunction,
" Thou shalt not steal," in such a way as to render it impos-
sible to break the commandment within the precincts of the
barrel, without at the same time effacing some of its charac-
ters. And these once effaced, Click-Clack, as he was no
writer himself, and had no assistant or confidant, could not
have re-inscribed. Ere quitting us for the low country, I bar-
gained with him that he should carry my blanket in his cart
to Conon-side, and gave him a shilling and a dram in advance,
as pay for the service. He carried it, however, no farther than
the next inn, where, pledging it for a second shilling and a
second dram, he left me to relieve it as I passed. Poor Click-
Clack, though one of the cleverest of his class, was decidedly
half-witted; and I may rcr.irk, as at least curious, that
though I have known idiotcy in its unmixed state united to
great honesty, and capable of disinterested attachment, I
never yet knew one of the halfwitted cast wlio was not selfish
and a rogue.
We were unlucky in our liarracks this season. Ere com-
pleting our first piece of work, we had to quit the hay-barn,
our earliest dwelling, to make way for the proprietor's hay, and
to shelter in a cow-house, where, as the place had no chimney,'
wc were nearly suflbcated by smoke ; and we now found the
inn-kcepor, our new employer, speculating, like the magistrates
in Joe Mill'"", on tlie practicability of lodging us in a building
the materials of which were to be used in erecting the one
which we were engaged to build. We did our best to solve
the [)rol)l('in, ])y hanging up at the end of the doomed hovel,
—which had l)een a salt-store in its day, and was in damp
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 279
weather ever s^^ eating salt-water, — a hanging partition of mats.
that somewhat resembled the curtain of a barn-theatre; and,
making our beds within, we began pulling down piecemeal, as
the materials were required, that part of the erection which
lay outside. We had very nearly unhoused ourselves ere our
work was finished ; and the chill blasts of October, especially
when they blew in at the open end of our dwelling, rendered
it as uncomfortable as a shallow cave in an exposed rock-frout.
My boyish experiences, however, among the rocks of Cromarty,
constituted no bad preparation for such a life, and I roughed
it out at least as well as any of my comrades. The day had
so contracted, that night always fell upon our unfinished lar
bors, and I had no evening walks ; but there was a delight-
ful gneiss island, of about thirty acres in extent, and nearly
two miles away, to which I used to be occasionally despatched
to quarry lintels and corner stones, and where work had all
the charms of play ; and the quiet Sabbaths were all my own.
So long as the laird and his family were at the mansion-house
at Flowerdale, — at least four months of every year, — there
was an English service in the parish church ; but I had come
to the place this season before the laird, and now remained in
it after he had gone away, and there was no English service
for me. And so I usually spent my Sabbath^ all alone in the
noble Flowerdale woods, now bright, under their dark hill-
sides, in the autumnal tints, and remarkable for the great
height and bulk of their ash trees, and of a few detached firs,
that spoke, in their venerable massiveness, of former centuries.
The clear, calm mornings, when the gossamer went sailing in
long gray films along the retired glades of the wood, and the
straggling sunlight fell on the crimson and orange mushroom,
as it sprang up amid the dank grass, and under thi ;kly-leaved
bougns of scarlet and gold, I deemed peculiarly delightiiil,
For one who had neither home nor church, the autunuial
woods formed by much a preferable Sabbath haunt to a shal-
low cave, dropping brine, unprovided with chair or table, and
whose only furniture consisted of two rude bedsteads of un
dressed slab? that bore atop two blankets a-piece and a heap
280 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
of straw. Sabbath-walking in parties, and especially in the
neighborhood of our large towns, is always a frivolous, and
often a very bad thing ; but lonely Sabbath-walks in a rural
district, — walks such as the poet Grahame describes, — are not
necessarily bad ; and the Sabbatarians who urge that in all
cases, men, when not in church on the Sabbath, ought to be
in their dwellings, must know very little indeed of the " huts
where poor men lie." In the mason's barrack, or the farni'
servant's bothy, it is often impossible to enjoy the quiet of the
Sabbath : the circumstances necessary to its enjoyment must
be sought in the open air, amid the recesses of son-.e thick
wood, or along the banks of some unfrequented river, jr on
the brown wastes of some solitary moor.
We had completed all our work ere Hallowday, and, after
a journey of nearly three days, I found myself once more at
home, with the leisure of the long happy winter before me. 1
still look back on the experiences of this year with a feeling
of interest. I had seen in my boyhood, in the interior of
Sutherland, the Highlanders living in that condition of com-
parative comfort which they enjoyed from shortly after the
suppression of the rebellion of 1745. and the abolition of the
hereditary jurisdictions, till the beginning of the present cen-
tury, and in some localities for ten or twelve years later. And
here again I saw them in a condition — the effect mainly of the
introduction of the extensive sheep-farm system into the in-
terior of the country — which has since become general over
almost the entire Highlands, and of which the result may be
seen in the annual famines. The population, formerly spread
pretty equally over the country, now exists as a miserable
selvage, stretched along its shores, dependent in most cases on
precarious fisheries, that )>rove remunerative for a year or two,
and disastrous for mayliaj) half-a-dozen. And, aMe ])arely to
subsist when most successful, a failure of the potato crop, or
in the expected return of the hi>rring shoals, at once reduces
them to starvation. Tlu* grand dillerence l)ctween the circiini-
stances of the people of the Highlands in the better time and
Uie worse, may bi- summed up in the one important vocable,
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 281
— capital. The Highlander was never wealthy : tht. inhabit-
ants of a wild mountainous district, formed of the primary
rocks, never are. But he possessed on the average his six, or
eight, or ten head of cattle, and his small flock of sheep ; and
when, as sometimes happened in the high-lying districts, the
corn-crop turned out a failure, the sale of a few cattle or sheep
more than served to clear scores with the landlord, and enabled
him to purchase his winter and spring supply of meal in the
Lowlands. lie was thus a capitalist, and possessed the capi-
talist's peculiar advantage of not "living from hand to mouth,"
but on an accumulated fund, which always stood between him
and absolute want, though not between him and positive hard-
ship, and which enabled him to rest, during a year of scarcity,
on his own resources, instead of throwing himself on the charity
of his Lowland neighbors. Nay, in what were emphatically
termed " the dear years" of the beginning of the present and
latter half of the past century, the humble people of the Low
lands, especially our Lowland mechanics and laborers, suf
fered more than the crofters and small farmers of the High-
lands, and this mainly from the circumstance, that as the
failure of the crops which induced the scarcity was a corn
failure, not a failure of grass and pasture, the humbler High-
landers had sheep and cattle, which continued to supply them
with food and raiment ; while the humbler Lowlanders, de-
pending on corn almost exclusively, and accustomed to deal
with the draper for their articles of clothing, were reduced by
the high price of provisions to great straits. There took place,
however, about the beginning of the century, a mighty change,
coincident with, and, to a certain extent, an effect of, the wars
of the first French Revolution. The price of provisions rose
in England and the Lowlands, and, with the price of provis
ions, the rent of land. The Highland proprietor naturally
enough set himself to determine how his rental also was to be
increased ; and, as a consequence of the conclusion at which
he arrived, the sheep-farm and clearance-system began. Many
thousand Highlanders, ejected from their snug holdings, em-
ployed their little capital in emigrating to Canada and the
282 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
States ; and there, in most cases, the little capital increased,
and a rude plenty continues to be enjoyed by their descendants.
Many thousands more, however, fell down upon the coasts of
the country, and, on moss-covered moors or bare promontories,
ill-suited to repay the labors of the agriculturist, commenced
a sort of amphibious life as crofters and fishermen. And, lo-
cated on an ungenial soil, and prosecuting with but indifferent
skill a precarious trade, their little capital dribbled out of their
hands, and they became the poorest of men. Meanwhile, in
some parts of the Highlands and Islands, a busy commerce
sprang up, which employed — much to the profit of the land-
lords — many thousands of the inhabitants. The kelp manu
facture rendered inhospitable islets and tracts of bleak rocky
shore, rich in sea-weed, of as much value to the proprietors
as the best land in Scotland ; and under the impetus given by
full employment, and, if not ample, at least remunerative pay,
population increased. Suddenly, however. Free Trade, in its
first approaches, destroyed the trade in kelp ; and then the dis-
covery of a cheap mode of manufacturing soda out of common
salt secured its ruin beyond the power of legislation to retrieve.
Both the people and landlords experienced in the kelp dis-
tricts the evils which a ruined commerce alway leaves behind
it. Old Highland fomilies disappeared from amid the aristoc-
racy and landowners of Scotland ; and the population of ex-
tensive islands and sea-boards of the country, from being no
more than adequate, suddenly l)ecame oppressively redundant.
It required, however, another drop to make the fidl cup run
over. The potato'es had become, as I have shown, the staple
food of the Ilighlandor ; and when, in 1846, the potato blight
came on, the people, most of (hem previously stripped of their
little capitals, and divested of their employment, were (]ej>rived
of their food, and niiiieil at a blow. The same stroke which
did little more than slightly inijiinge on the comforts of the
people of the Lowlands, uMerly prostrated the Highlanders;
and ever since, the sufferings of fiunine have become chronic
along the bleak sliores and rugged ishuidsof at least the north-
western j)orli<)n of our country. Nor is it perhaps the worst
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 28.-<
pan of the evil that takes the form of clamorous want : so
heavily have the famines born on a class which were not ab-
solutely the poor when they came on, that they are absolutely
the poor now ; — they have dissipated the last remains of capi
tal possessed by [he people of the Highlands.
284 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERa •
CHAPTER XIV,
"Edina! Scotia's darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and towers 1"
Burns.
There had occurred a sad accident among the Cromarty rocks
this season, when I was laboring in Gairloch, which, from
the circumstance that it had nearly taken place in my own
person about five years before, a good deal impressed me on
my return. A few hundred yards from the very bad road
which I had assisted old Johnstone of the Forty-Second in
constructing, there is a tall inaccessible precipice of ferruginous
gneiss, that from time immemorial down to tliis period had
furnished a secure nestling-place to a pair of ravens, — the only
birds of their species that frequented the rocks of the Hill.
Year after year, regularly as the breeding season came round,
the ravens used to make their a|ipoar;uioo. and enter on po*
session of their hereditary home : they had done so for a hun
drcd years to a certainty, — some said, for a much longer tinu' ;
and as there existed a tradition in tlie place that the nest had
once been robbed of its young birds l)y a bold climber, I paid
it a visit one morning, in order to determine whether I could
not rob it too. There was no getting up to it from below:
the precipice, more inaccessil)le for about a hundred feet from
ils base than a castle-wall, overhung the shore; but it seemed
oit impracticable from above; and, coming gradually down
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 285
upon it, availing myself, af T crept along, of every little protu
berance and hollow, I at length stood within six or eight feet
of the young birds. From that point, however, a smooth shelf,
without projection or cavity, descended at an angle of about
forty, to the nest, and terminated abruptly, without ledge or
margin, in the overhanging precipice. Have I not, I asked,
crept along a roof of even a steeper slope than that of the
shelf? Why not, in like manner, creep along it to the nest,
where there is firm footing ? I had actually stretched out my
naked foot to take the first step, when I observed, as the sun
suddenly broke out from behind a cloud, that the light glisten-
ed on the smooth surface. It was encrusted over by a thin
layer of chlorite, slippery as the mixture of soap and grease
that the ship-carpenter spreads over his slips on the morning
of a launch. I at once saw there was an element of danger
in the wav on which I had at first failed to calculate : and so,
relinquishing the attempt as hopeless, I returned by the path I
had come, and thought no more of robbing the raven's nest.
It was, however, again attempted this season, but with tragic
result, by a young lad from Sutherland named Mackay, who
had previously approved his skill as a cragsman in his native
county, and several times secured the reward given by an
Agricultural Society for the destruction of young birds of
prey. As the incident was related to me, he had approached
the nest by the path which I had selected : he had paused
where I had paused, and even for a longer time ; and then,
venturing forward, he no sooner committed himself to the
treacherous chlorite, than, losing footing as if on a steep sheet
of ice, he shot right over the precipice. Falling sheer for the
first fifty feet or so without touching the rock, he was then
turned full round by a protuberance against which he had
glanced, and descending for the lower half of the way head
foremost and dashing with tremendous force among the smooth
sea-stones below, his brains were scattered over an area of
from ten to twelve square yards in extent. His only com-
panion — ^an ignorant Irislr lad — ^had to gather up the fragments
of his head in a napkin.
286 MY scjrooLS and schoolmasters ;
I now felt that, save for the gleam of the sun on the glisten
ing chlorite, — seen not a moment too soon, — I would probably
have been substituted as the victim for poor Mackay, and tliat
he, warned by my fate, would, in all likelihood, have escaped.
And though I knew it night be asked, Why the interposition
of a Providence to save you, when he was left to perish ? I
did feel that I did not owe my escape merely to my acquaint-
ance with chlorite and its properties. For the full develop-
ment of the moral instincts of our nature, one may lead a life
by much too quiet and too secure : a sprinkling in one's lot
of sudden perils and hair-breadth escapes is, I am convinced,
more wholesome, if positive superstition be avoided, than a
tot<al absence of danger. For my own part, though I have, I
trust, ever believed in the doctrine of a particular Providence,
it has been always some narrow escape that has given me my
best evidences of the vitality and strength of the belief within.
It has been ever the touch of danger that has rendered it
strongly emotional. A few years after this time, when stoop-
ing forward to examine an opening'fissure in a rock front, at
which I was engaged in quarrying, a stone, detached from
above by a sudden gust of wind, brushed so closely past my
head as to beat down the projecting front of my bonnet, and
then dented into a deep hollow the sward at my feet. There
was nothing that was not perfectly natural in the occurrence ;
but the gush of acknowledgment that burst spontaneously from
my heart would have set at nought the scepticism which would
have held that tliere was no Providence in it. On another
occasion, I paused for some time when examining a cave of
the old-coast lino, directly under its low-browed roof oi Old
Red conglomerate, as little aware of the presence of danger as
;f I had been standing under the dome of St. Paul's ; but when
\ next passed the way, the roof had fallen, and a mass, huge
enough lo liavc given mo at once death and burial, cumbered
the spot which I had occupied. On yet another occasion, I
clanibered a few yards down a precipice, to examine some
crali apple trees, wliieh, springing from a turret-like projec-
tion of the rock, fur from gardens or nurseries, had every
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 287
mark of being indigene us; and then, climbing up among the
branches, I shook them in a manner that must have exerted
no small leverage power on the outjet beneath, to possess
myself of some of the fruit, as the native apples of Scotland.
On mj descent I marked, without much thinking of the mat-
ter, an apparent y recent crack running between the outjet and
the body of the precipice. I found, however, cause enough to
think of it on my return, scarce a month after ; for then btith
outjet and trees lay broken and fractured on the beach more
than a hundred feet below. With such momentum had even
tke slimmer twigs been dashed against the sea-pebbles, that
uhey stuck out from under more than a hundred tons of fallen
rock, divested of the bark on their under sides, as if peeled by
the hand. And what I felt on all these occasions was, I be-
lieve, not more in accordance with the nature of man as an in
stinct of the moral faculty, than in agreement with that provis-
ion of the Divine Government under which a sparrow falleth
not without permission, -There perhaps never was a time in
which the doctrine of a particular Providence was more ques-
tioned and doubted than in the present ; and yet the scepticism
which obtains regarding it seems to be very much a scepticism
of eflbrt, conjured up by toiling intellects, in a quiet age, and
among the easy classes ; while the belief which, partially and
for the time, it overshadows, lies safely entrenched all the
while amid the fastnesses of the unalterable nature of man.
When danger comes to touch it, it will spring up in its old
proportions ; nay, so indigenous is it to the human heart, that
if it will not take its cultivated form as a belief in Providence,
it will to a certainty take to it its wild form as a belief in Fate
or Destiny. Of a doctrine so fundamentally important that
there can be no religion without it, God himself seems to have
taken care when He moulded the human heart.
The raven no longer builds among the rocks of the Hill ol
Cromarty, and I saw many years ago its last pair of eagles.
This last noble bird was a not unfrequent visitor of the Sutors
early in the present century. I still remember scaring it from
288 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS;
its perch on the southern side of the hill, as day was drawing
to a close, when the tall precipices amid which it had lodged
lay deep in the shade ; and how picturesquely it used to catch
the red gleam of evening on its plumage of warm brown, as,
saiMng outwards over the calm sea, many hundred feet below,
it emerged from under the shadow of the cliffs into the
sunshine. Uncle James once shot a very large eagle beneath
one of the loftiest precipices of the southern Sutor ; and, swim-
ming out through the surf to recover its body, — for it had drop-
ped dead into the sea, — he kept its skin for many years as a
trophy.* But eagles are now no longer to be seen or shot on
the Sutors or their neighborhood. The badger, too, — one of
perhaps the oldest inhabitants of the country, for its seems to
have been contemporary with the extinct elephants and hyaenas
of the Pleistocene periods, — has become greatly less common
on their steeps sides than in the days of my boyhood ; and both
the fox and otter are less frequently seen. It is not uninterest-
ing to mark with the eye of the geologist, how palpably in
the course of a single lifetime, — still nearly twenty years
short of the term fixed by the Psalmist, — these wild animals
have been posting on in Scotland to that extinction which
overtook, within its precincts, during the human period, the
bear, the beaver, and the wolf, and of which the past history
• Uncle James would scarce have Banctioiied, liad he been consulted in the matter,
the use to wliicli llio carc;ise of his dead eagle was applied. There lived in the place
on eccentric half-witted old woman, who, for the small sum of one half-penny, used
to fall a dancing on the street to amuse children, and who rejoiced in the euphonious
Ihouttli somewhat obscure at)|icllation of "Dribble Drone." Some youni; folloHS, on
seeiuR the easle divosled of its skin, and iDokiiij; remarkably clean and wcll-condi-
tloncd, suggeslcd Hint it should bo senl l<> " Driblile;" and, accordingly In the char
actcr of "a great goom^, the uifl of a genllein.an," it was landed al Ihi door. The
gill was thankfully accepted. Dribble's cottage proved odoriferous at dinner-time
for the several following days; and when asked, atler a week had gone by, how she
had relished the great goose which the getillennin had sent, she replied, that it wai
" I'nro sweet, but OI tench, tench." For yejirs after, the reply continued to he pro-
verbiiil In the place' and many a piece of over-hard slock (Isli, and over-fresh steak,
useil to be characterized as, ''IJke Dribble Drone's eagle, unco swot, but OI leuclt,
teueti,"
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 289
of tht globe, as inscribed on its rocks, furnishes so strange a
record
Winter passed in the usual pursuits ; and I commenced the
worlviug season of a new year by assisting my old master to
inclose with a stone wall a little bit of ground, which he bad
bought on speculation, but had foiled in getting feued out for
buildings. My services, however, were gratuitous, — given
merely to eke out the rather indifferent bargain that the old
man had been able to drive in his own behalf, for my labors
as an apprentice ; and when our job was finished, it became
necessary that I should look out for employment of a more
remunerative character. There was not much doing in the
north ; but work promised to be abundant in the gi'eat towns
of the south: the disastrous building mania of 1824—25 had
just begun ; and, after some little hesitation, I resolved on
trying whether I could not make my way as a mechanic among
the stone-cutters of Edinburgh, — perhaps the most skilful in
their profession in the world. I was, besides, desirous to get
rid of a little property in Leith, which had cost the family
great annoyance, and not a little money, but from which, so
long as the nominal proprietor was a minor, we could not
shake ourselves loose. It was a house on the Coal-hill, or
rather the self-contained ground-floor of a house, which had
fallen to my father by the death of a relative, so immediately
before his own death that he had not entered upon possession.
It was burdened with legacies to the amount of nearly two
hundred pounds ; but then the yearly rent amounted to twenty-
four pounds ; and my mother, acting on the advice of friends,
and deeming the investment a good one, had no sooner re-
covered the insurance-money of my father's vessel from the
underwriter, than she handed the greater part of it to the leg-
atees, and took possession of the property in my behalf Alas !
never was there a more unfortunate inheritance or worse in
vestment. It had been let as a public-house and tap-room,
and had been the scene of a somewhat rough, and, I dare say,
uot very respectable, but vet, orofitable trade ; but no soouf r
290 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
had it become mine, than, in consequence of some alterations
in the harbor, the greater part of the shipping that used to
lie at the Coal-hill removed to a lower reach : the tap-room
business suddenly fell off, and the rent sank, during the course
of one twelvemonth, from twenty-four to twelve pounds. And
then, in its sere and wintry state, the unhappy house came to
be inhabited by a series of miserable tenants, Avho, though
they sanguinely engaged to pay the twelve pounds, never paid
them. I still remember the brief, cui-t letters from our agent,
the late Mr. Veitch, town-clerk of Leith, that never foiled to
fill my mother with terror and dismay, and very much resem-
bled, in at least the narrative parts, jottings by the poet Ci-abbe
for some projected poem on the profligate poor. Two of our
tenants made moonlight flittings just on the eve of the term ;
and though the little furniture which they left behind them
was duly rouped at the cross, such was the inevitable expense
of the transaction, that none of the proceeds of the sale reached
Cromarty. The house was next inhabited by a stout female,
who kept a certain description of lady-lodgers ; and for the
first half-year she paid the rent most conscientiously ; but the
authorities interfering, there was another house found for her
and her ladies in the neighborhood of the Calton, and the rent
of the second half-year remained unpaid. And as the house
lost, in consequence of her occupation, the modicum of char-
acter which it had previously retained, it lay for five years
wholly untenanted, save by a mischievous spirit, — the ghost
it was said, of a murdered gentleman, whose throat had beei
cut in an inner apartment by the ladies, and his body flung bj
night into the deep mud of the harbor. The ghost was, how
ever, at length detected l)y the police, couching, in the form of
one of the ladies themselves, on a lair of straw in the ct^rnei
of one of the rooms, and exorcised into Bridewell ; and then
the house came to be inhabited by a tenant who had both
the will and the ability to pay. One year's rent, however,
had 1o be expended in repairs; and ere the next year passed,
the heritors of the jiarish were rated for the erection of
the magtiificcnt par'sh church of North Leith, with its taU
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 291
aid graceful spire, then in course of building; and as we
had no one to state our case, our house was rated, not accord-
ing to its reduced, but according to its original value. And
so the entire rental of the second year, with several pounds
additional which I had to subtract from my hard-earned sav-
ings as a mason, were appropriated in behalf of the ecclesiastical
Establishment of the country, by the builders of the church
and spire. I had attained my majority when lodging in the
fragment of a salt store-house in Gairloch ; and, competent in
the eye of the law to dispose of the house on the Coal-hill, I
now hoped to find, if not a purchaser, at least some one foolish
enough to take it off my hands for nothing, I have since heard
and read a good deal about the atrocious landlords of the
poorer and less reputable sort of houses in our large towns,
and have seen it asserted that, being a bad and selfish kind
of people, they ought to be rigorously dealt with. And so, I
dare say, they ought ; but at the same time I cannot forget,
that I myself was one of these atrocious landlords from my
fifth till nearly my twenty -second year, and that I could not
possibly help it, and was very sorry for it.
On the fourth day after losing sight of the Hill of Cromarty,
the Leith smack in which I sailed was slowly threading her
way, in a morning of light airs and huge broken fog-wreaths,
through the lower tracts of the Frith of Forth. The islands
and distant land looked dim and gray through the haze, like
objects in an unfinished drawing ; and at times some vast low-
browed cloud from the sea applied the sponge as it rolled past,
and blotted out half a county at a time ; but the sun occa^
sionally broke forth in j)artial glimpses of great beauty, and
brought out in l)old relief little bits of the landscape, — now a
town, and now an islet, and anon the blue summit of a hill,
A sunlit wreath rose from around the abrupt and rugged Bass
as we passed ; and my heart leaped within me as I saw, for
the first time, that stern Patmos of the devout and brave of
another age looming dark and high through the diluted mist,
and enveloped for a moment, as the cloud parted, in an am-
ber *inted glory. There had been a little Presbyterian oasis
292 ilY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS-.
of old in the neighborhood of Cromarty, which, in the midst
of the Highlands and Moderate indifferency that characterized
the greater part of the north of Scotland during the seven-
teenth century, had furnished the Bass with not a few of its
most devoted victims. Mackilligen of Alness, Hogg of Kil-
team, and the Rosses of Tain and Kincardine, hud been in.
carcerated in its dungeons ; and, when laboring in the Cro-
marty quarries in early spring, I used to know that it was time
to gather up my tools for the evening, when I saw the sun
resting over the high-laying farm which formed the patrimony
of another of its better-known victims, — yoinig Fraser of Brea.
And so I looked with a double interest on the bold sea-girt
rock, and the sun-gilt cloud that rose over its scared forehead,
like that still brighter halo which glorifies it in the memories
of the Scottish people. Many a long-cherished association
drew my thoughts to Edinburgh. I was acquainted with Ram-
say, and Fergusson, and the "Humphrey Clinker" of Smollett,
and had read the description of the place in the " Marmion"
and the earlier novels of Scott ; and I was not yet too old to feel
as if I were ap})roaching a gi'cat magical city. — like some of
those in the " Arabian Nights," — that was even more intensely
poetical than Nature itself. I did somewhat chide the tan-
talizing mist, that, like a capricious showman, now raised one
corner of its curtain, and anon another, and showed me the
place at once very indistinctly, and only by bits at a time ;
and yet I know not that I could in reality have seen it to
greater advantage, or after a mode more in harmony with my
previous conceptions. The water in the harbor was too low,
during the first hour or two after our arrival, lo float our ves-
bel, and we remained tacking in the roadstead, watching ftir
the signal from the pier-head which was to intimate to us when
the tide had risen high enough for our adniisslun ; and so I
had sudicient time given me to con over the U-atures of the
scene, as presented in detail. At one ;iine a fiat reach of the
New Town came full into view, along which, in the genmal
dimness, the multitvidinous chinmeys stood up like stacks of
corn in a field newly reaped ; at another, the Castle loomed
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 293
out dark in the cloud ; then, as if suspended over the earth,
the rugged summit of Arthur's Seat came strongly out, while
its base still remained invisible in the wreath ; and anon I
caught a glimj^se of the distant Pentlands, enveloped by a
clear blue sky, and lighted up by the sun. Leith, with its
thicket of masts, and its tall round Tower, lay d(;(;p in shade
in the forogroinid, — a cold, dingy, ragged town, but so strongly
relieved against the pale smoky gray of the background, thai
it seemed another little city of Zoar, entire in front of the
burning. And such was the strangely picturesque countenance
with which I was favored by the Scottish capital, when form-
ing my earliest acquaintance with it, twenty -nine years ago.
It was evening ere I reached it. The fog of the early part
of the day had rolled off, and every object stood out in clear
light and shade under a bright sunshiny sky. The workmen
of the place, — their labors just closed for the day, — were
passing in groupes along the streets to their respective homes ;
but I was too much engaged in looking at the buildings and
shops, to look very discriminately at them ; and it was not
without some surprise that I found myself suddenly laid hold
of by one of their number, a slim lad, in pale moleskin a good
deal bespattered with paint. My friend William Ross stood
before me ; and his welcome on the occasion was a very hearty
one. I had previously taken a hasty survey of my unlucky
house in Leith, accompanied by a sharp, keen-looking, one-
handed man of middle age, who kept the key, and acted,
under the town-clerk, as general manager; and who, as I
afterwards ascertained, was the immortal Peter M'Craw. But
I had seen nothing suited to put me greatly in conceit with
my patrimony. It formed the lowermost floor of an old black
building, four stories in height, flanked by a damp narrow
court along one of its sides, and that turned to the street its
sharp-peaked, many-windowed gable. The lower windows
were covered up by dilapidated, weather-bleached shutters;
m the upper, the comparatively fresh appearance of the rags
that stufled up holes where panes ought to have been, and a
tew very pale-colored petticoats and very dark-colored shirts
294 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
fluttering in the wind, gave evident signs of habitation. It
cost my conductor's one hand an ai'duous wrench to lay op^n
the lock of the outer door, in front of which he had first to
dislodge a very dingy female, attired in an earth-ctjiorcd gown,
that seemed as if starched with ashes ; and as the rusty hhiges
creaked, and the door fell against the wall, we became sensible
of a damp, unwholesome smell, like the breathing of a charnel-
house, which issued from the interior. The place had been
shut up for nearly two years ; and so foul had the stagnant
atmosphere become, that the candle which we brought with
us to explore burned dim and yellow like a miner's lamp
The floors, broken up in fifty difi'erent places, were littered
with rotten straw ; and in one of the corners there lay a damp
heap, gathered up like the lair of some wald beast, on wliich
som.e one seemed to have slept, mayhap months before. The
partitions were crazed and tottering ; the walls blackened with
smoke ; broad patches of plaster had fallen from the ceilings,
or still dangled from them, suspended by single hairs ; and the
bars of the grates, crusted with rust, had become red as fox-
tails. Mr. M'Craw nodded his head over the gathered heap of
straw. "Ah," he said, — "got in again, I see! The shutters
must be looked to." "I dare say." I. remarked, looking dis-
consolately around me, " you don't find it very easy to get
tenants for houses of this kind." " Vert/ easy !" said Mr.
M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I
thought, with also a good deal of Highland hauteur, — as was
of course quite natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-
agent, when dealing with the owner of a domicile that would
not lot, and who made foolish remarks, — " No, nor easy at
all, or it would not be locked up in this way ; but if we took
ofl'the shutters, you would soon got tenants enough." " O, I
8upi»ose so ; and I dare say it is as diflicult to sell as to let such
houses." " Ay, and more," said Mr. M'Craw : " it's all sellers,
and no buyers, when wo got this low." '• But do you not
think," 1 porsovoriiigly aske'd, '"that some kind, oharitabio
person might be found in the neighborhood disposed to take
it off" my hands as a free gift? It's terrible to be married for
OR, THE STOKY OF MY EDUCATION. 29t
lift to a baggage of a house like this, and made liable, like
other husbands, for all its debts. Is there no way of get
ting a divorce ?" " Don't know," he emphatically replied,
vith somewhat of a nasal snort ; and so we parted ; and 1
•aw or heard no more of Peter M'Craw until many years
ifter, when I found him celebrated in the well-known song
by poor Gilfdlan.* And in the society of my friend I soon
ibrgot my misci'able house, and all the liabilities which !t
•ntailed.
• Well known as Gillillan's song is among ourselves, it is much less so to the
bwth of the Border; and I present it to ray Euglisli readers as a wortliy repre-
5 mtative, in these latter days, of those ludicrous songs of our country in the olden
i/ne which are so admirably suited to show, notwithstanding the gibe of Gold-
uith,
"That a Scot may have humor, I almost said wit "
THE TAX-GATHERER.
CI do ye ken Peter, the taxman an' vriter?
Ye're weel atT wha ken naelhiug 'bout him ava:
They ca' him Inspector, or Poor's Rates Collector,—
My faith ! he's weel kent in Leith, Peter M'Craw I
He ca's, and he comes again,— haws, and he hums again,—
He's only ae hand, but it's as gude as twa;
He pu's 't out an' raxes, an' draws in the taxes.
An' pouches the siller,— shame ! Peter M'Craw I
He'll be at your door by daylight on a Monday,
On Tyesday ye're favored again wi' a ca' ;
E'en a slee look he gied me at kirk the last Sunday,
Whilk meant,— <■<■ Mind the preachin'' an' Peter M^OraioJ'
He glowrs at my auld door as if he had made it ;
He keeks through the key -hole when I am awa';
He'll syne read the auld stane, that tells a' wha read II,
To ^'■Blisse God for a' giftes,"*— but Peter M'Craw!
His sraa' papers neatly 'ranged a' completely,
That yours, for a wonder, 's the first on the raw .
There's nae jiukin' Peter; nae antelope's fleeter;
Nae cuttM acquaintance wi' Peter M'Craw I
• A <tevout legend, common In the seventeenth century above ine entrance ol
I ''uses.
296 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
1 was as entirely unacquainted with great towns at this tim«
as the shepherd in Virgil ; and, excited by what I saw, I sadly
tasked my friend's peripatetic abilities, and, I fear, his patience
also, in taking an admiring survey of all the more characteristic
streets, and then in setting out for the top of Arthur's Seat, —
from which, this evening, I watched the sun set behind the
distant Lomonds, — that I might acquaint myself with the fea-
tures of the surrounding country, and the effect of the city as
a whole. And amid much confused and imperfect recollec-
tion of picturesque groupes of ancient buildings, and magnifi-
cent assemblages of elegant modern ones, I carried away with
me two vividly distinct ideas, — first, results, as a painter might
perhaps say, of a "fresh eye," which no after survey has served
to freshen or intensify. I felt that I had seen not one, but two
cities, — a city of the past and a city of the present, — set down
side by side, as if for purposes of comparison, with a pictur-
esque valley drawn like a deep score between them, to mark
ofl^ the line of dvision. And such in reality seems to be the
grand peculiarity of the Scottish capital, — its distinguishing
Twas just Friday e'eniii', Auld Reekie I'd been in,
I'd gatteii a. shilliii', — I maybe Rat twa;
I thought to be liapjiy \vi' friends ower a drappie,
VVbeu wlia suld come paj) in, — but Peter M'Craw I
There's houp o' a ship though slie's sair pressed wi' dangera,
An' roiin' lier trail timmors tlie angry winds blaw ;
I've aften gal kindness nnlookcd for from strangers,
But wha need lioup kindness frae Peter Rl'Craw?
I've kent a man pardoned when Just at the gallows, —
I've kenl a eliiel honest wliase traile was tlie law (
Pve kent fortune's smile even fa' on gudo fallows;
Hut I ne'er kent exceptions wi' Peter M'Craw!
(jur touM, ylnce sae cheerie, Is dowie an' eene;
f)iir shippies lino left ns, Tur trade is nwa';
Theri-'» nae fair maids strayi> ', nac weo bairnies plnyln't
Vo've muckle to answer for, Peter M'Craw 1
Bui what gudo o' greevin' as lang's wo are Icevin',
My banes I'll soon lay within yon kirk-ynrd we'*
Them IUU1 care shall press me, nae taxes distress me.
I'n thor« I'll be >ao thee,— Pater M'Craw 1
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 29?
trait among the cities of the empire ; though, of course, during
the twenty -nine years that liave elapsed since I first saw it, the
more ancient of its two cities, — greatly modernized in many
parts, — has become less lUTiformly and consistently antique in
its aspect. Regarded simply as matters of taste, I have found
little to admire in the improvements that have so materially
changed its aspect. Of its older portions I used never to tire :
I found I could walk among them as purely for the pleasure
which accrued, as among the wild and picturesque of Nature
itself; whereas one visit to the elegant streets and ample
squares of the new city always proved sufficient to satisfy ; and
I certainly never felt the desire to retui'n to any of them, to
saunter in quest of pleasure along the smooth, well-kept pave-
ments. 1 of course except Prince's Street. There the two
cities stand ranged side by side, as if for compai^'ison ; and the
eye falls on the features of a natural scenery that would of it-
self be singularly pleasing even were both the cities away.
Next day I waited on the town-clerk, Mr. Veitch, to see
whether he could not suggest to me some way in which 1
might shake myself loose from my unfortunate property on the
Coal-hill. He received me civilly, — told me that the prop-
erty was not quite so desperate an investment as I seemed
to think it, as as least the site, in which I had an interest with
the other proprietors, was worth something, and as the little
court-yard was exclusively my own ; and that he thought he
could get the whole disposed of for me, if I was prepared to
accept of a small j^rice. And I was of course, as I told him,
prepared to accept of a very small one. Further, on learn
ing that I was a stone-cutter, and unemployed, he kindly in-
troduced me to one of his friends, a master-builder, by whom
I was engaged to work at a manor-house a few miles to the
south of Edinburgh. And procuring " lodgings" in a small
cottage of but a single apartment, near the village of Niddr}
Mill, I commenced my labors as a hewer under the shade of
the Niddry woods.
There was a party of sixteen masons employed at Niddry
besides apprentices and laborers. They were accomplishei
298 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
stone-cutters, — skilful, especially in the cutting of mouldings^
far above the average of the masons of the north country ; and ^
it was with some little solicitude that I set myself to labor
beside them on mullions, and tramsons, and labels, — for our
work was in the old English style, — a style in which I had no
previous practice. I was diligent, however, and kept old John
Eraser's principle in view (though, as Nature had been less
liberal in imparting the necessary faculties, I could not cut so
directly as he used to do on the required planes and curves
inclosed in the stone) ; and I had the satisfliction of finding,
when pay-night came round, that the foreman, who had fre-
quently stood beside me during the week, to observe my modes
of working, and the progress which I made, estimated my
services at the same rate as he did those of the others. I was
by and by entrusted, too, like the best of them, with all the
more difficult kinds of work required in the erection, and was
at one time engaged for six weeks together in fashioning long,
slim, deeply-moulded mullions, not one of which broke in my
hands, though the stone on which I wrought was brittle and
gritty, and but indifferently suited for the nicer purposes of
the architect. I soon found, however, that most of my brother
workmen regarded me with undisguised hostility and dislike,
and would have been better pleased had 1, as they seemed to
expect, from the northern locality in which I had been reared,
broke down in the trial. I was, they said, " a Highlander
newly come to Scotland," and, if not chased northwards again,
would carry home with me half the money of the country.
Some of the builders used to criticise very unfairly the work-
manship of the stones which I hewed : they could not lay
them, they said ; and the hewers sometimes refused to assist
me in carrying in or turning the weightier blocks on whieh I
wrought. The foreman, however, a worthy, pious man, a
member of a Secession congregation, stood my friend, and
enc/niraged me to i»ersevere. " Do not," he has said, " suffer
yourself to be driven from the work, and they will soon tiro
out, and leave you to pursue your own course. I know exactly
^he nature of your oilence : you do not drink with them or
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 299
(Teat them ; but they will soon cease to expect that you
should ; and when once they find that you are not to be coerced
or ariven off, they will let you alone." As, however, from
the abundance of employment, — a consequence of the build-
ing mania, — the men were masters and more at the time, the
foreman could not take my part openly in opposition to them ;
but I was grateful for his kindness, and felt too thoroughly in-
dignant at the mean fellows who could take such odds against
an inoffensive stranger, to be much in danger of yielding to
the combination. It is only a weak man whom the wind de-
prives of his cloak : a man of the average strength is more
in danger of losing it when assailed by the genial beams of
a too kindly sun.
I threw myself, as usual, for the compensatory pleasures,
on my evening walks, but found the enclosed state of the dis-
trict, and the fence of a rigorously-administered trespass-law,
serious drawbacks ; and ceased to wonder that a thoroughly
cultivated country is, in most instances, so much less beloved
by its people than a wild and open one. Rights of proprie-
torship may exist equally in both ; but there is an important
sense in which the open country belongs to the proprietors
and to the people too. All that the heart and the intellect can
derive from it may be alike free to peasant and aristocrat ;
whereas the cultivated and strictly fenced country belongs
usually, in every sense, to only the proprietor ; and as it is a
much simpler and more obvious matter to love one's country
as a scene of hills, and streams, and green fields, amid whicn
Nature has often been enjoyed, than as a definite locality, in
which certain laws and constitutional privileges exist, it is
rather to be regretted than wondered at, that there should be
cften less true patriotism in a country of just institutions and
equal laws, whose soil has been so exclusively appropriated as
to leave only the dusty high-roads to its people, than in wild
open countries, in which the popular mind and affections are
left free to embrace the soil, but whose institutions are partial
and defective. Were our beloved Monarch to regard such of
the gentlemen of her Court as taboo their Glen Tilts, and shut
14
300 MY SCHOOLS AJND SCHOOLMASTERS;
up the passes of the Grampians, as a sort of disloyal Destrim
tives of a peculiar type, who make it their vocation to divesi
her people of their patriotism, and who virtually teach thera
that a country no longer theirs is not worth the fighting for, it
might be very safely concluded that she was but manifesting,
in one other direction, the strong good sense which nas evei
distinguished her. Though shut out, however, from the neigh-
boring fields and policies, the Niddry woods were open to me;
and I have enjoyed many an agreeable saunter along a broad
planted belt, with a grassy path in the midst, that form their
southern boundary, and through whose long vista I could .^ee
the sun sink over the picturesque ruins of Craigmillar Castle.
A few pecularities in the natural history of the district showed
me, that the two degrees of latitude which lay between me
and the former scenes of my studies were not without their
influence on both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The
gi-oup of land-shells was different, in at least its proportions ;
and one well-marked mollusc, — the large tortoise-shell helix
{helix aspersa), very abundant in this neighborhood, — I had
never seen in the north at all. 1 formed, too, my first acquaint-
ance in this woody, bush-skirted walk, with the hedgehog in'ita
wild state, — an animal which does not occur to the nortli of the
Moray Frith. I saw, besides, though the summer was of but
the average warmth, the oak ripening its acorns, — a rare oc-
currence among the Cromarty woods, where, in at least nine
out of every ten seasons, the fruit merely forms and then drops
off. But my researches this season lay rather among fossils
than among recent plants and aninuils, I was now for the
first time located on the Carbon i fibrous System : the stone at
which 1 wrought was intercalated among the working coal
seams, and abounded in well-marked impressions of the mo«
robust vegetables of the period, — stigmaria, sigilhiria, cala
mites, and Icpidodendra ; and as they greatly excited my cu
riosity, I spent many an evening hour in the fiuarry in whicb
they occurred, in tracing their forms in the rock ; or — extend
ing my walks to the neighboring coal-pits — I laid ojien with
iny hammer, in quest of organisms, the blocks of shale <.r stvjv
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 301
fcified clay raised from beneath by the miner. There existed
at the time none of those popular digests of geological science
which are now so common ; and so I had to grope my way
without guide or assistant, and wholly unfurnished with a
vocabulary. At length, however, by dint of patient labor, I
came to form not very erroneous, though of course inadequate,
conceptions of the ancient Coal Measure Flora : it was impos-
sible to doubt that its numerous ferns were really such ; and
though I at first failed to trace the supposed analogies of ita
lepidodendra and calamites, it was at least evident that they
were the bole-like stems of great plants, that had stood erect
like trees. A certain amount of fact, too, once acquired,
enabled me to assimilate to the mass little snatches of infor-
mation, derived from chance paragraphs and occasional articletj
in magazines and reviews, that, save for my previous acquaint-
ance with the organisms to which they referred, would have
told me nothing. And so the vegetation of the Coal Mcas
ures began gradually to form within my mind's eye where
all had been blank before, as I had seen the spires and columns
of Edinburgh forming amid the fog, on the morning of my
arrival.
1 found, however, one of the earliest dreams of my youth
curiously mingling with my restorations, or rather forming
their groundwork. I had read Gulliver at the proper age ;
and my imagination had become filled with the little men and
women, and retained strong hold of at least one scene laid in
the country of the very tall men, — that in which the traveller,
after wandering amid grass that rose twenty feet over his head,
lost himself in a vast thicket of barley forty feet high. 1 be-
came the owner, in fancy, of a colony of Liliputians, that
manned my eighteen-inch canoe, or tilled my apron-breadth
of a garden ; and, coupling with the men of Liliput the scene
in Brobdignag, I had often set myself to imagine, when play
ing truant on the green slopes of the Hill, or among the swamps
of the "Willows," how some of the vignette-like scenes by
which I was surrounded, would have appeared to creatui'es so
minute. I have imagined them threading their way throvgh
302 inr schools and schoolmasters ;
lark forests of bracken forty feet high, — or admiring on the
hill-s.de some enormous club-moss that stretched out its green
hairy arms for whole roods, — or arrested at the edge of some
dangerous morass, by hedges of gigantic horse-tail, that bore
atop, high over the bog, their many-windowed, club-like
soues, and at every point shot forth their green verticillate
leaves, huge as coach-wheels divested of the rim. And while
I thus dreamed for my Liliputian companions, I became foi
the time a Liliputian myself, examined the minute in Nature
as if through a magnifying glass, roamed in fancy under ferns
that had shot up into trees, and saw the dark club-like heads
of the equisetacece stand up over the spiky branches, some six
yards or so above head. And now, strange to tell, I found I
had just to fall back on my old juvenile imaginings, and to
form my first approximate conceptions of the forests of the
Coal Measures, by learning to look at our ferns, club-mosses,
and equisetacete, with the eye of some wandering traveller of
Liliput lost amid their entanglements. When sauntering at
sunset along the edge of a wood-embosomed stream that ran
through the grounds, and beside which the horse-tail rose thick
and rank in the danker hollows, and the bracken shot out its
fronds from the drier banks, I had to sink in iancy, as of old,
into a manakin of a few inches, and to see intertropical jungles
in the tangled grasses and thickly-interlaced equisetaceaj, and
tall trees in the brake and the lady-fern. But many a want-
ing feature had to be su])[)lied, and many an existing one
altered. Amid forests of arboraceous ferns, and of horse-tails
tall as the masts of pinnaces, there stood up gigantic club-
mosses, thicker than the body of a man, and from sixty to
eighty feet in height, that mingled their foliage with strange
monsters of the vegetable world, of types no longer n-eognis-
able among the existing forms, — sculptured ullodeiidra, bear-
ing rectilinear stripes of sessile cones along their sides,- -and
ornately tatooed sigilaria, fluted like columns,anil with vertical
rows of leaves bristling over thrir stems and larger hranches.
Such wore some of the dreams in which I hegan at this j)erioQ
for the first t'me to indulge ; nor have they, like the ->theT
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 305
breams of youth, passed away. The aged poet has not anfr&.
quently to complain, that as he rises in years, his " visions
float less palpably before him." Those, on the contrary, which
science conjures up, grow in distinctness, as, in the process of
slow acquirement, form after form is evoked from out the
obscurity of the past, and one restoration is added to another.
There were at this time several collier villages in the neigh-
borhood of Edinburgh, which have since disappeared. They
were situated on what were called the " edge-coals," — thos
steep seams of the Mid-Lothian Coal Basin, which, lying low
in the system, have got a more vertical tilt against the trap
eminences of the south and west than the upper seams in the
middle of the field, and which, as they could not be followed
in their abrupt descent beyond a certain depth, are now re-
garded, for at least the practical purposes of the miner, and
until the value of coal shall have risen considerably, as wrought
out. One of these villages, whose foundations can no longer
be traced, occurred in the immediate vicinity of Niddry Mill.
It was a wretched assemblage of dingy, low-roofed, tile-cover-
ed hovels, each of which perfectly resembled all the others,
and was inhabited by a rude and ignorant race of men, that
still bore about them the soil and stain of recent slavery.
Curious as the fact may seem, all the older men of that village,
though situated little more than four miles from Edinburgh,
had been born slaves. Nay, eighteen years later (in 1842),
when Parliament issued a commission to inquire into the na-
ture and results of female labor in the coal-pits of Scotland,
there was a collier still living that had never been twenty
miles from the Scottish capital, who could state to the Com-
missioners that both his father and grandfather had been
slaves, — that he himself had been born a slave, — and that he
nad wrought for years in a pit in the neighborhood of Mu»
selburgh ere the colliers got their freedom. Father and grand
father had been parishioners of the late Dr. Carlyle of Inver-
esk. They were contemporary with Chatham and Cowper,
and Burke and Fox; and at a time when Gran\alle Sharpe
could have stepped forward and ellectually protected, in vir
804 MY SCHOOLS AJsD SCHOOLMASTERS;
tue of his own statute, the runaway negro who had taken ret-
uge from the tyranny of his master in a British port, no man
could have protected them from the Inveresk laird, their pro-
prietor, had they dared to exercise the right, common to all
Britons besides, of removing to some other locality, or of
making choice of some other employment. Strange enough,
surely, that so entire a fragment of the barbarous past should
have been thus dovetailed into the age not yet wholly passed
away ! I regard it as one of the more singular circumstances
of my life, that I should have conversed with Scotchmen who
had been born slaves. The collier women of this village, —
poor over-toiled creatures, who carried up all the coal from
under ground on their backs, by a long turnpike stair inserted
in one of the shafts, — bore more of the marks of serfdom still
about them than even the men. How these poor women did
labor, and how thoroughly, even at this time, were they cha^
racterized by the slave-nature ! It has been estimated by a
man who knew well them, — Mr. Robert Bald, — that one of
their ordinary day's work was equal to the carrying of a hun-
dredweight from the level of the sea to the top of Ben Lo-
mond. They were marked by a peculiar type Qf mouth, from
which I learned to distinguish them from all the other females
of the country. It was wide, open, thick-lipped, projecting
equally above and below, and exactly resembled that which
we find in the prints given of savages in their lowest and most
degraded state, in such narratives of our modern voyagers as,
for instance, the " Narrative of Captain Fitzroy's Second Voy-
age of the Beagle." During, however, the lapse of the last
twenty years this type of mouth seems to have disappeared in
Scotland. It was accompanied by traits of almost infantile
weakness. I have seen these collier women crying like chil-
dren, when toiling under their load along the uj)jx>r rounds
of the wooden stair that traversed the shaft ; and then re-
turning, scarce a minute after, with the empty creer, singing
with glee. The collier houses were chiefly reniarka])le for
being all alike, outside and in : all were equally dingy, dirty,
lakeQ, and uncomfortable. I first learned to suspect, in this
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 305
nide village, that the dcTnocratic watchword, " Liberty and
Equality," is somewhat faulty in its philosophy. Slavery and
Eq lality would be nearer the mark. Wherever there is
liberty, the original differences between man and man begin
to manifest themselves in their external circumstances, and
the equality straightway ceases. It is through slavery that
equality, among at least the masses, is to be fully attained.*
I found but little intelligence in the neighborhood, among
even the villagers and country people, that stood on a higher
platform than the colliers. The fact may be variously ac-
counted for ; but so it is, that though there is almost always
more than the average amount of knowledge and acquirement
amongst the mechanics of large towns, the little hamlets and
villages by which they are surrounded are usually inhabited
by a class considerably below the average. In M. Quete-
let's interesting " Treatise on Man," we find a series of maps
• The act for manumitting our Scotch colliers was passed in the year 1775, forty-
aine years prior lo the date of my acquainlauce with the class at Niddry. Rut
though it was only such colliers of the village as were in their fiflicth year when 1
knew them (with, of course, all the older ones), wlio had been born slaves, even its
men of thirty had actually, though not nominally, come into the world in a state of
bondage, in consequence of certain penalties attached to the emancipating act, of
which the poor ignorant workers \nider ground wore both too improvident and loo
Utile ingenious to keep clear. They were set free, however, by a second act passed
in 1799. The language of both these acts, regarded as British ones of the latter half
of the last cenlury, and as bearing reference to British subjects living williin Ihe
limits of the island, strikes with startling effect. " Whereas," says the pri'ainl)le ol
(he older act— that of 1775 — "by the statute law of Scotland, as explained by the
judges of the courts of law there, many colliers, and coal-bearers, and sailers, are in
a state of s/a!K'ry or fto?/^/««-(', bound to the collieries or salt-works where they work
for life, transferable with the collieries avd salt-works ; and whereas the emancipat-
ing," &c. &c. A passage in the preamble of the act of 1799 is scarce less striking •
it declares that, notwithstanding the former act, "many colliers and coal-bearers
$till continue in a state of bondage" in Scotland. The history of our Scotch colliers
^'>uld be found a curious and instructive one. Theii slavery seems not to have
been derived from the ancient times of general si'rfship, but to have originated in
comparatively modern acts of the Scottish Parliament, and in decisions of the Court
ofSesdions,— acts of a Parliament in which the pooi iguurant subterranean mun of
the country were, of course, wholly unrepresented, and in decisions of a Court If
which no iigent of theirs ever n-«de appearance in their behalf.
306 MY SCHOOLS A]SD SCHOOLMASTERS;
given, which, based on extensive statistical tables, exhil il
by darker and lighter shadings the moral and intellectual
character of the people in the various districts of the coun-
tries which they represent. In one map, for instance, repre-
sentative of the state of education in France, while certain
well-taught provinces are represented by a bright tint, as if
enjoying the light, there are others, in which great ignorance
obtains, that exhibit a deep shade of blackness, as if a cloud
rested over them ; and the general aspect of the whole is that
of a landscape seen from a hill-top in a day of dappled light
and shadow. There are certain minuter shadings, however, by
which certain curious facts might be strikingly represented to
the eye in this manner, for which statistical tables furnish no
adequate basis, but which men who have seen a good deal of
the people of a country might be able to give in a manner at
least approximately correct. In a shaded map representative
of the intelligence of Scotland, I would be disposed — sinking
the lapsed classes, or representing them merely by a few such
dark spots as mottle the sun — to represent the large towns as
centres of focal brightness ; but each of these focal centres I
would encircle with a halo of darkness considerably deeper in
shade than the medium spaces beyond. I found that in the
tenebrious halo of the Scottish capital there existed, indepen-
dently of the ignorance of the poor colliers, three distinct ele-
ments. A considerable proportion of the villagers were farm-
servants in the decline of life, who, unable any longer to pro-
cure, as in their days of unbroken strength, regular engage
ments from the farmers of the district, supported themselves as
occasional laborers. And they, of course, were characterized
by the ignorance of their chiss. Another portion of the people
were carters, — employed mainly, in these times, ere the rail-
ways began, in supplying the Edinburgli coal-market, and in
driving building materials into the city from the various quar-
ries. And carters as a class, like all who live much in thesociety
of horses, are invariably ignorant and unintellectual. A third,
but greatly smaller portion than either of tlic other two, con-
sisted of mechanics; but it was only mechanics of an inferioi
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 807
Drder, that remained outside the city to work fur carters aiw
laborers : the better skilled, and, as to a certain extent the
terms are convertible, the more intelligent mechanics, found
employment and a home in Edinburgh, The cottage in which
I lodged was inhabited by an old tarm-servant, — a tall, large
bodied, small-headed man, who, in his journey through life,
seemed to have picked up scarce an idea; and his wife, a
woman turned of sixty, though a fine enough body in the main,
and a careful manager, was not more intellectual. They had
but a single apartment in their humble dwelling, fenced off by
a little bit of partition from the outer door ; and I could fain
have wished that they had two ; but there was no choice of
lodgings in the village, and I had just to content myself, as the
working man always must in such circumstances, with tne
shelter I could get. My bed was situated in the one end of
the room, and my landlady's and her husband's in the other,
with the passage by which we entered between ; but decent
old Peggy Russel had been accustomed to such arrangements
all her life long, and seemed never once to think of the matter ;
and — as she had reached that period of life at which women
of the humbler class assume the characteristics of the other sex,
somewhat, I suppose, on the principle on which very ancient
female birds put on male plumage — I in a short time ceased to
think of it also. It is not the less true, however, that the pur
poses of decency demand that much should be done, especially
in the southern and midland districts of Scotland, for tha
dwellings of the poor.
308 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
OHAPTER XV
"See Inebriety, ber wand she waves,
And lo! her pale, and lo! her purple slaves."
Crabbb.
1 WAS joi-.':;d in the course of a few weeks, in Peggy Russel's
one-roomed cottage, by another lodger, — lodgers of the hum-
bler class usually consociating together in pairs. My new
companion had lived for some time, ere my arrival at Niddry,
in a neighboring domicile, which, as he was what was termed
a " quiet living man," and as the inmates were turbulent and
unsteady, he had, after bearing a good deal, been compelled
to quit. Like our foreman, he was a strict Seceder, in full
communion with his Church. Though merely a common la-
borer, with not more tlian half the wages of our skilled work-
luen, I had observed, ere ouf acquaintance began, that no
mason in the squad was more comfortably attired on week-
days than he, or wore a better suit on Sunday ; and so 1 had
set him down, from tlie circumstance, as a decent man. I
now found that, like my uncle Sandy, he was a great reader
of good books, — an admirer even of the same old authors,- —
deeply read, like him. in Durham and Rutherford, — and en-
tertaining, too, a high respect for Baxter, Boston, old John
Bntwn, and the Erskines. In one respect, however, he dift
fered from both my uncles: he had begun to question the
excellence of ri'ligious Establishments; nay, to hold that the
country might be none the worse were its ecclesiastical en
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 309
dowmcnts taken away, — a view which our foreman axso en-
tertained ; whereas both Uncles Sandy and James were as little
averse as the old divines themselves to a Stace-paid ministry,
and desiderated only that it should be a good one. There
were two other Seceders engaged as masons at the work, —
more of the polemical and less of the devout type than the
foreman or my new comrade the laborer ; and they also used
occasionally to speak, not merely of the doubtful usefulness,
hut as they were stronger in their language than their more
self-denying and more consistent co-religionists — of the posi-
tive worthlessness, of Establishments. The Voluntary con-
troversy did not break out until about nine years after this
time, when the Reform Bill gave vent to many a pent-up
opinion and humor among that class to which it extended the
franchise ; but the materials of the war were evidently already
accumulating among the intelligent Dissenters of Scotland;
and from what I now saw, its after appearance in a some-
what formidable aspect failed to take me by surprise. I must
in justice add, that all the religion of our party was to be
found among its Seceders. Our other workmen were really
wild fellows, most of whom never entered a church. A de-
cided reaction had already commenced within the Establish-
ment, on the cold, elegant, unpopular Moderatism of the pre-
vious period, — that Moderatism which had been so adequately
represented in the Scottish capital by the theology of Blair
and the ecclesiastical policy of Robertson ; but it was chiefly
\mong the middle and upper classes that the re-action had
jegun ; and scarce any portion of the humbler people, lost to
jhe Church during the course of the two preceding genera-
uSons, had yet been recovered. And so the working men of
Edinburgh and its neighborhood, at this time, were in large
vjart either non-religious, or included within the Independent
rfr Secession pale.
John Wilson — for such was the name of my new comrade —
^as a truly good man, — devout, conscientious, friendly, — not
uighly intellectual, but a person of plain good sense, and by
jo ni'gtwin. ievoid of general information. There \f as anothe?
310 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
laborer at the work, an unhappy little man, with whom i
have often seen John engaged in mixing mortar, or carrying
materials to the builders, but never without being struck by the
contrast which they presented in character and appearance.
John was a plain, somewhat rustic-looking personage; and
an injury which he had received from gunpowder in a quarry,
that had destroyed the sight of one of his eyes, and consider-
ably dimmed that of the other, had, of course, not served t<
improve his looks ; but he always Avore a cheerful, contented
air ; and, with all his homeliness, was a person pleasant to
the sight. His companion was a really handsome man, —
gray-haired, silvery-whiskered, with an aristocratic cast of
countenance, that would have done no discredit to a royal
drawing-room, and an erect though somewhat petit figure,
cast in a mould that, if set oil' more to advantage, would have
been recognized as elegant. But John Lindsay — for so he
was called — bore always the stamp of misery on his striking
features. There lay between the poor little man and the
Crawford peerage only a narrow chasm, represented by a miss-
ing marriage certificate ; but he was never able to bridge the
gulf across ; and he had to toil on in unhappiness, in conse-
quence, as a mason's laborer. I have heard the call resound-
ing from the walls twenty times a-day, — " John, Yearl Oa-
furd, bring us anithcr hod o' lime."
I found religion occupying a much humbler place among
these workmen of the south of Scotland than that which I had
used to see assigned to it in the north. In my native district
and the neighboring counties it still spoke with authority;
and a man who stood uj) in its behalf in any socioty, unless
very foolish or very inconsistent, always succeoded in silencing
opposition, and making good its claims. Here, however, the
irreligious asserted their power as (he majority, and carried
matters with a high hand ; and religion itself, existing as but
dissent, not as an csfaUisliiiwiit, liad to content itself with bare
toleration. Keriionstrance, or even advice, was not [)eriiiitted.
"Jolinnie, boy," I have heard one of the rougher mechanica
say, half in jest, half in earnest, to my companion, "if you set
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 311
yourself to convert me, I'll brak your face ;" and I have know;i
another of them remark, with a patronizing air, that " kirkg
were nae very bad things, after a' ;" that he "aye liked to be
in a kirk, for the sake of decency, once a twelvemonth ;" and
that, as L-e " hadna been kirked for the last ten months, he
was just only waiting for a rainy Sabbath to lay in his stock
o' divinity for the year," Our new lodger, aware how little
any interference with the religious concerns of others was
tolerated ii the place, seemed unable for some time to muster
up resolution enough to broach in the family his favorite
subject. He retired every night, before going to bed, to his
rloset,-— the blue vault, with all its stars, — often the only closet
of the devout lodger in a south-country cottage ; but I saw
that each evening, ere he went out, he used to look uneasily
at the landlord and me, as if there lay some weight on his
mind regarding us, of which he was afraid to rid himself, and
which yet rendered him very uncomfortable. " AVell, John,"
I asked one evening, speaking direct, to his evident embar-
rassment; "what is it?" John looked at old William the
landlord, and then at me. " Did we not think it right," he
said, "that there should be evening worship in the family?"
Old William had not idea enough for conversation : he either
signified acquiescence in whatever was said that pleased him,
by an ever-recurring ay, ay, ay ; or he grumbled out his dissent
m a few explosive sounds, that conveyed his meaning rather
in their character as tones than as vocables. But there now
mingled with the ordinary explosions the distinct enunciation,
given with, for him, unwonted emphasis, that he " wasna for
that.'''' I struck in, however, on the other side, and appealed
to Peggy. " I was sure," I said, '" that Mrs. Russel would see
thn propriety of John's proposal." And Mrs. Russel, as most
women would have done in the circumstances, unless, indeed,
very bad ones, did see the propriety of it ; and from that
evening forward the cottage had its family worship. John's
prayers were always very earnest and excellent, but sometimes
just a little too long ; and old William, who, I fear, did not
g.'eatly profit by them, used not unfrequently to fall asleep on
312 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
hijS knees. But though he sometimes stole tc his bed whec
John chanced to be a little later in taking the book than usual,
and got into a profound slumber ere the prayer began, he de-
ferred to the majoi ty, and gave us no active opposition. He
was not a vicious man : his intellect had slept through life,
and he had as little religion as an old horse or dog ; but he
was quiet and honest, and, to the measure of his failing ability,
I faithful worker in his humble employments. His religious
raining, like that of his brother villagers, seemed to have been
sadl}^ neglected. Had he gone to the parish church on Sun-
day, he would have heard a respectable moral essay read from
the pulpit, and would, of course, have slept under it ; but
William, like most of his neighbors, preferred sleeping out
the day at home, and never did go to the church ; and as cer-
tainly as he went not to the teacher of religion, the teacher of
religion never came to him. During the ten months which I
spent in the neighborhood of Niddry Mill, I saw neither
minister nor missionary. But if the village furnished no ad-
vantageous ground on which to fight the battle of religious
Establishments, — seeing that the Establishment was of no
manner of use there, — it furnished ground quite as unsuitable
for the class of Voluntaries who hold that the supply of relig-
ious instruction should, as in the case of all other commodi-
*;ies, be regulated by the demand. Demand and supply were
admirably well balanced in the village of Niddry : there was
no religious instruction, and no wish or desire for it.
The masons at Niddry House were paid fortnightly, on a
Saturday night. Wages were high, — we received two pounds
eight shillings for our two weeks' work; but scarce half^a-dozen
in the squad could claim at settlement the full tale, as the
Monday and Tuesday after pay-night were usually ItlanK days,
devoted by two-thirds of the whole to drinking and debauchery.
Not often has wages been more sadly misspent than by my
poor work-fi'llows at Niddry, during this period of abundant
and largcly-rcmuiu'ratcd employment. On receiving their
money, they set straightway off for Edinburgh, in parties of
threes and fours; and until the evening of the following Mon
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 813
day or Tuesday I saw no more of them. They would then
come dropping in, pale, dirty, disconsolate-looking, — almost al-
ways in the re-actionary state of unhappiness which succeeds
intoxication — (they themselves used to term it " the horrors")
— and with their nervous system so shaken, that rarely until
a day or two after did they recover their ordinary working
ability. Narratives of their adventures, however, would then
begin to circulate through the squad, — adventures commonly
of the " Tom and Jerry" type ; and always, the more extrav-
agant they were, the more was the admiration which they ex-
cited. On one occasion, I remember (for it was much spoken
about as a manifestation of high si)irit) that three of them,
hiring a coach, drove out on the Sunday to visit lioslni and
Hawthornden, and in this way spent their six pounds so much
in the style of gentlemen, that they were able to get back to
the mallet without a farthing on the evening of Monday.
And as they were at work on Tuesday in consequence, they
succeeded, as they said, in saving the wages of a day usually
lost, just by doing the thing so genteely. Edinburgh had in
those times a not very efficient police, and, in some of its less
reputable localities, must have been dangerous. Burke found
its West Port a fitting scene for his horrid trade a good many
years after ; and from the stories of some of our bolder spirits,
which, though mayhap exaggerated, had evidently their nu-
cleus of truth, there was not a little of the violent and the law-
less perpetrated in its viler haunts during the years of the spec-
ulation mania. Four of our masons found, one Saturday even-
ing, a country lad bound hand and foot on the floor of a dark
inner room in one of the dens of the High Street ; and such
was the state of exhaustion to which he was reduced, mainly
through the compression of an old apron wrapped tightly
round his face, that though they set nim loose, it was some
time ere he could muster strength enough to crawl away. He
had been robbed by a bevy of women whom he had beei.
foolish enough to treat ; and on threatening to call in the
watchman, they had fallen upon a way of keeping him quiet,
which, save for the interference of my wild fellow- workmen.
B14 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
would soon have rendered him permanently so. And such
was but one of many stories of the kind.
There was of course a considerable diversity of talent and
acquirement among my more reckless associates at the work ;
and it was curious enough to mark their very various views
regarding what constituted spirit or the w\int of it. One
weak lad used to tell us abou* a singuhirly spirited brother
apprentice of his, who not only drank, kept loose company
and played all sorts of very mischievous practical jokes, but
even occasionally stole out of warehouses ; which was of
course a very dauntless thing, seeing that it brought him with-
in wind of the gallows ; whereas another of our wild woi'k-
men, — a man of sense and intelligence, — not unfrequently cut
short the narratives of the weaker brother, by characterizing
his spirited apprentice as a mean, graceless scamp, who, had
he got his deservings, would have been hung like a dog. 1
found that the intelligence which results from a fair school
education, sharpened by a subsequent taste for reading, very
much heightened in certain items the standard by which my
comrades regulated their conduct. Mere intelligence formed
no guard amongst them against intemperance or licentious-
ness ; but it did form a not ineflectual protection against what
are peculiarly the mean vices, — such as theft, and the grosser
and more creeping forms of untruthfulness and dishonesty.
Of course, exceptional c<ases occur in all grades of society :
there have been accomplished ladies of wealth and rank who
have indulged in a propensity for stealing out of drapers' shops,
and gentlemen of birth and education who could not be trusted
in a library or a bookseller's back-room ; and what sometimes
occurs in the higher walks must be occasionally cxemplifiod
in the lower also ; but, judging from what I have seen, I
must hold it as a general rule, that a good intellectual cdiica.-
tion is a not inefficient protection against the meaner felonies,
though !iot in any degree against the " pleasant vices," The
only adequate protection against both equally is the sort of
education which my friend John Wilson the laborer exem-
plilic/l, —a kind of education not often acquired in schools,
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 815
ft id not nnich more frequently possessed by schoolmasters than
by any other class of professional men.
The most remarkable man in our party was a young fellow
of three-and-twenty, — at least as much a blackguard as any
of his companions, but possessed of great strength of character
and intellect, and, with all his wildness, marked by very noble
traits. He was a strongly and not inelegantly formed man,
of about six feet, — dark complexioned, and of a sullen cast of
countenance, which, however, though he could, I doubt not,
become quite as formidable as he looked, concealed in his
ordinary moods much placidity of temper, and a rich vein of
humor, Charles was the recognized hero of the squad ;
but he differed considerably from the men who admired him
most. Burns tells us that he " often courted the acquaint-
ance of the part of mankind commonly known by the ordi-
nary phrase of blackguards ;" and that, " though disgraced by
follies, nay, sometimes stained with guilt, he had yet found
among them, in not a few instances, some of the noblest vir-
tues, — magnanimity, generosity, disinterested friendship, and
even modesty," I cannot say with the poet that I ever court-
ed the acquaintance of blackguards ; but though the labor-
ing man may select his friends, he cannot choose his work-
fellows ; and so I have not unfrequently co7)ie in contact w ilh
blackguards, and have had opportunities of pretty thoroughly
knowing them. And my experience of the class has been very
much the reverse of that of Burns, I have usually found
their virtues of a merely theatric cast, and their vices real ;
much assumed generosity in some instances, but a callous-
ness of feeling, and meanness of spirit, lying concealed beneath.
In this poor fellow, however, I certainly did find a sample of
the noble variety of the genus. Poor Charles did too de-
cidedly belong to it. He it was that projected the Sunday
party to Roslin ; and he it was that, pressing his way into the
recesses of a disreputable house in the High Street, found
the fast-bound wight choaking in an apron, and, unloosing
the cords, let him go. No man of the party squandered
his gains more recklessly than Charles, or had looser no
316 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
tions regarding the egitimacy of the uses to which he too
often applied them. And yet, notwithstanding, he was u
generous-hearted fellow ; and, under the influence of religious
principle, would, like Burns himself, have made a very noble
man.
In gradually forming my acquaintance with him, I was at
first struck b} the circumstance that he never joined in the
clumsy ridicule with which I used to be assailed by the other
workmen. When left, too, on one occasion, in consequence
of a tacit combination against me, to roll up a large stone to
the sort of block-bench, or siege^ as it is technically termed, on
which the mass had to be hewn, and as I was slowly succeed-
ing in doing, through dint of very violent effort, what some two
or three men usually united to do, Charles stepped out to assist
me ; and the combination at once broke down. Unlike the
others, too, who, while they never scrupled to take odds against
me, seemed sufficiently chary of coming in contact with me
singly, he learned to seek me out in our intervals of labor,
and to converse on subjects upon which we felt a common in-
terest. He was not only an excellent operative mechanic, but
possessed also of considerable architectural skill ; and in this
special province we found an interchange of idea not unprofit-
able. He had a turn, too, for reading, though he was by no
means extensively read ; and liked to converse about books.
Nor, though the fiiculty had been but little cultivated, was he
devoid of an eye for the curious in nature. On directing his
attention, one morning, to a well-marked impression of lopi-
dodendron, which delicately fretted with its lozenge-shaped
net-work one of the planes of the stone before me, he began
to describe, with a minuteness of observation not common
among working men, certain strange forms which had attract-
ed his notice when employed among the gray flagstones of
Forfarshire. I long after recognized in his description that
strange crustacean of the Middle Old Red Sandstone of Scot-
land, the Pteryijotus, — an organism which was wholly un-
known at this time to geologists, and which is but partially
•mown Btill ; and I saw in 1838, on the publication, in itv<»
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 81?
first edition, of the " Elements" of Sir Charles Lyell, what he
meant to indicate, by a rude sketch which he drew on the
stone before us, and which, to the base of a semi-ellipsis, some-
what resembling a horse-shoe, united an angular prolongation
not very unlike the iron stem of a pointing trowel drawn from
the handle. He had evidently seen, long ere it had been de-
tected by the scientific eye, that strange ichthyolite of the Old
Red system, the Cephalaspis. His story, though he used to
tell it with great humor, and no little dramatic effect, was in
reality a very sad one. He had quarrelled, when quite a lad,
with one of his fellow-workmen, and was unfortunate enough,
in the pugilistic encounter which followed, to break his jaw-
bone, and otherwise so severely to injure him, that for some
time his recovery seemed doubtful. Flying, pursued by the
officers of the law, he was, after a few days' hiding, appre-
hended, lodged in jail, tried at the High Court of Judiciary,
and ultimately sentenced to three months' imprisonment. And
these three months he had to spend — for such was the wretch-
ed arrangement of the time — in the worst society in the world.
In sketching, as he sometimes did, for the general amusement,
the characters of the various prisoners with whom he had as-
sociated, — from the sneaking pick-pocket and the murderous
ruffian, to the simple Highland smuggler, who had converted
his grain into whisky, with scarce intelligence enough to see that
there was aught morally wrong in the transaction, — he sought
only to be as graphic and humorous as he could, and always
with complete success. But there attached to his narratives
an unintentional moral ; and I cannot yet call them up with-
out feeling indignant at that detestable practice of promiscuous
imprisonment which so long obtained in our country, and which
had the effect of converting its jails into such complete criminal-
manutacturing institutions, that, had the honest men of the
community risen and dealt by them as the Lord-George-Gor-
don mob dealt with Newgate, I hardly think they would have
been acting out of character. Poor Charles had a nobility in
his nature which saved him from being contaminated by what
was worst in his meaner associates ; but he was none the bet
318 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ter for his imprisonment, and he quitted jail, of course, a
marked man ; and his after career was, I fear, all the more
reckless in consequence of the stain imparted at this time to
his character. He was as decidedly a leader among his brothei
workmen as I myself had been, when sowing my wild oats,
among my school-fellows; but society in its settled state, and
in a country such as ours, allows no such scope to the man as
(t does to the boy ; and so his leadership, dangerous both to
iimself and his associates, had chiefly as the scene of its trophies
»he grosser and more lawless haunts of vice and dissipation.
His course through life was a sad, and, I fear, a brief one.
W^hen the sudden crftsh in the commercial world took place,
n which the speculation mania of 1824-25 terminated, he
vas, with thousands more, thrown out of employment ; and,
laving saved not a farthing of his earnings, he was compelled,
♦nder the pressure of actual want, to enlist as a soldier into
■ ne of the regiments of the line, bound for one of the inter-
> topical colonies. And there, as his old comrades lost ail
} 'ace of him, he too probably fell a victim, in an insalubrious
Climate, to old habits and new rum.
Finding me incorrigible, I was at length left by my brother
operatives to be as peculiar as I pleased; and the working
portion of the autumnal months passed off* pleasantly enough
in hewing great stones under the branching foliage of the elm
ar.d chestnut trees of Niddry Park. From the circumstance,
however, that the stones were so great, the previous trial had
been an embarrassing one ; and, though too proud to confess
that I cared aught about the matter, I was now glad enough
that it was fairly over. Our modern Temperance Societies —
Institutions which at this time had not begun to exist — have
done much to shield sober working men from combinations
of the trying character to which. In the generation well-nigh
passed away, they were too often exposed. There are few
working ])arties which have not now their groupes of enthu-
siastic Teetotallers, that always band together against the
drinkers, and mutnally assist and keep one another in coun-
tenance ; and a breakwater is thus formed in the middle of
OR, THJ? STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 319
the stream, tc protect from that grinding oppression of the
poor by the poor, which, let popular agitators disclaim on the
other side as they may, is at once more trying and more gene-
ral than the oppression which they experience from the great
and wealthy. According to the striking figure of the wise old
king, " it is like a sweeping rain, which leaveth no food."
Fanaticism in itself is not a good thing ; nor are there many
quiet people who do not dislike enthusiasm ; and the mem
bers of new sects, whether they be religious sects or no, are
almost always enthusiasts, and in some degree fanatical. A
m.an can scarce become a vegetarian even without also be-
coming in some measure intolerant of the still large and not
very disreputable class that eat beef with their greens, and
herrings with their potatoes ; and the drinkers of water do
say rather strong things of the men who, had they been guests
at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, would have seen no great
harm in partaking in moderation of tlie wine. There is a
somewhat intolerant fanaticism among the Teetotallers, just as
there is fanaticism among most other new sects ; and yet, re-
cognizing it simply as strength, and knowing what it has to con-
tend with, I am much disposed to tolerate it, v/hether inolerate
me or no. Human nature, with all its defects, is a wiser
thing than the mere common sense of the creatures whose
nature it is ; and we find in it special provisions, as in the in-
stincts of the humbler animals, for overmastering the special
difficulties with which it is its destiny to contend. And the
sort of fanaticism to which I refer seems to be one of those
provisions. A few Teetotallers of the average calibre and
strength, who take their stand against the majority in a party
of wild dissipated mechanics, would require a considerable
amount of vigorous fanaticism to make good their position ;
nor do I see in ordinary men, as society at present exists,
aught at once sufficiently potent in its nature, and sufficiently
general in its existence, to take its place and do its work. It
seems to subsist in the present imperfect state as a wise provi-
«5ion, though, like o*^her wise provisions, such as the horns of
820 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
the bull or the sting of the bee, it is misdirected at times, und
does harm.
Winter came on, and our weekly wages ^rere lowered im-
mediately after Hallow-day, from twenty-four to fifteen shil
lings per week. This was deemed too large a reduction ; and,
reckoning by the weekly hours during which, on the average,
we were still able to work, — forty-two, as nearly as 1 could
calculate, instead of sixty, — it was too great a reduction by
about one shilling and ninepence. I would, however, in the
circumslances, have taken particular care not to strike work
for an advance. I knew that three-fourths of the masons
about town — quite as improvident as the masons of our own
party — could not live on their i-esources for a fortnight, and
had no general fund to sustain them ; and further, that many
of the inaster-buildcrs were not very urgently desirous to press
on their work throughout the winter. And so, when, on
coming to the work-shed on the Monday morning after the
close of our first fortnight on the reduced scale, I found my
comrades gathered in front of it in a group, and learned that
there was a grand strike all over the district, 1 received the
intelligence with as little of the enthusiasm of the " indepen-
dent associated mechanic" as possibly may be. " You are in
the right in your claims," I said to Charles ; " but you have
taken a bad time for urging them, and will be beaten to a cer-
tainty. The masters are much better prepared for a strike
than you are. How, may I ask, are you yourself provided with
the sinews of war 1" " Very ill indeed," said Charles, scratch-
ing his head : " if the masters don't give in before Saturday,
it's all up with me ; but never mind ; let us have one day's
fun : (here's to be a grand meeting at Bruntsficld Links ; let
us go in as a deputation from the country masons, and make
a speech about our rights and duties ; and then, if wo see mat-
ters going very far wrong, we can just step l)ii(k again, and
begin work to-morrow." " Bravely resolved," I said : " I
shall go with you by all means, and take notes of your
epeech." We marched in to town, about sixteen in number ;
OR, THE STOKY OF MY EDUCATION. 321
and, on joining the crowd already assembled on the Luiks, were
recognized by the deep red hue of our clothes and aprons,
which differed considerably from that borne by worlvcrs in the
paler Edinburgh stone, as a reinforcement from a distance, and
were received with loud cheers. Charles, however, did not
make his speech : the meeting, which was about eight hun-
dred strong, seemed fully in the possession of a few crack
oi'ators, who spoke with a fluency to which he could make no
pretensions ; and so he replied to the various calls from among
his comrades, of " Cha, Cha," by assuring them that he could
not catch the eye of the gentleman in the chair. The meet
ing had, of course, neither chair nor chairman ; and after a
good deal of idle speech-making, which seemed to satisfy the
speakers themselves remarkably well, but which at least some
of their auditory regarded as nonsense, we found that the only
motion on which we could harmoniously agree was a motion
for an adjournment. And so we adjourned till the evening,
fixing as our place of meeting one of the humbler halls of
the city.
My comrades proposed that we should pass the time until
the hour of meeting in a public-house ; aad, desirous of se-
curing a glimpse of the sort of enjoyment for which they sacri-
ficed so mucli, I accompanied them. Passing not a few more
inviting-looking places, we entered a low tavern in the upper
part of the Canongate, kept in an old half-ruinous building,
which has since disappeared. We passed on through a nar-
row passage to a low-roofed room in the centre of the erection,
into which the light of day never penetrated, and in which the
gas was burning dimly in a close sluggish atmosphere, ren-
dered still more stifling by tobacco-smoke, and a strong smell
)f ardent spirits. In the middle of the crazy floor there was
a trap-door which lay open at the time ; and a wild combina-
tion of sounds, in which the yelping of a dog, and a few gruflf
voices that seemed cheering him on, were most noticeable, rose
from the apartment below. It was customary at this time for
drim-shops to keep badgers housed in long narrow boxes, and
for working men to keep do?s ; and it was part of the ordi-
322 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
nary sport of such places to set the dogs to unhouse the badgers.
The wild sport which Scott describes in his " Guy Manner! ng,"
as pursued by Dandy Dinmont and his associates among the
Cheviots, was extensively practised twenty nine years ago amid
the dingier haunts of the High Street and Canongate. Our
party, like most others, had its dog, — a repulsive-looking brute,
with an earth-directed eye, as if he carried about with him an
evil conscience ; and my companions were desirous of getting
his earthing ability tested upon the badger of the establishment ;
but on summoning the bar-keeper, we were told that the
party below had got the start of us : their dog was, as we might
hear, "just drawing the badger ; and before our dog could be
permitted to draw him, the poor brute would require to get
an hour's rest." 1 need scarce say, that the hour was spent in
hard drinking in that stagnant atmosphere ; aud we then all
descended through the trap-door, by means of a ladder, into a
bare-walled dungeon, dark and damp, and where the pestifer-
ous air smelt like that of a burial vault. The scene which
followed was exceedingly repulsive and brutal, — nearly a»
much so as some of the scenes furnished by those otter hunts in
which the aristocracy of the country delight occasionally to in-
dulge. Amid shouts and yells, the badger, with the blood of
his recent conflict still fresh upon him, was again drawu to the
box mouth ; and the party returning satisfied to the apartment
above, again betook themselves to hard drinking. In a short
time the liquor began to tell, not first, as might be supposed,
on our younger men, who were mostly tall, vigorous fellows,
in the first flush of their full strength, but on a few of the
middle-aged workmen, whose constitutions seemed undermin-
ed by a previous course of dissipation and debauchery. The
conversation became very loud, very involved, and, though
highly seasoned with emj)liatic oaths, very insipid ; and leav
ing with Cha, — who seemed somewhat uneasy that my eye
should l)e upon their nu'cting in its hour of weakness, — money
enough to clear oil" my share of the reckoning, 1 stole out to
tile King's Park, and passed an hour to better purpose among
the trap rocks than I could possibly have spent it beside
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 323
the trap-door. Of that tavern party I am not aware that a
single individual save the writer is now living : its very dog
did not live out half his days. His owner was alarmed one
morning, shortly after this time, by the intelligence that a
dozen of sheep had been worried during the night on a neigh-
boring farm, and that a dog very like his had been seen
prowling about the fold ; but in order to determine the point,
he would be visited, it was added, in the course of the day, by
the shepherd and a law-officer. The dog meanwhile, how
ever, conscious of guilt, — for dogs do seem to have consciences
in such matters, — was nowhere to be found, though, after the
lapse of nearly a week, he again appeared at the work ; and
his master, slipping a rope round his neck, brought him to a
deserted coal-pit half filled with water, that opened in an ad-
jacent field, and, flhiging him in, left the authorities no clue
by which to establish his identity with the robber and assassin
of the fold.
I had now quite enough of the strike ; and, instead of at-
tending the evening meeting, passed the night with my friend
William Ross. Curious to know, however, whether my ab-
sence had been observed by my brother workmen, I asked
Cha, when we next met, " what he thought of our meeting V
" Gudesake !" he replied, " let that flee stick to the wa' ! We
got upon the skuff after you left us, and grew deaf to time,
and so not one of us has seen the meeting yet," I learned,
however, that though somewhat reduced in numbers, it had
been very spirited and energetic, and had resolved on nailing
the colors to the mast ; but in a few mornings subsequent,
several of the squads returned to work on their master's terms,
and all broke down in about a week after. Contrary to what
I would have expected from my previous knowledge of him, I
found that my friend William Ross took a warm interest in
strikes and combinations, and was much surprised at the apathy
which I manifested on this occasion ; nay, that he himself, as
he told me, actually officiated as clerk for a combined society
of house-painters, and entertained sanguine hopes regarding
the happy influence which the principle of union was yet to
324 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOIuMASTEES ;
exercise on the status and comfort of the working man. There
are no problems more difiicult than those which speculative
men sometimes attempt solving, when they set themselves to
predict how certain given characters would act in certain given
circumstances. In what spirit, it has been asked, would So-
crates have listened to the address of Paul on Mars Hill, had
be lived a few ages later 1 and what sort of a statesman would
Robert Burns have made ? I cannot answer either question ;
out this I know, that from my intimate acquaintance with the
retiring, unobtrusive character of my friend in early life, I
should have predicted that he would have taken no interest
whatever in strikes or combinations ; and I was now surprised
to find the case otherwise. And he, on the other hand, equal
ly intimate with my comparatively wild boyhood, and my in
fluence among my school-fellows, would have predicted that 1
should have taken a very warm interest in such combinations,
mayhap as a ringleader ; at all events, as an energetic, influen
tial member ; and he was now not a little astonished to see me
keeping aloof from them, as things of no account or value. I
believe, however, we were both acting in cliaractcr. Lacking
my ol)stinacy, he had in some degree yielded, on first coming
to the capital, to the tyranny of his brother workmen ; and,
becoming one of themselves, and identifying his interests with
theirs, his talents and acquirements had recommended liim to
an oflTice of trust among them ; wiiereas 1, stubbornly battling,
like-. Harry of the Wynd, " for my own hand," would not stir
a finger in assertion of the alleged rights of fellows who had
no respect for the rights which were indisputably mine.
T may here mention, that this first year of the building
mania was also the first, in the present century, of those gi'cat
slrikcsumouir workmen, of which the public has since heard and
seen so much. Up till this time, combination among operatives
for the purpose of raising the rate of wages had been a crime
piuiishable l>y law ; and though several combinaiions and trade
unions did exist, open strikes, which would have lieen a too
pali>able manifestation of them to be tolerated, could scarce be
said ever to take place. I saw enough at the period to con-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 32ft
vmce me, that though the right of combinaticin, alisfractly
considered, is just and proper, tlic strikes which would re-
sult from it as consequences would be productive of much
evil and little good ; and in an argument with my friend Wil-
liam on the subject, I ventured to assure him that his house^
painters' union would never benefit the operative house painters
as a class, and urged him to give up his clerkship. " There is
a want," I said, " of true leadership among our operatives in
♦hese combinations. It is the wilder spirits that dictate the
conditions ; and, pitching their demands high, they begin
usually by enforcing acquiescence in them on the quieter and
more moderate among their companions. They are tyrants to
their fellows ere they come into collision with their masters,
and have thus an enemy in the camp, not unwilling to take
advantage of their seasons of weakness, and prepared to re-
joice, though secretly mayhap, in their defeat and reverses.
And further, their discomfiture will be always quite certain
enough when seasons of depression come, from the circum-
stance that, fixing their terms in prosperous times, they will
fix them with reference rather to their present power of en-
forcing them, than to that medium line of fair and equal ad-
justment on which a conscientious m.an could plant his foot
and make a firm stand. Men such as you, able and ready to
work in behalf of these combinations, will of course get the
work to do, but you will have little or no power given you in
their direction : the direction will be apparently in the hands
of a few fluent gabbers ; and yet even they will not be the
actual directors, — they will be but the exponents and voices of
the general mediocre sentiment and inferior sense of the mass
as a whole, and acceptable only so long as they give utteranco
to that ; and so, ultimately, exceedingly little will be won in
this way for working men. It is well that they should be al-
lowed to combine, seeing that combination is jiermitted to
those who employ them ; but until the majority of our work-
ing men of the south become very diflferent from what they
now are, — greatly wiser and greatly better,— -there will be
more lost *^han gained by their combinations. According to
326 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
the circumstances of the time and season, the current \vill be
at one period running in their favor against the masters, and
at another in favor of the masters against them : there will
be a continual ebb and flow, like that of the sea, but no een-
eral advance ; and the sooner that the like of you and I get
out of the rough conflict and jostle of the tideway, and set our
selves to labor apart on our own internal resources, it will be
all the better for us." William, however, did not give up his
clerkship ; and I dare say the sort of treatment which I had
received at the hands of my fellow-workmen made me express
myself rather strongly on the sultject ; but the actual history
of the numerous strikes and combinations which have taken
place during the quarter of a century and more which has
since intervened, is of a kind not in the least suited to modify
my views. There is a want of judicious leadership among
our working men ; and such of the autobiographies of the
class as are able and interesting enough to obtain a hearing
for their authors show, I am inclined to think, how this takes
place. Combination is first brought to bear among them
against the men, their fellows, who have vigor enough of in-
tellect to think and act for themselves ; and such always is
the character of the born leader : their true leaders are almost
always tbrced into the opposition ; and thus separating be-
tween themselves and the men fitted by nature to render them
formidable, tliey fall under the direction of mere chatterers and
stump orators, which is in reality no direction at all. The
author of the " Working Man's Way in the World," — evi-
dently a very superior man, — had, he tells us, to quit at one
time his employment, overl)()rne by the senseless ridicule of his
brother workmen. JSomerville states in his Autobiogra])hy,
ihat, both as a laboring man and a soldier, it was from the liaiuls
of his comrades that, — save in one nicinorable instance, — he
had experienced all the tyranny and oj)j)ri'ssiun of which he
bad been the victim. Nay, B(>njamin Franklin himself was
deemed a much more ordinary man in the |>riiitiiig-hout^e iu
Bartholomew Close, where he was teased and laughed at as
the Waler-American, than in the House of Keprcsentatives,
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION'. 827
the Ro^^ dl Society, or the court of France. The great Printer,
though recognized by accomplished politicians as a profoun(f
statesman, and by men of solid science as " the most rational
of the philosophers," was regarded by his poor brother com-
positors as merely an odd fellow, who did not conform to their
drinking usages, and whom it was therefore fair to teaze and
annoy as a contemner of the sacrament of the cha2)el.*
The life of my friend was, how3ver, pitched on a better and
higher tone than that of most of his brother unionists. It wa
intellectual and moral, and its happier hours were its hours
of quiet self-improvement, when, throwing himself on the re-
sources within, he forgot for the time the unions and combina-
tions that entailed upon him much troublesome occupation,
but never did him any service. I regretted, however, to find
that a distrust of his own powers was still growing upon him,
and narrowing his circle of enjoyment. On asking him
whether he still amused himself with hi? flute, he turned,
after replying with a brief " Oh no," to a comrade with whom
he had lived for years, and quietly said to him, by way of ex-
plaining the question, " Robert, I suppose you don't know I
was once a grand flute-player !" And sure enough Robert did
not know. He had given up, too, his water-color drawing,
in which his taste was decidedly fine ; and even in oils, with
which he still occasionally engaged himself, instead of casting
himself full on nature, as at an earlier period, he had become
a copyist of the late Rev. Mr. Thomson of Duddingstone, at
* The kind of club into which the compositors of a prinling-liouse always fonn
themselves has from time immemorial been termed a chapel ; and the petty tricks by
which I'raiikrm was annoyed were said to be ])layed liim by the chapel f,'hosl. "My
employer desirinu;," he says, "afler some weeks, to have mo in the composing-room,
I left llie pressmen. A new bicn venu for diink, bo'Mg five shillinKs, was demanded
ol me by llie compcisiturs. I thought it an inipo^iiioii, as I had paid one to the press-
ESii. The master tlioiinlit so loo, and forbade my [)ayin|j it. I stood out two or three
weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicnte, and had s.) many Mule pieces
of private malice practiced on me by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my
Clutter, &c., &.C., if ever I stepped out of the room, and all ascribed to the chapel
g-hust, which, they said, ever haunted those not reitularly adniilled, thai, nolwillistand-
Uig my inaste.-'s proteo'on, found myself obliged to comply and pay the money.''
828 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
that time in the full blow :)f his artistic reputation ; nor could
I see that he copied him ^^ ell. I urged and remonstrated, but
to no effect. " Ah, Miller," he has said, " what matters it
how I amuse myself? You have stamina in you, and will
force your way ; but I want strength : the world will never
hear of me." Tliat overweening conceit which seems as
natural to the young man as a playful disposition to the kitten,
or a soft and timid one to the puppy, often assumes a ridicu-
lous, and oftener still an unamiablc, aspect. And yet, though
it originates many very foolish things, it seems to be in itself,
like the fanaticism of the Teetotaller, a wise provision, which,
were it not made by nature, would leave most minds without
spring enough to effect, with the required energy, the move-
ments necessary to launch them fairly into busy or studious
life. The sobered man of mature age v.ho has learned pretty
correctly to take the measure of himself, has usually acquired
both habits and knowledge that assist him in urging his on-
ward way, and the moving force of necessity always presses
him onward from behind ; but the exliilarating conviction of
being born to superior parts, and to do something astonish-
ingly clever, seems necessary to the young man ; and when I
see it manifesting itself, if not very foolishly or very offen-
sively, I usually think of my poor friend William Ross, who
was unfortunate enough wholly to want it ; and extend to it a
pretty ample toleration. Ultimately my friend gave up paint,
ing, and restricted himself to the ornamental parts of his )>ro-
fession, of which he became very much a master. In linish-
ing a ceiling in oils, upon which he had represented in bold
relief some of the ornately sculptured foliage of the architect,
the gontlpman for whom he wrought (the son-in-law of a dis-
tinguished artist, and himself an amateur), called on his wife
to admire the truthful and delicate shading of tlu'lr houso-
paintir. It was astonishing, he said, and perhaps soinewiiat
ininiiliating, to see the mere mechanic trenching so decidi-dly
on the province of the artist. IVior William Koss, however,
was no mere mechanic; and even artists might have regarded
his encroachments on their jiroper domain with more of com
OR, THE STORY OF MT EDUCATION. 329
plticency than humiliation. One of Ihe last pieces of work
upon which he was engaged was a gorgeously painted ceiling
hi the palace of some Irish bishop, which he had been sent all
the way from Glasgow to finish.
Every society, however homely, has its picturesque points,
nor did even that of the rather commonplace hamlet in which
] resided at this time wholly want them. There was a de-
caying cottage a few doors away, that had for its inmate a
cross-tempered old crone, who strove hard to set up as a
witch, but broke down from sheer want of the necessary
capital. She had been one of the underground workers of
Niddry in her time ; and, being as little intelligent as most
of the other collier-women of the neighborhood, she had not
the necessary w^itchJore to adapt her pretensions to the ca-
pacity of belief which obtained in the district. And so the
general estimate formed regarding her was that to which our
landlady occasionally gave expression. " Donnart auld bodie,"
Peggy used to say ; " though she threaps hersel' a witch, she's
nae mair witch than I am ; she's only just trying, in her feck-
less auld age, to make folk stand in her reverence." Old Alia
was, however, a curiosity in her way, — quite malignant enough
to be a real witch, and fitted, if, with a few more advantages
of acquirement, she had been antedated an age or two, to be-
come as hopeful a candidate for a tar-barrel as most of her
class. Her next door neighbor was also an old woman, and
well-nigh as poor as the crone ; but she was an easy -tempered,
genial sort of person, who wished harm to no one ; and the
expression of content that dwelt on her x'ound fresh face,
which, after the wear of more than seventy winters, still re-
tained its modicum of color, contrasted strongly with the
fierce wretchedness that gleamed from the sharp and sallow
features of the witch. It was evident that the two old women,
though placed externally in almost the same circumstances,
had essentially a very different lot assigned to them, and en
joyed existence in a very unequal degree. The placid old
woman kept a solitary lodger, — "Davie the apprentice," — a
wayward, eccentric lad, i luch about my own age, though ■"■•
380 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
but the second " year of his time," who used to fret even hei
temper, and who, after making trial of I know not how many
other professions, now began to find that his genius did not
lie to the mallet. Davie was stage-mad ; but for the stage
nature seemed to have fitted him rather indifterently : she had
given him a squat ungainly figure, an inexpressive face, a voice
that in its intonations somewhat resembled the grating of a
carpenter's saw, and, withal, no very nice conception of either
comic or serious character ; but he could recite in the " big
bow-wow style," and think and dream of only plays and
play-actors. To Davie the world and its concerns seemed
unworthy of a moment's care, and the stage appeared the only
great reality. He was engaged, when I first made his ao
quaintance, in writing a play, with which he had already filled
a whole quire of foolscap, without, however, having quite en
tered upon the plot ; and he read to me some of the scenes in
tones of such energy, that the whole village heard. Though
written in the kind of verse which Dr. Young believed to be
the language of angels, his play was sad stuff; and when he
paused for my approbation, I ventured to suggest an alteration
in one of the speeches. " There, Sir," said Davie, in the vein
of Cambyses, " take the pen ; let me see, Sir, how you would
turn it." I accordingly took the pen, and re-wrote the speech.
" Hum," said Davie, as he ran his eye along the lines, " that,
Sir, is mere poetry. What, think you, could the great Kean
make of feeble stuff like that 1 Let me tell you. Sir, you have
no notion whatever of stage effect." I, of course, at once ac-
quiesced ; and Davie, mollified by my submission, read to mo
yet another scene. Clia, however, of whom he stood a g<iod
deal in awe, usrd to tease him not a little about his play. 1
have heard hiin inquire sedulously about the develo|;.nent of
Iho story and the nuuiagement of the characters, and whether
be was writing the sevi-r.il |>arts with a due eye to the capa-
bilities of the holding actors ol'tlie <lay ; and Davie, not quite
sure, apparently, wheUu r Cha was in joke or ciirnest, wua
asually on these occasions very chary of reply.
Davie, had he but the means of securng access, would havf
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 331
walked in every night to the city to attend the playhouse ; and
it quite astonished him, he used to say, that I, who x'eally
knew something of the drama, and had four shillings a-day,
did not nightly devote at least one of the four to purchase per-
fect happiness and a seat in the shilling gallery. On some
two, or at most three occasions, I did attend the playhouse,
accompanied by Cha and a few of the other workmen ; but
though I had been greatly delighted, when a boy, by the act-
ing of a company of strollers that had visited Cromarty, and
converted the Council House Hall into a theatre, the greatly
better acting of the Edinburgh company failed to satisfy me
now. The few plays, however, which I saw enacted chanced
to be of a rather mediocre character, and gave no scope for the
exhibition of nice histrionic talent ; nor were any of the great
actors of the south on the Edinburgh boards at the time. The
stage scenery, too, though quite fine enough of its kind, had,
I found, altogether a different effect upon me from the one
which it had been elaborated to produce. In perusing our
fine old dramas, it was the truth of nature that the vividly-
drawn scenes and figures, and the happily portrayed charao
ters, always suggested ; whereas the painted canvas, and the
respectable but yet too palpable acting, served but to unre-
alize what I saw, and to remind me that I was merely in a
theatre. Farther, I deemed it too large a price to devote a
whole evening to see some play acted which, mayhap, as a
composition I would not have deemed worth the reading ; and
so the temptation of play -going failed to tempt me ; and lat-
tei'ly, when my comrades set out for the playhouse, I staid at
home. Whatever the nature of the process through which
they have gone, a considerable proportion of the more intel-
ligent mechanics of the present generation seem to have landed
in conclusions similar to the one at which I at this time ar-
rived. At least, for every dozen of the class that frequented
the theatre thirty years ago, there is scarce one that frequents
it now. I have said that the scenery of the stage made no
i'ery favorable impression upon me. Some parts of it must,
hovever, have made a considerably stronger one than I could
382 MY SCHOOLt Ain) SCHOOLMASTERS ;
have supposed at the time. Fourteen years after, when the
whole seemed to have passed out of memory, I was lying ill of
small-pox, which, though a good deal modified apparently by
the vaccination of a long anterior period, was accompanied by
such a degree of fever, that for two days together one delirious
image continued to succeed another in the troubled sensorium,
as scene succeeds scene in the box of an itinerant showman.
As is not uncommon, however, in such cases, though ill enough
to be haunted by the images, I was yet well enough to know
*.ha. they were idle unrealities, the mere effects of indisposi-
tion ; and even sufficiently collected to take an interest in
watching them as they arose, and in striving to determine
whether they were linked together by the ordinary associative
ties. I found, however, that they were wholly independent of
each other. Curious to know whether the will exerted any
power over them, I set myself to try whether I could not con-
jure up a death's head as one of the scries ; but what rose
instead was a cheerful parlor fire, bearing atop a tea-kettle ;
and as the picture faded and then vanished, it was succeeded
by a gorgeous cataract, in which the white foam, at first
strongly relieved against the dark rock over which it fell, soon
exhibited a deep tinge of sulphurous blue, and then came
dashing do\vn in one friglitful sheet of blood. The great sin-
gularity of the vision served to freshen recollection, and I de-
tected in the strange cataract every line and tint of the water-
fall in the incantation scene in " Der Freischutz" which I had
witnessed in the Theatre Royal of Edinlnirgh, with certainly
no very particular interest, so long before. There are, I suspect,
provinces in tlir philosophy of mind into which the metaphy-
sicians have not yet entered. Of that accessible storehouse in
which the memories of past events lie ari'anged and tajH'd up,
IJU'y appear to know a good deal ; but of a mysterious cabinet
of daguerreotype pictures, of which, though fast locked up on
ordinary occasions, disease sometimes flings the door ajar, they
teem to knov nothing.
OR THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 333
CHAPTER XVI.
" Let not this wenk, unknowing hand,
Presume thy bolts to throw."
Pope.
The great fires of the Parliament Close and the High Street
were events of this winter. A countryman, who had left town
when the old spire of the Tron Church was blazing like a
torch, and the large group of buildings nearly opposite the
Cross still enveloped in flame from ground-floor to roof-tree,
passed our work-shed, a little after two o'clock, and, telling us
what he had seen, remarked that, if the conflagration went on
as it was doing, we would have, as our next season's employ-
ment, the Old Town of Edinburgh to rebuild. And as the
evening closed over our labors, we went in to town in a body,
to see the fires that promised to do so much for us. The spire
had burnt out, and we could but catch between us and the
darkened sky, the square abrupt outline of the masonry atop
that had supported the wooden broach, whence, onlv a few
hours before, Fergusson's bell had descended in a molten
.slio\\er. The flames, too, in the upper group of buildings
were restricted to the lower stories, and flared fittbily (>n ihe
tall forms and bright swords of the dragoons, drawn from tlip
neighboring barracks, as they rode up and down the middle
space ; or gleamed athwart the street on groupes of wretched-
looking women and ruflian men, who seemed scanning with
334 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
greedy eyes the still unremoved heapu of household goods
i"escued from the burning tenements. The first figure that
caught my eye was a singularly ludicrous one. Removed
from the burning mass by but the thickness of a wall, there
was a barber's shop brilliantly lighted with gas, the uncur-
tained window of which permitted the spectators outside to
see whatever was going on in the interior. The barber was
as busily at work as if he was a hundred miles from the
scene of danger, though the engines at the time were playing
against the outside of his gable wall ; and the immediate sub-
ject under his hands, as my eye rested upon him, was an im-
mensely fat old fellow, on whose round bald forehead and
ruddy cheeks the perspiration, occasioned by the oven-like
heat of the place, was standing out in huge drops, and whose
vast mouth, widely opened to accommodate the man of the
razor, gave to his countenance such an expression as I have
sometimes seen in grotesque Gothic heads of that age of art
in which the ecclesiastical architect began to make sport of
his religion. The next object that presented itself was, how-
ever, of a more sobering description. A poor working man,
laden with his favorite piece of furniture, a glass-fronted press
or cupl>oard, which he had succeeded in rescuing from his
burning dwelling, was emerging from one of the lanes, fol-
lowed by his wife, when, striking his foot against some ob-
stacle in the Avay, or staggering from the too great weight of
his load, he tottered against a projecting corner, and the glazed
door was driven in with a crash. There was hoiH'less misery
in the wailing cry of his wife, — " Oh, niiii, riiiu ! — it's lost
too !" Nor w.as his own despairing response less sad : — "Aye,
aye, puir lassie, its a' at an end noo." Curious as it may seera,
the wild excitement of the si-ene hail at first rather exhihirated
than depressed my ■spirits; hut the incident of (lie glass cup-
board servetl to Mwaken the propei- It'eliiig; ;iii(l as I came
more in contact with tiie misery of tlie catastroijhe, and
marked the groups of shivering liouseh'ss creatures that
watched beside tlie. Iirokeii iVagiiients of their stuff, I saw
what a dire Ciilamity a great fire really is. Nearly two hun
OB, THE STOKY OF MY EDUCATION, 335
dred ftiinilies were already at tliis time cast homeless ihto the
streets. Shortly before quitting the scene of the conflagration
for the country, I passed along a common stair, which led from
the Parliament Close towards the CoM'gate, through a tall old
domicile, eleven storeys in height, and T afterwards remem-
bered that the passage was occupied by a smouldering oppress-
ive vapor, which, froin the direction of the wind, could
scarce have been derived from the adjacent conflagration,
though at the time, without thinking much of the circum-
stance, I concluded it might have come creeping westwards
on some low cross current along the narrow lanes. In less
than an hour after, that lofty tenement was wrapped in flames,
from the ground storey to more than a hundred feet over its
tallest chimneys, and about sixty additional families, its ten-
ants, were cast into the streets with the others. My friend
William Ross afterwards assured me, that never had he wit-
nessed anything equal in grandeur to this last of the confla-
grations. Directly over the sea of fire below, the low-browed
clouds above seemed as if charged with a sea of blood, that
lightened and darkened by fits as the flames rose and fell ; and
far and wide, tower and spire, and tall house-top, glared out
against a background of darkness, as if they had been brought
to a red heat by some great subterranean, earth-born fire, that
was fast rising to wrap the entire city in destruction. The old
church of St. Giles, he said, with the fantastic masonry of its
pale gray tower, bathed in crimson, and that of its dark rude
walls suffused in a bronzed umber, and with the red light
gleaming inwards through its huge mullioned windows, and
flickering on its stone roof, formed one of the most pictur
f^sque objects he had ever seen.*
*The extreme picturesqtieness of these fires,— in part a consequence of the greet
'jeighi and iieculiar architecture of the buildings which they destroyed,— cauglit tlie
nice eyo ol' Sir Waller Scott. " I can conceive," we find liim saying, in one of Lit
letters of the period, "no sight more grand or terrible than to see these lofty build-
ings on fire from top to bottom, vomiting out flames, like a volcano, from every
aperture, aud finally crashing dovni, one after another, into a;i abyss of fire, which
336 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
1 sometimes heard old Dr. Colquhoun of Leith pitach.
There were fewer authors among the clergy in those days than
now ; and I felt a special interest in a living divine who had
written so good a book, that my Uncle Sandy — no mean judge
in such matters — had assigned to it a place in his little theo-
logical library, among the writings of the great divines of othei
ages. The old man's preaching days, ere the winter of 1824
were well nigh done : he could scarce make himself heard ovei
naif the area of his large, hulking chapel, which was, how-
ever, always less than half filled ; but, though the feeble tones
teasingly strained the ear, I liked to listen to his quaintly-at-
tired but usually very solid theology ; and found, as I thought,
more matter in his discourses than in those of men who spoke
louder and in a flashier style. The worthy man, however, did
me a mischief at this time. There had been a great Musical
Festival held in Edinburgh about three weeks previous to the
conflagration, at which oratorios were performed in the ordi-
nary pagan style, in which amateurs play at devotion,' without
even professing to feel it ; and the Doctor, in his first sermon
after the great fires, gave serious expression to the conviction,
that they were judgments sent upon Edinburgh, to avenge the
profanity of its Musical Festival. Edinburgh had sinned, he
said, and Edinburgh was now punished ; and it was according
to the Divine economy, he added, that judgments administered
exactly after the manner of the infliction which we had just
witnessed should fall uj)on cities and kingdoms. 1 liked the
reasoning very ill. 1 knew only two ways in which God's
judgments could be determined to be really such, — either
through direct revelation from God himself, or in those cases
in which they take place so much in accordance with His
fixed laws, and in such relation to the oflencc or crime visited
osctnblcd nolhinir but Jicll ; for Ihoro were vaults ol wine nnd spirits which stnl
up hiigo JL'ls fif Humes whenever llicy wrre cjilleil into acllvity by tlio fall of IhcM
miusive fhi|;mcul8. Ilelv/een the corner of ilio rnrllanient Sqimro mid tlio Tr •■
Cburct, all ia destroyed excepting gome new liniUl^nK's at the lower exlromity."
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDaCATION. 837
in t.iem by punishment, that man, simply by the exercise of
his rational faculties, and reasoning from cause to effect, as ig
his nature, can determine them for himself. And the great
Edinburgh fires had come under neither category. God did
not reveal that he had punished the tradesmen and mechanics
of the High Street for the musical sins of the lawyers and land-
owners of Abercrombie Place and Charlotte Square ; nor could
any natural relation be established between the oratorios in th
Parliament House or the concerts in the Theatre Royal, and
the conflagrations opposite the Cross or at the top of the Tron
Church steeple. All that could be proven in the case were
the facts of the festival and of the fires ; and the farther
fact, that, so far as could be ascertained, there was no visi-
ble connection between them, and that it was not the people
who had joined in the one that had suffered from the others.
And the Doctor's argument seemed to be the perilously loose
one, that as God had sometimes of old visited cities and na-
tions with judgments which had no apparent connection with
the sins punished, and which could not be recognized as judg-
ments had not He himself told that such they were, the Edin-
burgh lires, of which he had told nothing, might be propcrl}
regarded — seeing that they had in the same way no connec-
tion with the oratorios, and had wrought no mischief to the
people who had patronized the oratorios — as special judg-
ments on the oratorios. The good old Papist had said, " 1
believe because it is impossible," What the Doctor in this
instance seemed to say was, " I believe because it is not in the
least likely." If, I argued, Dr. Colquhoun's own house and
library had been burnt, he would no doubt very properly have
deemed the infliction a great trial to himself; but on what
principal could he have further held that it was not only a
trial to himself, but also a judgment on his neighbor ? If we
must not believe that the falling of the tower of Siloam was a
special visitation on the sins of the poor men whom it crushed,
now, or on what grounds, are we to believe that it was a spe
cial visitation on the sins of the men whom it did not in the
least injure 1 I fear I reraembered Dr. Colquhoun's remark'
338 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
on the fire better than aught else I ever heard from him ; nay,
I must add, that nothing had I ever found in the writings of
the sceptics that had a worse effect on my mind ; and I _ow
mention the circumstance to show how sober in applications
of the kind, in an age like the present, a theologian should be.
It was some time ere I forgot the ill savor of that dead fly ;
and it was to beliefs of a serious and very important class
tliat it served for a time to impart its own doubtful character.
But from the minister whose chapel I oftenest attended, 1
was little in danger of having my beliefs unsettled by reasoi.*
ings of this stumbling cast. " Be sure," said both my uncles,
as I was cjuitting Cromarty for the south, — " be sure you go
and hear Dr. M'Crie." And so Dr. M'Crie I did go and
hear ; and not once or twice, but often. The biographer of
Knox, — to employ the language in which Wordsworth de-
scribes the humble hero of the " Excursion," —
'• \Vas a niau
VVTiom no one could have passed without remark."
And on first attending his church, I found that I had unwit-
tingly seen him before, and that without remark I had not
passed him. I had extended one of my usual evening walks,
shortly after commencing work atNiddry, in the direction of
the southern suburb of Edinburgh, and was sauntering through
one of the green lanes of Liborton, when I met a gentleman
whose appearance at once struck me. He was a singularly
erect, spare, tall man, and bore about him an air whic-h,
neither wholly clerical nor wholly military, seemed to be a
curious compound of both. The countenance was pale, and
the expression, as 1 thought, somewhat ineiancholy ; but an
air of sedate power sat so palpably on every feature, that I
stood arrested as he passed, and tbr half a minute or so re-
maincd looking after him. He wore, over a suit of black, a
brown great-coat, with the neck a good deal whitened by pow-
der, and the rim of the hat behind, which was slightly turned
up, bore a sinnlar stain. " There is mark about that old-
fushioned man," 1 said to myself: " who or what can he be?"
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCAnON. 339
Curiously enough, the apparent combination of the militarj
and the clerical in his gait and air suggested to me Sir Richard
Steele's story, in the Tattler," of the old officer who, acting
in the double capacity of major and chaplain to his regiment,
challenged a young man for l^lasphemy, and, after disarming,
would not take him to mercy until he had first begged pardon
of God upon his knees on the duelling-ground, for the irrev-
erence with which he had treated His name. My curiosity
regarding the stranger gentleman was soon gratified. Next
Saturday I attended the Doctor's chapel, and saw the tall, spare,
clerico-military looking man in the pulpit. I have a good
deal of foith in the military air, when, in the character of
a natural trait, I find it strongly marking men who never
served in the army. I have not yet seen it borne by a civilian
who had not in him at least the elements of the soldier ; nor
can I doubt that, had Dr. M'Crie been a Scotch covenanter of
the times of Charles II., the insurgents at Bothwell would
have had what they sadly wanted, — a general. The shrewd
sense of his discourses had great charms for me; and, though
not a flashy, nor, in the ordinary sense of the term, even an
eloquent preacher, thei-e were none of the other Edinburgh
clergy his contemporaries to whom I found I could listen with
greater profit or satisfaction. A simple incident which oc-
curred during my first morning attendance at his chapel,
strongly impressed me with a sense of his sagacity. There
was a great deal of coughing in the place, the effect of a recent
change of weather ; and the Doctor, whose voice was not a strong
one, and who seemed somewhat annoyed by the ruthless inter-
ruptions, stopping suddenly short in the middle of his argument,
made a dead pause. When people are taken greatly by sur-
prise, they cease to cough, — a circumstance on which he had
evidently calculated. Every eye was now turned towards him,
and for a full minute so dead was the silence, that one might
have heard a pin drop. " I see, my friends," said the Doctor,
resuming speech, with a suppressed smile, — "I see you can
be all quiet enougi when I am quiet." There was not a little
genuine strategy in the rebuke ; and as cough lies a good deaJ
340 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS :
more under the influence of the will than most coughers sup.
pose, such was its effect, that during the rest of the day there
was not a tithe of the previous coughing.
The one-roomed cottage which I shared with its three other
inmates, did not present all the possible conveniences for study ;
but it had a little table in a corner, at which I contrived to
write a good deal ; and my book-shelf already exhibited from
twenty to thirty volumes, picked up on Saturday evenings at
the book-stalls of the city, and which were all accessions to
my little library. I, besides, got a few volumes to read from
my friend William Ross, and a few more through my v ork.
fellow Cha; and so my rate of acquirement in book-knowl-
ledge, if not equal to that of some former years, at least con-
siderably exceeded what it had been in the previous season.
which I had spent in the Highlands, and during which I had
perused only three volumes, — one of the three a slim volume
of slim poems, by a lady, and the other, the rather curious
than edifying work, "Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed."
The cheap literature had not yet been called into existence;
and, without in the least undervaluing its advantages, it was,
I dare say, better, on the whole, as a mental exercise, and
greatly better in the provision which it made for the fviture, that
I should have to urge my way through the works of our best
writers in prose and verse, — works which always made an
impression on the mcnn^ry, — than that I should have been
engaged, instead, in picking up odds and ends of information
from loose essays, the hasty productions of men too little
vigorous, or too little at leisure, to impress upon their writings
the stamp of their own individuality, hi quiet moonlight
niglits I found it exceedingly pleasant to sainitcr all alone
through the Niddry woods. Moonlight gives to even leafless
groves the charms of full foliage, and conceals tamencss of
outline in a landscape. I found it singularly agreeal)le, too, tc
listen, from a solitude so profoiuid as that which a short walk
secured to me, to the distant l)clls of the city ringing out, as
the clock struck eight, the old curfew peal ; and to mark, fron?
under the 'nterlacing boughs of a long-arched vista, the inter
OR, THE STORY OF I^IY EDUCATION . d41
niittent gli>am of the Inchkeith light now brightenmg and now
fading, as the lanthorn revolved. In short, the winter passed
not unpleasantly away : I had now nothing to annoy mc in the
work-shed ; and my only sericnis care arose from my unlucky
house in Leith, for which I found myself summoned one morn-
ing by an officer-looking man, to pay nearly three pounds, —
the last instalment which I owed, I was told, as one of the
heritors of the place, for its fme new church. I must confess
I was wicked enough to wish, on this occasion, that the j)rop-
erty on the Coal-hill had been included in the judgment on
the Musical Festival. But shortly after, not less to my as.
tonishment than delight, I was informed by Mr. Vcitch that
he had at length found a purchaser for my house; and, aftei
getting myself served heir to my father before the court ot
the Canongate, and paying a larger arrear of feu-duty to thai
venerable corporation, in which I had to recognize my feudal
superior, I got myself as surely dissevered from the Coal-hill
as paper and parchment could do it, and pocketed, in virtue
of the transaction, a balance of about fifty pounds. As nearly
as I could calculate on what the property had cost us, from
first to last, the composition which it paid was one of about
five shillings in the pound. And such was the concluding
passage in the history of a legacy which threatened for a time
to be the ruin of the family. When I last passed along the
Coal-hill, I saw my umquhile house existing as a bit of dingy
wall, a single storey in height, and perforated by three narrow
old-flishioned doors, jealously boarded up, and apparently, as
m the days when it was mine, of no maimer of use in the
world. I trust, however, it is no longer the positive mischief
to its proprietor that it was to me.
The busy season had now fairly commenced : wages were
fiist mounting up to the level of the former year, which they
ultimately overtopped ; and employment had become very
abundant. I found, however, that it might be well for me to
return home for a few months. The dust of the stone which 1
had been hewing for the last two years had begun to afiect my
lungs, as they had l^een affected in the last autumn of my ap
342 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS,
prenticeshi] , but much more severely; and I was too palpabi}
sinking in flesh and strength to render it safe for me to en-
counter the consequences of another season of hnrd work as s\
stone-cutter. From the stage of the malady at which I had
already arrived, poor workmen, unalile to do what 1 did, throw
themselves loose from their employment, and sink in six or
eight months into the grave, — some at an earlier, some at a
later period of life ; but so general is the affection, that few of
our Edinburgh stone-cutters pass their fortieth year imscathed,
and not one out of every fifty of their numlier ever reaches his
forty-fifth. I accordingly engaged my passage for the north
m an Inverness sloop, and took leave of my few friends, — of
the excellent foreman of the Niddry squad, and of Clia and
John Wilson, with l)oth of whom, notwithstanding their oppo-
site characters, I had become very intimate. Among the rest,
too, I took leave of a paternal cousin settled in Leith, the wife
of a genial-hearted sailor, master of a now wholly obsolete type
of vessel, one of the old Leith and London smacks, with a huge
single mast, massive and tall as that of a frigate, and a main-
sail of a quarter of an acre. I had received much kindness
from my cousin, who, besides her relationship to my father,
had been a contemporary and early friend of my mother's ;
and my welcome from the master her husband — one of the
best-natured men I ever knew — used always to be one of
the heartiest. And after parting from Cousin Marshall, 1
mustered up resolution enough to call on yet another cousin.
Cousin William, the eldest son of my Sutherlandshirc aunt
had been for some years settled in Edinburgh, first as an upper
clerk and manager, — for, after his failure as a merchant, he
had to begin the world anew; and now, in the speculation
year, ho had succeeded In establishing a business for himself,
which bore about it a hopeful and jiromising air so long as tho
over-genial season lasted, but fell, with many a more deeply-
rooted establishment, in the tempest which followed. On
quitting the north, 1 had been charged with a letter for him
by his father, which I knew, however, to be wholly recom
mendatory <>f myself, and so i had failed to deliver it. Cousin
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 843
William, likt Uncle James, had fully expected that was to
make my way in life in some one of the learned professions ;
and as his position — though, as the result unfortunately
showed, a not very secure one — was considerably in advance
of mine, I kept aloof from him, in the character of a poor re-
lation, who was quite as proud as he was poor, and in the be-
lief that his new friends, of whom, I understood, he had now
well nigh as many as before, would hold that the cousinship
of a mere working man did him little credit. He had learned
from home, however, that I was in Edinburgh, and had made
not a few ineffectual attempts to find me out, of which 1 had
heard ; and now, on forming my resolution to return to the
north, I waited upon him at his rooms in Ambrose's Lodgings,
— at that time possessed of a sort of classical interest, as the
famous Blackwood Club, with Christopher North at its head,
used to meet in the hotel immediately below. Cousin Wil
liam had a warm heart, and received me with great kindness,
though I had, of course, to submit to the scold which I de-
served ; and as some young friends were to look in upon him
in the evening, he said, I had to do, what I would fain have
avoided, perform penance, by waiting, on his express invita^
tion, to meet with them. The^ were, I ascertained, chiefly
students of medicine and divinity, in attendance at the classes
of the University, and not at all the formidable sort of persons
I had feared to meet ; and finding nothing very unattainable
in their conversation, and as Cousin William made a dead set
on me " to bring me out," I at length ventured to mmgle in
it, and found my reading stand me in some stead. There was
a meeting, we were told, that evening, in the apartment below,
of the Blackwood Club. The night I spent with my cousin
was, if our information was correct, and the Nodes not a mere
myth, one of the famous Nodes Ambrosiance ; and fain would
I have seen, for but a moment, from some quiet corner, the
men whose names fame had blown so widely ; but I have ever
been unlucky in the curiosity — though I have always strongly
entertained it — which has the personal appearance of cele
brated men for its object. I had ere now several times lin
34i ir?" SCHOOLS and schoolmasters;
gered in Castle Street of a Saturday evening, opposite ue housM
of Sir "Walter Scott, in the hope of catching a glimpse of that
great writer and genial man, but had never been successftil. I
could thin, too, have seen Hogg (who at the time occasionally
visited Edinburgh) ; with Jeffrey ; old Dugald Stewart, who
still lived ; Delta, and Professor Wilson ; but I quitted the
place w^ithout seeing any of them ; and ere I again returned
to the capital, ten years after, death had been busy in the high
places, and the greatest of their number was no longer to be
seen. In short, Dr. M'Crie was the only man whose name
promises to live, of whose personal appearance I was able
to carry away with me at this time a distinct image. Addi
son makes his Spectator remark, rather in joke than earnest,
that " a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he
knows whether the writer of it be a black or a tair man, of
a mild or choleric disposition, married or a ba<helor, with
other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much
to the right understanding of an author." I am inclined to
sav nearly as much, witliout being in the least in joke. 1
think I understand an author all the better for knowing ex-
actly how he looked. I would have to regard the massive
vehemence of the style of Ckalmers as considerably less char,
dcteristic of the man, had it been dissociated from the broad
chest and mighty structure of bone ; and the warlike spirit
which breathes, in a subdued but still very palpable form, in
the historical writings of the elder M'Crie, strikes nie as sin-
gularly in harmony with the military air of this Presbyterian
minister of the type of Knox and Melville. However theo
lo^ians may settle the meaning of the text, it is one of the
grand lessons of his writings, that such of the Churches of
the Reformation as did not " take the sword, perished by the
word."
I was accompanied to the vessel by my friend William Ross,
fi-om whom I, alas ! i-artod for tlie last time ; and, when step-
ping aboard. Cousin William, whom I had scarce expected to
see, but who had snatched an hour from business, and walked
Jown all the way to Leith to bid me farewell, came forward
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 345
to grasp me by the hand. I am not much disposed to quarrel
with the pride of the working man, when, according to John-
son and Chalmers, it is a defensive, not an aggressive pride ;
but it does at times lead him to be somewhat less than just to
the better feelings of the men who occupy places in the scale
a little higher than his own. Cousin William from whom J
had kept so jealously aloof, had a heart of the finest water
His after course was rough and unprosperous. After the gen-
eral crash of 1825-26, he struggled on in London for some
six or eight years, in circumstances of great difficulty ; and
then, receiving some subordinate appointment in connection
with the Stipendiary Magistracy of the West Indies, he sailed
for Jamaica, where — considerably turned of fifty at the time
— ^he soon fell a victim to the climate.
In my voyage north, I spent about half as many days on
sea, between Leith Roads and the Soutcrs of Cromarty, as the
Cimard steamers now spend in crossing the Atlantic. I had
taken a cabin passage, not caring to subject my weakened
lungs to the exposure of a steerage one ; but during the seven
days of thick, foggy mornings, clear moonlight nights, and
almost unbroken calms, both night and morning, in which
we tided our slow way north, I was much in the forecastle
with the men, seeing how sailors lived, and ascertaining what
they were thinking about, and how. We had rare narratives
at nights, —
"Wonderful stories of battle and wreck.
That were told by the men of the watch."
Some of the crew had been voyagers in their time to distant
parts of the world ; and though no existence can be mo-e mo-
notonous than the every -day life of the seaman, the profession
has always its bits of striking incident, that, when strung
together, impart to it an air of interest which its ordinary de-
tails sadly want, and which lures but to disappoint the young
lads of a romantic cast who are led to make choice of it in
'ts presumed character as a continued series of stirring events
and exciting adventures. What, however, struck me as ou
846 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS;
rious in the narratives of my companions, was the large mix
ture of the supernatural which they almost always exhibited.
The story of Jack Grant the mate, given in an early chapter,
may be regarded as not inadequately representative of the
sailor stories which were told on deck and forecastle, along at
least the northern coasts of Scotland, nearly thirty years later.
That life of peril which casts the seaman much at the mercy
of every rough gale and lee-shore, and in which his calcula-
tions regarding ultimate results must be always very doubtful,
has a strong tendency to render him superstitious. He is more
removed, too, than the landsman of his education and stand-
ing, from the influence of general opinion, and the mayhap
over-sceptical teaching of the Press ; and, as a consequence
of their position and circumstances, I found, at this period,
seamen of the generation to which I myself belonged as firm
believers in wraiths, ghosts, and death-warnings, as the land-
ward contemporaries of my grandfither had been sixty years
before. A series of well-written nautical tales had appeared
shortly previous to this time in one of the metropolitan month
lies, — the London Magazine, if I rightly remember ; and
was now interested to find in one of the sailors' stories, the
original of decidedly the best of their number, — " The Doomed
Man." The author of the series, — a Mr. Hamilton, it was said,
who afterwards became an Irvingite teacher, and grew too scru
pulous to exercise in fiction a very pleasing pen, though he
continued to employ, as a portrait-painter, a rather indifferent
pencil, — had evidently sought such opportunities of listening
to sailors' stories as those on which I had at this time thrust
myself. Very curious materials for fiction may be found in
this way by the litteratenr. It must be hold that Sir Walter
Scott was no incompetent judge of the capabilities, for th<
purposes of the novelist, of a piece of narrative ; and yet wt
find him saying of the story told by a common sailor to hia
friend William Clirk, which he records in the " Letters on
Demonology and Witchcraft," that "the tale, properly
oianaged, might have made the fortune of a romancer."
At times by day, — for the sailors' stories were stories of the
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 347
night, — I found interesting companionship m the society of a
young student of divinity, one of the passengers, who, though
a lad of parts and acquirements, did not deem it beneath him
to converse on literary subjects with a working man in pale
moleskin, and with whom I did not again meet until many
years atlci\ when we were both actively engaged in prosecut-
ing the same quarrel, — he as one of the majority of the Pres-
bytery of Anchterarder, and I as editor of the leading news-
paper of the Non-Intrusion party. Perhaps the respected Free
Church minister of North Leith may be still able to call to
memory, — not, of course, the subjects, but the^oc^, of our dis-
cussions on literature and the belles lettres at this time ; and
that, on asking me one morning whether I had not been, ac-
cording to Burns, " crooning to mysel', " when on deck during
the previous evening, what seemed from the cadence to be
verse, I ventured to submit to him, as my night's work, a few
descriptive stanzas. And, as forming in some sort a memorial
of our voyage, and in order that my friendly critic may be
enabled, after the lapse of considerably more than a quarftsr
of a century, to review his judgment respecting them, I > .«w
submit them to the reader : —
STANZAS WRITTEN AT SEA.
Jc/ of the poet's soul, I court thy aid ;
Arouuu our vessel heaves the midnight wave ;
The cheerless moon sinks In the western sky ;
Keigiis breezeless silence!— in her ocean cave
The mermaid rests, while her fond lover nigh,
Marks the pale star-beams as they fall from high,
Gilding with treniuloiis li^ht her couch of sleep
Why smile incred'lousV the rapt Muse's eye
Through earth's dark caves, o'er heaven's fair plains, can 8WMp
Can range each hidden cell, where toils the unfathom'd deep
On ocean's craggy floor, beneath the shade
Of bushy rock-weed, tangled, dusk, and brown.
She sees the wreck of founder'd vessel laid,
In slimy silence, many a fathom down
From where the star-beam trembles ; o'er it ihrowD
16
848 Mr SCHOOLS and schoolmasters;
Are heap'd the treasures iren have died to gain,
And in sad mockery of the parting groan.
That babbled 'mid t.'ie wild unpitying ma.n,
Quick gasliiug o'er the bones, the restless tides ccmp kin
Gloomy and wide rolls the sepulchral sea.
Grave of my kindred, of my sire the grave !
Perchance, where now he sleeps, a space for me
Is marked by Fate beneath the deep green wave.
It well may be ! Poor bosom, why dost heave
Thus wild ! O, many a care, troublous and dark.
On earth stands thee still ; the Mermaid's cave
Grief haunts not ; sure 'twere pleasant there to mark
Serene, at noon-tide hour, the sailor's passing bark.
Sure it were pleasant through the vasty deep,
When on its bosom plays the golden beam,
When headlong speed by bower and cave to sweep;
When flame the waters round with emerald gleam,—
When, borne from high by tides and gales, the scream
Of sea-mew soften'd falls, — when bright and gay
The crimson weeds, proud ocean's pendants, stream
From trophied wrecks and rock-towers darkly gray, —
Through scenes so strangely fair 'twere pleasant, sure, to strtw
Why this strange thought V If, in that ocean laid,
The ear would cease to hear, the eye to see.
Though sights and sounds like these circled my bed,
(Vakeless and heavy would my slumbers be:
rbough the mild softened sun-light beam'd on me
(If a dull heap of bones relain'd my name,
That bleach'd or blacken'd 'mid the wasteful sea).
Its radiance all unseen, its golden beam
In vain through coral groves or emerald roof^ might streaVL.
Yet dwells a spirit in this earthy frame
Which oceans cannot quench nor Time destroy; —
A deathless, fadeless ray, a heavenly flame.
That pure shall rise when fails I'ach base alloy
That earth instils, dark grief, or l)a!>eli'HS joy :
Then shall the ocean's secrets meet its sight; —
For I do hold that happy soids ciijny
A vast all-reaching range of angel Might,
Prwm tnc fair source of day, oven to the gates ..>f night,
Now niifhl's d:irk veil Is rent; on yonder Itnd,
Thai blue and dislanl rises o'or the main,
I see the purple sky of morn expand,
Scattering Ihc gloom. Then cease my feeble strain :
When darkness rcignod, thy whisperings soothed my pa i^—
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 349
The pain by weariness and languor bred.
But now my eyes shall greet a lovelier scene
Than fancy pictured : fniin the dark green bed
Soon shall ihe orb of day exalt his glorious head.
I found my two uncles, O-usin George, and several other
friends and relations, waiting for me on the Cromarty beach ;
and was soon as happy among them as a man suffering a good
deal from debility, but not much from positive pain, could
well be. When again, about ten years after this time, I visited
the south of Scotland, it was to receive the instructions neces-
sary to C[Ualify me for a bank accountant ; and when I revisit-
ed it at a still later period, it was to undertake the manage-
ment of a metropolitan newspaper. In both these instances
I mingled with a diflerent sort of persons from those with
whom I had come in contact in the years 1824-25. And in
now taking leave of the lowlier class, I may be permitted to
make a few general remarks regarding them.
It is a curious change which has taken place in this country
during the last hundred years. Up till the times of the Rebel-
lion of 1745, and a little later, it was its remoter provinces that
formed its dangerous portions ; and the effective strongholds
from which its advance-guards of civilization and good order
gradually gained upon old anarchy and barbarism, were its
great towns. We are told by ecclesiastical historians, that in
Rome, after the age of Constantine, the term villager [Pagvs)
came to be regarded as synonymous with heathen, from the
circumstance that the worshippers of the gods were then chiefly
to be found in remote country places ; and we know that in
Scotland the Reformation pursued a course exactly resembling
that of Christianity itself in the old Roman world : it began
in the larger and more influential towns ; and it was in the
cmoter country districts that the displaced religion lingered
.ongest, and found its most efficient champions and allies.
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, St. Andrew's, Dundee, were all
Protestant, and sent out their well-taught burghers to serve
in the army of the Lords of the Congregation, when Iluntly
avd Hamilton were arming their vassals to contend for the ol>
850 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
solete faih. In a later age the accessible Lowlands were en:-
bucd with an evangelistic Presbyterianism, when the Biore
mountainous and inaccessible provinces of the country were
still in a condition to furnish, in what was known as the High-
land Host, a dire instrument of persecution. Even as late as
the middle of the last century, "Sabbath," according to a
popular writer, " never get aboon the Pass of Killicrankie ;"
and the Stuarts, exiled for their adherence to Popery, con-
tinued to found almost their sole hopes of restoration on the
swords of their co-religionists the Highlanders. During the
last hundred years, however, this old condition of matters has
been strangely reversed ; and it is in the great towns that
Paganism now chiefly prevails. In at least their lapsed
classes, — a rapidly-increasing proportion of their population,
— it is those cities of our country which first caught the light
of religion and learning, that have become pre-eminently its
dark parts ; just, if I may employ the comparison, as it is
those portions of the moon which earliest receive the light
when slio is in her increscent state, and shine like a thread of
silver in the deep blue of the heavens, that first become dark
when she falls into the wane.
It is mainly during the elapsed half of the present century
that this change for the worse has taken place in the large
towns of Scotland. In the year 1824 it was greatly less than
half accomplished ; but it was fast going on ; and I saw, par-
tially at least the processes in operation through which it has
been effected. The cities of the countries have increased their
population during the past fifty years greatly beyond the pro-
portion of its rural districts, — a result in part of the revolu-
f,'ons which have taken place in the agricultural systcjii of the
Lowlands, and of the clearances of the Highlands ; and in part
also of that extraordinary development of the manufactures
and trade of the kingdom which the last tw'o generations have
witnessed. Of the wilder Ivlinhurgh mechanics with whom
I formed at this time any ac(juainlance, less than one-fourth
were natives of the place. The others were mere settlers in it,
who had renuived mostly from country districts and small
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 851
lowns, in which they had heen known, each by his own circle
of neighborliood, and had lived, in consequence, under the
wholesome influence of public opinion. In Edinburgh, —
grown too large at the time to permit men to know aught of
their neighbors, — they were set free from this wholesome in-
fluence, and, unless when under the guidance of higher prin-
ciple, found themselves at liberty to do very much as they
pleased. And, — with no general opinion to control, — cliques
and parties of their wilder spirits soon formed in their sheds an
workshops a standard of opinion of their own, and found only
too effectual r. leans of compelling their weaker comrades to
conform to it. And hence a great deal of wild dissipation and
profligacy, united, of course, to the inevitable improvidence.
And though dissipation and improvidence are quite compatible
with intelligence in the first generation, they are sure always
to part company from it in the second. The family of the
unsteady spendthrift workman is never a well-taught family.
It is reared up in ignorance ; and, with evil example set be-
fore and around it, it almost necessarily takes its place among
the lapsed classes. In the third generation the descent is of
course still greater and more hopeless than in the second.
There is a type of even physical degradation already manifest-
ing itself in some of our large towns, especially among de-
graded females, which is scarce less marked than that exhib-
ited by the negro, and which both my Edinburgh and Glas-
gow readers must have often remarked on the respective High
Streets of these cities. The features are generally bloated and
overcharged, the profile lines usually concave, the complexion
coarse and high, and the expression that of a dissipation and
sensuality become chronic and inherent. And how this class,
— constitutionally degraded, and with the moral sense, in most
instances, utterly undeveloped and blind, — are ever to be re-
claimed, it is difficult to see. The immigrant Irish form also
a very appreciable element in the degradation of our large
towns. They are, however, pagans, not of the new, but of
the old type; and are chiefly formidable from the squalid
wrrotchedness of a physical character which they have tran?^
352 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ferred ft ?m their mud cabins into our streets and lanes, and
from the course of ruinous competition into which they have
entered with the unskilled laborers of the country, and which
has had the effect of reducing our lowlier countrymen to a
humbler level than they perhaps ever occupied before. Mean-
while, this course of degradation is going on, in all our larger
towns, in an ever-increasing ratio ; and all that philanthropy
and the Churches are doing to counteract it is but as the dis-
charge of a few squirts on a conflagration. It is, I fear, pi*©.
paring terrible convulsions for the future. When the daii"
gerous classes of a country were located in its remote districts,
as in Scotland in the early half of the last century, it was com-
paratively easy to deal with them : but the sans culottes of
Paris, in its First Revolution, placed side by side with the ex
ecutive Government, proved very formidable indeed ; nor is
it, alas ! very improbable that the ever-growing masses of our
large towns, broke loose from the sanction of religion and
morals, may yet terribly avenge on the upper classes and the
Churches of the country the indiflerency with which they have
been suffered to sink.
I was informed by Cousin George, shortly after my arrival,
that my old friend of the Doocot Cave, after keeping shop as
a grocer for two years, had given up business, and gone to col-
lege to prepare himself for the Church. He had just returned
home, added George, after completing his first session, and had
expressed a strong desire to meet with me. His mother, too,
had joined in the invitation, — would I not take tea with them
that evening 1 — and Cousin George had been asked to accom-
pany me. I demurred ; but at length set out with George, and,
ftfter an interruption in our intercourse of about five years,
spent the evciiiiig with my old friend. And for years after we
wvre inseparable conipaniuns, who, when living in the same
eighborhood, spent together almost every hour not given to
private study or inevitable occupation, and who, when separated
by distance, exchanged letters enough 1o fill volumes. We had
parted boys, and had now grown men; and lor the first few
w^eks we took stock of ench other's acquirements and ex
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 35S
periences, and the measure of each other's calibre, with some
little curiosity. Tlie mind of my friend had developed rather
m a scientific than literary direction. lie afterwards carried
away the first mathematical prize of his year at college, and
the second in natural philosophy ; and he had, I now found,
great acuteness as a metaphysician, and no inconsideraI)]e ac-
quaintance with the antagonist positions of the schools of
Hume and Reid. On the other hand, my opportunities of ob
servation had been perhaps greater than his, and my acquaint
ance Avith men, and even with books, more extensive ; and ir.
the interchange of idea which we carried on, both were gainers:
he occasionally picked up in our conversations a fact of which
he had been previously ignorant ; and I, mayhap, learned t(
look a little more closely than before at an argument. I intro
duced him to the Eathie Lias, and assisted him in forming a
small collection, which, ere he ultimately dissipated it, contaiuea
some curious fossils, — among the others, the second specimen
of Pterichthys ever found ; and he, in turn, was able to give
me a few geological notions, which, though quite crude enough,
— for natural science w^as not taught at the university which
he attended, — I found of use in the arrangement of my facts,
— now become considerable enough to stand in need of those
threads of theory without which large accumulations of fact
refuse to hang together in the memory. There was one special
hypothesis which he had heard broached, and the utter im-
probability of which I was not yet geologist enough to detect,
which for a time filled my whole imagination. It had been
said, he told me, that the ancient world, in which my fossils,
animal and vegetable, had flourished and decayed, — a world
gi-eatly older than that before the Flood, — had been tenanted
by rational, responsible beings, for whom, as for the race to
which we ourselves belong, a resurrection and a day of final
judgment had awaited. But many thousands of years liad
elapsed since that day — emphatically the last to the Pre-Adam-
Ite race' — had come and gone. Of all the accountable crea^
tures that had been summoned to its bar, bone had been gath-
ered to its bone, so that not a vestige of the frame-work of their
354 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
bodies occurred in the rocks or soils in which they had been
originally inhumed ; and, in consequence, only the remains of
their irresponsible contemporaries, the inferior animals, and of
the vegetable productions of their fields and forests, were now
to be found. The dream filled for a time my whole imagina-
tion ; but though poetry might find ample footing on a hy
pothesis so suggestive and bold, I need scarce say that it has
itself no foundation in science, Man had no responsible
predecessor on earth. At the determined time, when his ap-
pointed habitation was completely fitted for him, he came and
took possession of it ; but the old geologic ages had been ages
of immaturity, — dai/s whose work as a work of promise was
' ^od," but not yet " very good," nor yet ripened for the
appearance of a moral agent, whose nature it is to be a fellow-
worker with the Creator in relation to even the physical and
the material. The planet which we inhabit seems tu have
been prepared for man, and for man only.
Partly through my friend, but in part also from the circum-
stance that I retained a measure of intimacy with such of my
school-fellows as had subsequently prosecuted their education
at college, I was acquainted, during the later years in which I
wrought as a mason, with a good many university -taught lads ;
and I sometimes could not avoid comparing them in my mind
with working men of, as nearly as 1 could guess, the same
)riginal calibre. I did not always find that general superiority
)n the side of the scholar which the scholar himself usually
took for granted. What he had specially studied he knew,
save in rare and exceptional cases, better than the working
man ; b>it while the student had lieon mastering his Greek and
Latin, and expatiating in Natural IMiilosophy and the Math-
ematics, the working man, if of an inquiring mind, had been
doing something else ; and it is at least a fact, that all the
great readers of my acquaintance at tliis time, — the men most
ex/ onsivoly acquainted witli English literature, — were not the
men who had i\'Cfived the classical education. On the other
nand, in framing an argument, the advantage lay with the
scholars. In that common sense, however, which reasons but
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 355
does not argue, and which enables men to pick their stepping
pridently through the journey of life, I found that the class-
ical education gave no superiority Avhatever ; nor did it appear
to form so fitting an introduction to the realities of business as
that course of dealing with things tangible and actual in which
the working man has to exercise his faculties, and from which
he derives his experience. One cause of the over-low estimate
which the classical scholar so often forms of the intelligence of
that class of the people to which our skilled mechanics belong
arises very much from the forwardness of a se<. of blockheads
who are always sure to obtrude themselves upon his notice,
and who come to be regarded "by him as average specimens
of their order. I never yet knew a truly intelligent mechanic
obtrusive. Men of the stamp of my two uncles, and of my
friend William Ross, never press themselves on the notice of
a class above them. A minister newly settled in a charge, for
instance, often finds that it is the dolts of his flock that first
force themselves upon his acquaintance. I have heard the
late Mr. Stewart of Cromarty remark, that the humbler dun
derheads of the parish had all introduced themselves to his ac-
quaintance long ere he found out its clever fellows. And hence
often sad mistakes on the part of a clergyman in dealing with
the people. It seems never to strike him that there may be
■flnong them men of his own calibre, and, in certain practical
departments, even better taught than he ; and that this su-
perior class is always sure to lead the others. And in preach-
ing down to the level of the men of humbler capacity, he fails
often to preach to men of any capacity at all, and is of no use.
Some of the clerical contemporaries of Mr. Stewart used to
allege that, in exercising his admirable faculties in the theolog
ical field, he sometimes forgot to lower himself to his people^
and so preached over their heads. And at times, when the^
themselves came to occupy his pulpit, as occasionally hap
pened, they addressed to the congregation sermons quite sim
Die enough for even children to comprehend. I taught at thu
time a class of boys in the Cromarty Sabbath-school, and in
vari\»bl\ fovnd on these occasions, that while the memories o*
356 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
ruy pupils were charged to the full with the striking thoughts
and graphic illustrations of the very elaborate discourses
deemed too high for them, they remembered of the very simple
ones, specially lowered to suit narrow capacities, not a single
word or note. All the attempts at originating a cheap litera-
ture that have failed, have been attempts pitched too low : the
higher-toned efforts have usually succeeded. If the writer of
these chapters has been in any degree successful in addressing
himself as a journalist to the Presbyterian people of Scotland,
it has always been, not by writing down to them, but by doing
his best on all occasions to write up to them. He has ever
thought of them as represented by his friend William,, his
uncles, and his Cousin George, — by shrewd old John Fraser,
and his reckless though very intelligent acquaintance Cha ; and
by addressing to them on every occasion as good sense and as
solid information as he could possibly muster, he has at times
succeeded in catching their ear, and perhaps, in some degree,
ir influencing their judgment.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 357
CHAPTER XVII.
Bjware, Lorenzo, a slow, sudden death."
Young.
There was one special subject which my fi'iend, in our quiet
evening walks, used to urge seriously upon my attention. He
had thrown up, under strong religious impressions, what prom-
ised to be so good a business, and in two years he had al-
ready saved money enough to meet the expenses of a college
course of education. And assuredly, never did man determine
on entering the ministry with views more thoroughly disinter-
ested than his. Patronage ruled supreme in the Scottish Estab-
lishment at the time ; and my friend had no influence and no
patron ; but he could not see his way clear to join with the
Evangelical Dissenters or the Secession ; and believing that the
most important work on earth is the work of saving souls, he
had entered on his new course in the full conviction that, if God
had work for him of this high character to do. He would find
him an opportunity of doing it. And now, thoroughly in ear
nest, and as part of the special employment to which he had
devoted himself, he set himself to press upon my attention
<-he importance, in their personal bearing, of religious concerns.
I was not unacquainted with the standard theology of the
Scottish Church. In the parish school I had, indeed, acquired
no ideas on the subject ; and though I now hear a good deal
358 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
said, chiefly with a controversial bearing, about the excellent
religious influence of our parochial seminaries, I never knew
any one who owed other than the merest smattering of theo.
logical knowledge to these institutions, and not a single in-
dividual who had ever derived from them any tincture, even
the slightest, of religious feeling. In truth, during almost the
whole of the last century, and for at least the first forty years
of the present, the people of Scotland were, with all their
faults, considerably more Christian than the larger part of their
schoolmasters. So far as I can remember, I carried in my
memory from school only a single remark at all theological
in its character, and it was of a kind suited rather to do
harm than good. In reading in the class one Saturday morn-
ing a portion of the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm, I was
told by the master that that ethical poem was a sort of al-
phabetical acrostic ; a circumstance, he added, that account-
ed for its broken and inconsecutive character as a composition.
Chiefly, however, from the Sabbath-day catechisings to which
[ had been subjected during boyhood by my uncles, and lat-
terly from the old divines, my Uncle Sandy's favorites, and
from the teachings of the pulpit, I had acquired a considerable
amount of religious knowledge. I had thought, too, a good deaJ
about some of the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, in their char
acter as abtruse positions, — such as the doctrine of the Di-
vine decrees, and of man's inability to assume the initiative in
the work of his own conversion. I had, Tjesides, a great admira-
tion of the Bible, especially of its narrative and poetical parts ;
and could scarce give strong enough expression to the contempt
which I entertained for the vulgar and tasteless sceptics who,
with Paine at their head, could sj)cak of it as a weak or foolish
book. Farther, reared in a family circle, some of whose mem
bers were habitually devout, and all of whom respected and
Btood up for religion, and were iml>ued with the stirring eccle
sia-stical traditions of their country, I felt that tiie religious side
in any (juarrel had a sort of hereditary claim upon me. 1 be-
licve I may venture to say, that previous to this time I had never
seen a religious man badgered for his rel'gion, and much in a
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION'. 35^!
minority, without openly taking part with him ; nor is it ini
possible that, in a time of trouble, I might have almost de-
served the character given by old John Howie to a rather
notable " gentleman sometimes called Burly," who, " although
he was by some reckoned none of the most religious," joined
himself to the suffering party, and was " always zealous and
honest-hearted." And yet my religion was a strangely in-
congruous thing. It took the form, in my mind, of a mass
of indigested theology, with here and there a prominent point
developed out of due proportion, from the circumstance that
I had thought upon it for myself; and while, entangled, if I
may so speak, amid the recesses and under cover of the gen-
eral chaotic mass, there harbored no inconsiderable amount
of superstition," there rested over it the clouds of a dreary
scepticism. I have sometimes, in looking back on the doubts
and questionings of this period, thought, and perhaps even
spoken, of myself as an infidel. But an infidel I assuredly
was not : my belief was at least as real as my incredulity, and
had, I am inclined to think, a much deeper seat in my mind.
But wavering between the two extremes, — now a believer, and
anon a sceptic, — the belief usually exhibiting itself as a strongly-
based instinct, — the scepticism as the result of some intellect-
ual process, — I lived on for years in a sort of uneasy see-saw
condition, without any middle ground between the two ex-
tremes, on which I could at once reason and believe.
That middle ground I now succeeded in finding. It is at once
delicate and dangerous to speak of one's own spiritual condi-
tion, or of the emotional sentiments on which one's conclur.ions
regarding it are often so doubtfully founded. Egotism in the re-
ligious form is perhaps more tolerated than in any other ;. but it
is not on that account less perilous to the egotist himself. There
need be, however, less delicacy in speaking of one's belie *j3 than
of one's feelings ; and I trust I need not hesitate to say. that 1
was led to see at this time, through the instrumentality of my
friend, that my theologic system had previously wanted a < centra]
object, to which the heart, as certainly as the intellect, could at
360 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
taoh itself; and that the true centre of an efficient Chrti
tianity is, as the name ought of itself to indicate, " the Wora
made Flesh." Around this central sun of the Cliristian sys-
tern, — appreciated, howe% er, not as a doctrine which is a mere
abstraction, but as a Divine Person, — so truly man, that the
affections of the human heart can lay hold upon Him, and so
truly God. that the mind, through faith, can at all tinicg
ind in all places be brought into direct contact with Him,
— all that is truly religious takes its place in a subsidiary and
subordinate relation. I say subsidiary and subordinate. The
Divine Man is the great attractive centre, — the sole gravi-
tating point of a system which owes to Him all the coher-
ency, and which would be but a chaos were He away. It
seems to be the existence of the human nature in this central
and paramount object that imparts to Christianity, in its sub-
jective character, tts peculiar power of influencing and con-
trolling the human mind. There may be men who, through a
peculiar idiosyncrasy of constitution, are capable of loving,
after a sort, a mere abstract God, unseen and inconceivable ;
though, as shown by the air of sickly sentimentality borne by
almost all that has been said and written on the subject, the
feeling, in its true form, must be a very rare and exceptional
one. In all my experience of men, I never knew a genuine
instance of it. The love of an abstract God seems to be as
little natural to the ordinary human constitution as the love
of an abstract sun or planet. And so it will be found, that in
all the religions that have taken strong hold of the mind of
man, the element of a vigorous humanity has mingled, in the
character of its gods, with the theistic element. The gods of
the classic mythology were simply powerful men let loose
from the tyranny of the physical laws; and, in their purelj
hunijui cliaractiT, as warm friends and deadly enemies, the}
were both feared and loved. And so the belief which bowed
ut their shrines ruled the old civilized world Ibr many cen
turies. In (he great ancient mythologies of the East, — Budh
Jsni and Brahiiianism, — both very influential forms of belief)
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 361
— we have the same elements, — genuine humanity added to
god-like power. In the faith of the Moslem, the human
character of the man Mahommed, elevated to an all-potential
vicegercncy in things sacred, gives great strength to what with-
out it would be but a weak theism. Literally it is Allah's
supreme prophet that maintains for Allah himself a place
in the Mahommedan mind. Again, in Popery we find an
excess of humanity scarce less great than in the classical my-
thology itself, and with nearly corresponding results. Tliough
.he Virgin Mother takes, as queen of heaven, a first place in the
scheme, and forms in that character a greatly more interesting
goddess than any of the old ones who counselled Ulysses, or
responded to the love of Anchises or of Endymion, she has to
share her empire with the minor saints, and to recognize in them
a host of rivals. But undoubtedly to this popular element
Popery owes not a little of its indomitable strength. In, how
ever, all these forms of religion, whether inherently false from
the beginning, or so overlaid in some after stage by the fictitious
and the untrue as to have their original substratum of truth
covered up by error and fable, there is such a want of coherency
between the theistic and human elements, that we always find
them undergoing a process of separation. We see the human
element ever laying hold on the popular mind, and there mani-
festing itself in the form of a vigorous superstition ; and the
theistic element, on the other hand, recognized by the culti-
vated intellect as the exclusive and only element, and elabo-
rated into a sort of natural theology, usually rational enough
in its propositions, but for any practical purpose always feeble
and inefficient. Such a separation of the two elements took
place of old in the ages of the classical mythology ; and hence
the very opposite characters of the wild but genial and popu-
lar fables so exquisitely adorned by the poets, and the ra-
tional but uninfluential doctrines received by a select few from
the philosophers. Such a separation took place, too, in France
in the latter half of the last century ; and still on the Euro-
pear. Continent generally do we find this separation repre
seated by the asserters of a weak theism on the one hand, and
362 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
of a superstitious saint-worship on the other. In the false oi
corrupted religions, the two indispensable elements of Divinity
and Humanity appear as if blended together by a mere me-
chanical process ; and it is their natural tendency tr "separate,
through a sort of subsidence on the part of the humar. element
from the theistic one, as if from some lack of the necessary af-
finities. In Christianity, on the other hand, when existing in
its integrity as the religion of the New Testament, the union of
the two elements is complete : it partakes of the nature, not
of a mechanical, but of a chemical mixture ; and its great
central doctrine, — the true Humanity and true Divinity of the
A.dorable Saviour, — is a truth equally receivable by at once the
humblest and the loftiest intellects. Poor dying children
possessed of but a few simple ideas, and men of the most ro-
bust intellects, such as the Chalmerses, Fosters, and Halls of
the Christian Church, find themselves equally able to rest their
salvation on the man " Christ, who is over all, God blessed for-
ever." Of this fundamental truth of the two natures, that
condensed enunciation of the gospel which forms the watch-
word of our faith, " Believe in the Loi'd Jesus Christ, and
thou shalt be saved," is a direct and palpable embodiment;
and Christianity is but a mere name without it.
I was impressed at this time by another very remarkable fea.
ture in the religion of Christ in its subjective character. Kames,
in his ''Art of Thinking," illustrates, by a curious story, one of
his observations on the " nature of man." " Nothing is more
common," he says, " than love converted into hatred ; and we
have seen instances of hatred converted into love." And in ex-
emplifying the remark, he relates his anecdote of'Unnion and
Valentine." Two English soldiers, who fought in the wars of
Queen Anne, — the one a petty oflicer, the other a private sen
tinel, — had been friends and comrades for years; but, quarrel
ling in some love affair, they became bitter enemies. The
officer made an uiigciierous use of his authority, and so annoy
ed and persecuted the sentinel as almost to fret him into mad-
ness ; and lie was frequently heard to say that he would die to
be avengu J of him. Whole months were spent in the inilicidon
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 863
of injuries on the one side, and in the venting of complaints on
the other ; when, in the midst of their mutual rage, they were
both selected, as men of tried courage, to share in some des-
perate attack, which was, however, unsuccessful ; and the of-
ficer, in the retreat, was disabled, and struck down by a shot
in the thigh. "Ah, Valentine ! and will you leave me here to
perish V he exclaimed, as his old comrade rushed past him.
The poor injured man immediately returned ; and, in the midst
of a thick fire, bore off his wounded enemy to what seemed
place of safety, when he was struck by a chance ball, and fell
dead under his burden. The officer, immediately forgetting his
wound, rose up, tearing his hair ; and throwing himself on the
bleeding body, he cried, " Ah, Valentine ! and was it for me,
who have so barbarously used thee, that thou hast died ? I will
not live after thee." He was not by any means to be forced
from the corpse; but was removed with it bleeding in his arms,
and attended with tears by all his comrades, who knew of his
harshness to the deceased. When brought to a tent, his
wounds were dressed by force ; but the next day, still calling
on Valentine, and lamenting his cruelties to him, he died in
the pangs of remorse and despair.
Tliis surely is a striking story ; but the commonplace re-
mark based upon it by the philosopher is greatly less so.
Men who have loved do often learn to hate the object of
their aftections ; and men who have hated sometimes learn
to love ; but the portion of the anecdote specially worthy of
remark appears to be that which, dwelling on the o'ermaster-
ing remorse and sorrow of the rescued soldier, shows how ef-
fectually his poor dead comrade had, by dying for him " while
he was yet his enemy," " heaped coals of fire upon his head."
And Such seems to be one of the leading principles on which,
with a Divine adaptation to the heart of man, the scheme of
Redemption has been framed. The Saviour approved his love,
' in that while we were yet sinners, He died for us.'* There
8 an inexpressibly great power in this principle ; and miinv
deeoly <«tirred heart has felt it to its core. The theolo
364 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
gians have perhaps too frequently dwelt on the Saviour's vi
carious satisfaction for human sin in its relation to the of
fended justice of the Father. How, or on what principle, the
Father was satisfied, I know not, and may never know. The
enunciation regarding vicarious satisfaction may be properly
received in faith as a fact, but, I suspect, not properly reasoned
upon until we shall be able to bring the moral sense of Deity,
with its requirements, within the limits of 'a small and trivial
logic. But the thorough adaptation of the scheme to man's na.
ture is greatly more appreciable, and lies fully within the reach
of observation and experience. And how thorough that adapta-
tion is, all who have really looked at the matter ought to be com-
petent to say. Does an earthly priesthood, vested with alleged
powers to interpose between God and man, always originate
an ecclesiastical tyranny, which has the effect, in the end, of
shutting up the mass of men from their Maker? — here is
there a High Priest passed into the heavens, — the only Priest
whom the evangelistic Protestant recognizes as really such,
— to whom, in his character of Mediator between God and
man, all may apply, and before whom there need be felt none
of that abject prostration of the spirit and understanding which
man always experiences when he bends betbre the merely
human priest 1 Is self-righteousness the besetting infirmity of
the religious man? — in the scheme of vicarious righteousness
it finds no footing. The self-approving Pharisee must be con
tent to renounce his own merits, ere he can have part or lot in
the fund of merit which alone avails ; and yet without personal
richteousness he can have no evidence whatever that he has
an interest in the all-prevailing ini[)Uted righteousness. But
it is in the closing scene of life, when man's boasted vir-
tues become so intangible in his estimation that they elude
nis grasp, and sins and shortcomings, little noted before, start
up around him like spectres, that the scheme of Kedcmptioi;
appears worthy of (lie infinite wisdom and goodness of God,
and when wliat tli(3 Saviour did and sulH-red seems of cfiicaey
enough to bio* ut the guilt of every olfence. It is wbi^H
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. S6o
the minor lights of comfort are extinguished that the Sun of
Righteousness shines forth, and more than compensates for
them all.
The opinions formed at this time on this matter of prime
importance I found no after occasion to alter or modify. On
the contrary, in passing from the subjective to the objective
view, I have seen the doctrine of the union of the two natures
grea'ily confirmed. The truths of geology appear destined to
exercise in the future no inconsiderable influence on natural
theology ; and with this especial doctrine they seem very much
in accordance. Of that long and stately march of creation with
which the records of the stony science bring us acquainted,
the distinguishing characteristic is progress. There appears to
have been a time when there existed on our planet only dead
matter unconnected with vitality; and then a time in which
plants and animals of a low order began to be, but in which
even fishes, the humblest of the vertebrata, were so rare and
few, that they occupied a scarce appreciable place in Nature.
Then came an age of fishes huge of size, and that to the pe
culiar ichthyic organization added certain well-marked char-
acteristics of the reptilian class immediately above them. And
then, after a time, during which the reptile had occupied a place
as inconspicuous as that occupied by the fish in the earlier
periods of animal life, an age of reptiles of vast bulk and high
standing was ushered in. And when, in the lapse of untold
ages, it also had passed away, there succeeded an age of great
mammals. Molluces, fishes, reptiles, mammals, had each in
succession their periods of vast extent ; and then there came
a period that differed even more, in the character of its master-
existence, from any of these creations, than they, with their
many vitalities, had differed from the previous inorganic period
in which life had no existence. The human period began,—
the period of a fellow-worker with God, created in God's own
image. The animal existences of the previous ages formed,
if I may so express myself, mere figures in the landscapes of
the great garden which they inhabited. Man, on the other
hand, was placed in it to " keep and to dress it ;" and such
866 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
has been the effect of his labors, that they have altered and
improved the face of whole continents. Our globe, even as it
might be seen from the moon, testifies, over its surface, to that
anique nature of man, unshared in by any of the inferior an-
imals, which renders him, in things physical and natural, a
fellow-worker with the Creator who first produced it. And of
ihe identity of at least his intellect with that of his Maker, and,
of consequence, of the integrity of the revelation which declares
that he was created in God's own image, we have direct evidence
\n his ability of not only conceiving of God's contrivances, but
even of reproducing them ; and this, not as a mere imitator, but
%s an original thinker. He may occasionally borrow the prin-
ciples of his contrivances from the works of the Original De-
signer, but much more frequently, in studying the works of the
Original Designer, does he discover in them the principles of
nis own contrivances. He has not been an imitator : he has
merely been exercising, with resembling results, the resembling
mind, i. e. the mind made in the Divine image. But the ex-
isting scene of things is not destined to be the last. High as
it is, it is too low and too imperfect to be regarded as God's
finished work : it is merely one of the progressive dynasties ;
and Revelation and the implanted instincts of our nature alike
teach us to anticipate a glorious terminal dynasty. In the
first dawn of being, simple vitality was united to matter : the
vitality thus united became, in each succeeding period, of a
higher and yet higher order ; — it was in succession the vitality
of the mollusc, of the fish, of the reptile, of the sagacious
mammal, and, finally, of responsible, immortal man, created in
the image of God ? What is to be the next advance ? Is there
to bo merely a repetition of the past, — an introduction a sec-
ond time of " man made in the image of God"? No ! Tlie
geologist, in the tables of stone which form his records, finds
no example of dynasties once passed away again returning.
There has been no repetition of the dynasty of (he fish, — of the
reptile,— -of the mammal. Thedynasfy oi'llic fiiture is to have
glorified man for its iiihal)itiiiit ; but it is to be the dynasty,
-^tho ' kln^ iom" — not of glorified man made in the imago
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCAnON. 867
of God, l)ut of God himself in the form of man. hi the doc.
trine of the two natures, and in the further doctrine that the
terminal dynasty is to be peculiarly the dynasty of Him, in
whom the natures are united, we find (bat required progression
beyond which progress cannot go. Creation and the Creator
meet at one point, and in one person. The long ascending
line from dead matter to man has been a progress Godwards,
— not an asymptotical progress, but destined from the begin-
ning to furnish a point of union ; and, occupying that point aa
true God and true man, as Ci-eator and created, we recognize
the adorable Monarch of all the Future. It is, as urged by
the Apostle, the especial glory of our race, that it should have
furnished that point of contact at which Godhead has united
Himself, not to man only, but also, through man, to His own
Universe. — to the Universe of Matter and of Mind.
I remained for several months in delicate and somewhat
precarious health. My lungs had received more serious in-
jury than I had at first supposed ; and it seemed at one time
rather doubtful whether the severe mechanical irritation which
had so fretted them that the air-passages seemed overchaz'ged
with matter and stone-dust, might not pass into the complaint
which it simulated, and become confirmed consumption. Cu-
riously enough, my comrades had told me in sober earnest, —
among the rest, Cha, a man of sense and observation, — that I
would pay the forfeit of my sobriety by being sooner affected
than they by the stone-cutter's malady : " a good bouse'''' gave,
they said, a wholesome fillip to the constitution, and " el^^ared
the sulphur oft' the lungs ;" and mine would suff'er for want
of the medicine which kept theirs clean. I know not whether
there was virtue in their remedy : it seems just possible that
the shock given to the constitution by an overdose of strong
irink may in certain cases be medicinal in its effects ; bat
hey were certainly not in error in their prediction. Among
the hewers of the party I was the first affected by the malady.
I still remember the rather pensive than sad feeling Avith which
I used to contemplate, at this time, an early death, and the in-
tense love of nature that drew me, day after day, to the beaiv
368 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
tiful scene 'y which surrounds my native town, and which 1
loved all tiie more from the consciousness that my eyes might
so soon close upon it forever. " It is a pleasant thing to be-
hold the sun." Among my manuscripts, — useless scraps of
paper, to which, however, in their character as fossils of the
past epochs of my life, I cannot help attaching an interest not
at all in themselves, — I find the mood represented by only a
few almost infantile verses, addressed to a docile little girl of
five years, my eldest sister by my mother's second marriage,
and my frequent companion, during my illness, in my short
walks.
TO JEANIE.
Sister Jeanie, haste, we'll go
To where the while-stan'tl gowans jfrow,
Wi' the putiiluck-lluwer o' gowdeii hue,
The snaw-drap white and the bonny vi'let blue.
Sister Jeanie, haste, we'll go
To where the blossom'd lilacs grow, —
To where the pine-tree, dark an' high.
Is pointing its tap at the cludless sky.
Jennie, mony a merry lay
Is suug in the young-leav'd woods to-day ;
Flits on light wing the dragon-flee.
An' bums on the flowrie the big red-bee.
Down the burnie wirks its way
Aneath the hendini; birken spray.
An' wimples roun' the green moss stauo,
An' mourns, I kenna why, wi' a ceaseless man*
Jeanie, come ; thy days o' play
Wi' autumn tide shall pass away ;
Sune shall these sconi's. In darkness cast,
Be ravaged wild by tlie wild winter blast.
Though to thee a spring shall rise,
An' scenes as fair salute thine eyes;
An' though, through many a cludless day,
Bly winsome Jean shall be heartsome and gay
!le wha grasps thy little hand
Nae lauKor at thy side shall Hiand,
Nor o'er the Uower-be»i)rinkled brae
Laad thee the lowu'esl an' the bonniest way.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 369
Dost Ihou see yon yard sne green,
SpreckTcl wi' many a mossy siane?
A few short weeks o' pain sliall fly,
An' asleep in that bd shall thy puir brither 11&
Then thy millier'a lears awhile
May chide Ihyjoy an' damp thy snile;
But sune ilk grief shall we ir awa'
And I'll be forgotten by ane an' by a'.
Dinna think tlie thought is sad;
Life vex'd me aft, but this niak's glad:
Whan cauld my heait and clos'd my ee',
Bonny shall the dreams o' my slumbers be.
At length, however, my constitution threw off the mah^dy ;
though — as I still occasionally feel — the organ affected never
quite regained its former vigor ; and I began to experience the
quiet but exquisite enjoyment of the convalescent. After long
and depressing illnesses, youth itself appears to return with re-
turning health ; and it seems to be one of the compensating pro-
visions, that while men of robust constitution and rigid or-
ganization get gradually old in their spirits and obtuse in
their feelings, the class that have to endure being many times
sick have the solace of being also many times young. The
reduced and weakened frame becomes as susceptible of the
emotional as m tender and delicate youth. I know not that
I ever spent three happier months than the autumnal months
of this year, when gradually picking up flesh and strength
amid my old haunts, the vt'oods and caves. My friend had
left me early in July for Aberdeen, where he had gone to
prosecute his studies under the eye of a tutor, one Mr. Dun-
can, whom he described to me in his letters as perhaps the
most deeply learned man he had ever seen. " You may ask
him a common question," said my friend, " without getting an
answer, — for he has considerably more than the average ab-
sontness of the great scholar about him ; but if you inquire of
him the state of any one controversy ever agitated in the
Church or the world, he will give it you at once, with, if you
please, all the arguments on both sides." The trait struck me
at the time as one of some mark ; and I thought of it manj
370 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
years after, when flime had blown the name of my friend's
tutor pretty widely as Dr. Duncan, Hebrew Professor in our
Free Church College, and one of the most profoundly learned
of Orientalists. Though separated, however, from my friend,
I found a quiet pleasure in following up, in my solitary walks,
the views which his conversations had suggested ; and in a
copy of verses, the production of this time, which, with all
their poverty and stiffness, please me as true, and as repre-
sentative of the convalescent feeling, I find direct reference tc
the beliefs which he had laliored to instil. My verses are
written in a sort of metre which, in the hands of Collins, be
came flexible, and exquisitely poetic, and which in those of
Kirke White is at least pleasing, but of which we find poor
enough specimens in the " Anthologies" of Southey, and
which perhaps no one so limited in his metrical vocabulary,
and so defective in his musical ear, as the writer of these
chapters, should ever have attempted.
SOLACE.
No star of golden iiifliieiicu hailed thcbirih
Of him who, all unUiiowii and louely, pours.
As fails the light of eve.
His pensive, artless i^ong;
Yea, those who mark out honor, ease, wealth, fame.
As man's sole joys, shall And no joy in him ;
Yet of far nobler Uiud
His silent pleasures prove.
For not ninnarkcd hy him Ihe ways of men ;
Nor yet lo him ilic ample i)age unknown,
Where, trac'd by Nature's hand,
Is many a plcMsing line.
O! when the world's dull children bend the knee,
Meanly obsequious, lo some mortal god,
It yields no vulvar joy
Alone to stand aloof;
Or when they josllc on wrallli's crowde<l road,
And swells Ihe tnmiili on Ihe breeze, 'lis sweet,
Thoughtful, al length reclined.
To list Ihe wralhliil hum.
\\'h:il IhouKh Ihe weakly gay uCTect to 8C0m
The loitering dreamer of life's darkest Bbud<\
Stinglc.Hs the jeer, whoso voice
Cornea from the erroueoiu path.
OB, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 37l
Scorner, of all tliy toils the end rieclarel
If pleasure, pleasure comes unfaU'd to cheef
The haunts of him who spends
His hours in quiet thonght.
And happier he who can repress desire,
Than they who seldom mourn a thwarted wish :
The vassals Ihey of fate,—
The unbending conqueror he.
And thou, blest Muse, though rudely strung thy lyre^
Its tones can guile the dark "iid lonesome day, —
Can smooth the wrinkled brow,
And dry the sorrowing tear.
"Tiine many a bliss, — O, many a solace thine!
By thee upheld, the soul asserts her throne.
The chastened passions sleep.
And dove-eyed Peace prevails.
And thou, fair Hope! when other comforts fail, —
When night's thick mists descend, — thy beacon flaoM,
Till grow the dark clouds round
With beams of promised bliss.
Thou failest not, when, mute the soothing lyre,
Lives thy unfading solace : sweet to raise
Thy eye, O quiet Hope,
And greet a friend in heaven ! —
A friend, a brother, one whose awful throne
In holy fear heaven's mightiest sons approach
Man's heart to feel for man, —
To save him God's great power I
Conqueror of death, joy of the accepted soul,
U, worfders raise no doubt when told of thee I
Thy way past finding out.
Thy love, can tongue declare 1
Cheti-cd by thy smile, Peace dwells amid the atorm ;
Held by thy hand, the floods assail in vain ;
With grief is blent a joy.
And beams the vault of death.
Passing, m one of my walks this autumn, the cave in wliica
I used to spend in boyhood so many happy hours with Finlay,
1 found in smoking, as of old, with a huge fire, and occupied
by a wilder and more careless party than even my truant
Kciioolfellows. It has been discovered and appropriated by a
band of gipsies, who, attracted by the soot-stains on its roof
and sides, and concluding that it had been inhabited by the
gij/sies of oiher days, had, without consulting factor or landlord,
17
872 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
at once entered upon possession, as the proper successors of ita
former occupants. They were a savage party, with a good
deal of the true gipsy blood in them, but not without mixture
of a broken-down classof apparently British descent; and one
of their women was purely Irish. From what I had previously
hoard about gipsies, I was not prepared for a mixture of this
kind ; but I found it pretty general, and ascertained that al
Inast one of the ways in which it had taken place was exem
plified by the case of the one Irish woman. Her gipsy hus-
band had served as a soldier, and had married her when in the
army. I have been always exceedingly curious to see man in
his rude elements, — to study him as the savage, whether among
the degraded classes of our own country, or, as exhibited in
the writings of travellers and voyagers, in his aboriginal state ;
and I now did not hesitate to visit the gipsies, and to spend
not unfrcquently an hour or two in their company. They at
first seemed jealous of me as a spy ; but finding me inoftensive,
and that I did not bewray counsel, they came at length to re
cognize me as the," quiet, sickly lad," and to chatter as freely
in my presence as in that of the other pitchers with ears, which
they used to fabricate out of tin by the dozen and the score,
and the manufacture of which, with the making of horn spoons,
formed the main branch of business carried on in tne cave. I
saw in these visits curious glimpses of gipsy life. I could
trust only to what I actually witnessed : what was told me
could on no occasion be believed ; for never were there lies
more gross and monstrous than those of the gipsies ; but even
the lying formed of itself a peculiar trait. I have never heard
lying elsewhere that set all probability so utterly at defiance, —
a consequence, in part, of their recklessly venturing, like un-
skilful authors, to expatiate in walks of invention over which
their experience did not extend. On one occasion an old gipsy
woman, after ju-oiiDuncing my malady consumption, prescri])t,'d
for me as an infallilile rcnu'dy, raw parsley minced small and
made up into balls with fresh butter; but seeing, I suppose, from
iriy nuumer, that I lacked the necessary belief in her specific,
she went on to say, that she had derived her knowledge of such
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 373
matters from her mother, one of the most " skeely women that
ever lived." Her mother, she said, had once healed a lord's
son of a grievous hurt in half a minute, after all the English
doctors had shown they could do nothing for him. His eye
had been struck out of its socket by a blow, and hung half^
way down his check ; and though the doctors could of course
return it to its place, it refused to stick, always falling out
again. Her mother, however, at once understood the case ;
and, making a little slit at the back of the young man's neck,
she got hold of the end of a sinew, and pulling in the dislodged
orb at a tug, she made all tight by running a knot on the con-
trolling ligament, and so kept the eye in its place. And, save
that the young lord continued to squint a little, he was well at
once. The peculiar anatomy on which this invention was
framed must have, of course, resembled that of a wax-doll with
winking eyes; but it did well enough for the woman ; and,
having no character for truth to maintain, she did not hesitate
to build on it. On asking her whether she ever attended
church, she at once replied, "O yes, at one time very often.
1 am the daughter of a minister, — a natural daughter, you
know : my flither was the most powerful preacher in all the
south, and I always went to hear him." In about an hour
after, however, forgetting her extemporary sally, and the rev-
erend character with which she had invested her sire, she
spoke of him, in another equally palpable invention, as the
greatest " king of the gipsies" that the gipsies ever had. Even
the children had caught this habit of monstrous mendacity.
There was one of the boys of the band, considerably under
twelve, who could extemporize lying narratives by the hour,
and seemed always delighted to get a listener ; and a little
girl, younger still, who " lisped va. fiction for \ki^ fiction came."
Tliere were two things that used to strike me as peculiar among
these gipsies, — a Hindu type of head, small of size, but with
a considerable fulness of forehead, especially along the medial
line, in the region, as the phrenologist would perhaps say, of
individ'iality and comparison ; and a singular posture assumed
by che ^Iderly females of the tribe in squatting before their
874 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS
fires, in which the elbow rested on the knees brought close to
gether, he chin on the palms, and the entire iigure (some
what resembling in attitude a Mexican mummy) assumed aii
outlandish appearance, that reminded me of some of the more
grotesque sculptures of Egypt and Hindustan. The peculiar
type of head was derived, I doubt not, from an ancestry
originally different from that of the settled races of the coun
try ; nor is it impossible that the peculiar position, — unl'ke
any I have ever seen Scottish females assume, — was also of
foreign origin.
I have witnessed scenes among these gipsies, of which the
author of the "Jolly Beggars" might have made rare use, but
which formed a sort of materials that I lacked the special abili-
ty riglitly to employ. It was reported on one occasion that
a marriage ceremony and wedding were to take place in the
cave, and I sauntered the way, in the hope of ascertaining how
its inmates contrived to do for themselves what of course no
clergyman could venture to do for them, — seeing that, of the
parties to be united, the bridegroom might have already as
many wives living as " Peter Bell," and the bride as many hus-
bands, A gipsy marriage had taken place a few years pre-
vious in a cave near Rosemarkie. An old • male gipsy, pos-
sessed of the rare accomplishment of reading, had half-read,
half-spelled the English marriage-service to the young couple,
and the ceremony was deemed complete at its close. And I now
expected to witness something similar. In an opening in the
wood above, I encountered two very drunk gipsies, and saw
the first fruits of the coming merriment. One of the two was
an uncouth-looking monster, sallow-skinned, flat-iiiced, round-
shouldered, long and thinly limbed, at least six feet two inches
in height, and, from his strange misproportions, he might have
passed for seven feet any day, were it not ihnt his trousers,
made for a much shorter man, and rising to the middle of his
calfless legs, gave him much the appearance of a big boy walk-
ing on stilts. The boys of tlie place called him "Giant
Grimbo ;" while his companion, a tight dajiper little fellow,
who always showed ofi' a compact, well-rounded leg in cordu
OK, THE STORY OP MY EDUCATION. 375
roy inexpressibles, they had learned to distinguish as "Billy
Breeches." The giant, who carried a bag-pipe, had broken
down ere I came up with them ; and now, sitting on the gras^
he was droning out in fitful blasts a diabolical music, to which
Billy Breeches was dancing ; but, just as I passed, Billy also
gave way, after wasting an infinity of exertion in keeping erect ;
And, falling over the prostrate musician, I could hear the bag
groaning out its soul as he pressed against it, in a lengthened
melancholious squeal. I found the cave bearing an a^spect of
more than ordinary picturesqueness. It had its two fires, and
its double portion of smoke, that went rolling out in the calm
like an inverted river ; for it clung close to the roof, as if by a
reversed gravitation, and turned its foaming surface lown-
wards. At the one fire an old gipsy woman was engaged in
baking oaten cakes ; and a great pot, that dispensed thi'ough
the cave the savory odor of unlucky poultry cut short in the
middle of their days, and of hapless hares destroyed without
the game license, depended over the other. An ass, the com-
mon property of the tribe, stood meditating in the fore-ground ;
two urchins, of about from ten to twelve years a-piece, —
wretchedly supplied in the article of clothing, — for the one,
provided with only a pair of tattered trousers, was naked from
the waist upwards, and the other, furnished with only a dilap-
idated jacket, was naked from the waist downwards, — were
engaged in picking up fuel for the fire, still further in front ;
a few of the ordinary inmates of the place lounged under cover
of the smoke, apparently in a inood not in the least busy ; and
on a couch of dried fern sat evidently the central figure of the
group, a young, sparkling-eyed brunette, more than ordinarily
marked by the Hindu peculiarities of head and feature, and
attended by a savage-looking fellow of about twenty, dark as
a mulatto, and with a profusion of long flexible hair, b'uick as
jet, hanging down to his eyes, and clustering about his cheeks
and neck. Tlicse were, I ascertained, the bride and bride-
groom. The bride was engaged in sewing a cap, — the bride-
groom in watching the pi'ogress of the work. I observed that
the party, who were le**.* communicative than usual, seemed to
376 Ml SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
regard me in the light of an intruder. An elderly tinker, i.ie
father of the bride, gray as a leafless thorn in winter, but
still stalwart and strong, sat admiring a bit of spelter of about
a pound weight. It was gold, he said, or, as he pronounced
the word, " guild," which had been found in an old cairn, and
was of immense value, " for it was peer guild, and that was
the best o' guild ;" but if I pleased, he w.'ild sell it to me, a
very great bargain. I was engaged with some difficulty in de-
clining the offer, when we were interrupted by the sounds of
the bag-pipe. Giant Grimbo and BilJy Breeches had suc-
ceeded in regaining their feet, and were seen staggering
towards the cave. " Where's the whisky, Billy ?" inquired
the proprietor of the gold, addressing himself to the man of
the small clothes. "Whisky!" said Billy, "ask Grimbo."
" Where's the whisky, Grimbo ?" reiterated the tinker.
" Whisky !" replied Grimbo, " Whisky !" and yet again, after
a pause and a hiccup, " Whisky !" " Ye confounded blacks !"
said the tinker, sjiringing to his feet with an agility wonderful
for an age so advanced as his, " Have you drank it all ? But
take that, Grimbo, he added, planting a blow full on the side
of the giant's head, which prostrated his vast length along the
floor of the cave. " And take that, Billy," he iterated, deal-
ing such another blow to the shorter man, which sent him
right athwart his prostrate comrade. And then, turning to
me she remarked with perfect coolness, "That, master, I call
smart hitting." " Honest lad," whispered one of the women
immediately after, " it will be a reugh time wi' us here the
nicht : you had just better be stepping your ways." I had
already begun to think so without ju-omptiiig ; and so, taking
mj leave of the gijjsies, I fiiilod being, as 1 had j>roposc(i, oiu;
»f the witnesses of the wcddinEr.
There is a sort of grotesque humor in scenes of the kind
described, that has cliMrins f;)r artists and authors of a particu-
lar class, — some of them iiu'ii of broad sympathies and great
genius; and hence, through Ihcir rcpreseiilalioiis, literary and
pictorial, the lii.ii<rous point of view has come to be the c^m-
rentional and ordinary one. And yet it is a sad enough mcr
OR. THE STOET OF MY EDUCATION. 877
riment , after all, that has for its subject a degradation so ex.
tremc. I never knew a gipsy that seemed to possess a moral
sense, — a degree of Pariahism which has been reached by only
one other class in the country, and that a small one, — the de-
scendants of degraded females in our large towns. An educa-
tion in Scotland, however secular in its character, always casts
a certain amount of enlightenment on the conscience ; a home,
however humble, whose inmates win their bread by honest in-
dustry, has a similar effect ; but in the peculiar walks in which
for generations there has been no education of any kind, or in
which bread has been the wages of infamy, the moral sense
8eems so wholly obliterated, that there appears to survive
nothing in the mind to which the missionary or the moralist
can appeal. It seems scarce possible for a man to know even
a very little of these classes, without learning, in consequence,
to respect honest labor, and even secular knowledge, as at
least the second-best things, in their moral bearing and iiv
fluence that can exist among a people.
S78 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
CHAPTER XVIII
For such is the flaw or the depth of the plan
In (he make of that wonderful creature call'd man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they chiim,
Nor even two dilTercnt sliades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin-brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you've the other."
Burns
During my period of convalescence, I amused myself in
liewing for my uncles, from an original design, an ornate dial-
stone ; and the dial-stone still exists, to show that my skill as
a stone-cutter rose somewhat above the average of the pro-
fession in those parts of the country in which it ranks highest.
Gradually as I recovered health and strength, little jobs canio
dropping in. I executed sculptured tablets in a style not
common in the north of Scotland ; introduced into the church
yards of the locality a better type of tombstone than had ob-
tained in them before, save, mayhaj), at ;i very ctirly period ;
distanced all my competitors in tlu; art of inscription-cutting ;
and at length fijund that, without exposing my weakened
lungs to the rough tear and wear to which the ordinary stone-
cutter must subject himself, I could live. I deemed it an
advantage, too, rather lliiin the reverse, that my new bninch of
eiii|iluyment brought me not unfrccpicntly for a tew days into
country districts sulliciently distant from home to present me
with iic\* <u'lds of observation, and to open up new tracts of
OR. THE STORY OF M\ EDUCATION. 379
inquiry. Sometimes I spent half a week in a farm-house in
the neighborhood of some country churchyard, — sometimes I
lodged in a village, — oftener than once I sheltered beside some
gentleman's seat, where the august shadow of lairdship lay
heavy on society ; and in this way I came to see and know a
good deal of the Scottish people, in their many-colored aspects.
of which otherwise I might have remained ignorant. At
times, too, on some dusty cottage shelf I succeeded in picking
up a rare book, or, what was not less welcome, got a curious
tradition from the cottager ; or there lay within the reach of
an evening walk some interesting piece of antiquity, or some
rock-section, which I found it profitable to visit. A solitary
burying-ground, too, situated, as country burying-grounds
usually are, in some pleasant spot, and surrounded by its
groupes of ancient trees, formed a much more delightful scene
of labor than a dusty work-shed, or some open area in a bus*}
town ; and altogether I found my new mode of life a quie .
and happy one. Nor, with all its tranquillity, was it a sort
of life in which the intellect was in any great danger of falling
asleep. There was scarce a locality in which new game might
not be started, that, in the running down, kept the faculties
in full play. Let me exemplify by describing the courses of
inquiry, physical and metaphysical, wliich opened up to me
when spending a few days, first in the burying-ground of Kirk
michael, and next in the churchyard of Nigg.
I have elsewhere somewhat fancifully described the ruinous
chapel and solitary grave-yard of Kirkmichael as lying on the
sweep of a gentle declivity, within a few yards of a flat sea
beach, so little exposed to the winds, that it would seem as
if " ocean muffled its waves in approaching this field of the
dead." And so the two vegetations, — that of the land and of
the sea, — undisturbed by the surf, which on opener coasts pre-
vents the growth of either along the upper littoral line, wnere
the waves beat heaviest, here meet and mingle, each encroach-
ing for a little way on the province of the other. And at
meal-times, and when returning homewards in the evening
along the shore 't furnished me with amusement enough to
S80 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
mark the character of the several plants of both floi.ts that thus
meet and cross each other, and the appearances which the}-
assume when inhabiting each the other's province. On the
side of the land, beds of thrift, with its gaj flowers the sear
pinks, occupied green prominent cushions, that stood up like
little islets amid the flowing sea, and were covered over by
salt water during stream-tides to the depth of fi-om eighteen
inches to two feet. With these there occasionally mingled
spikes of the sea-lavender ; and now and then, though more
rarely, a sea-aster, that might be seen raising above the calm
surface its composite flowers, with their bright yellow staminal
pods, and their pale purple petals. Far beyond, however
even the cushions of thrift, I could trace the fleshy, johited
stems of the glass-wort, rising out of the mud, but becoming
diminutive and branchless as I followed them downwards, till,
at depths where they must have been frequently swum over
by the young coal-fish and the flounder, they appeared as
mere fleshy spikes, scarce an inch in height, and then ceased.
On the side of the sea it was the various fucoids that rose
highest along the beach : the serrated fiicus barely met the
salt^wort; but the bladder-bearing fucus {Jucus nodosus)
mingled its brown fronds not unfrequently with the crimson
flowers of the thrift, and the vesicular fucus [fucus vesictilosns)
rose higher still, to enter into strange companionship with the
sea-side plaintains and the common scurvy -grass. Green en-
teromorpha of two species — £J. comprcssa and E. intcstinalis
— I also found abundant along the edges of the thrift-beds;
and it struck me as curious at the time, that while most of
the liind-plants which Imd thus descended lieyond the sea-
level were of the high dicotyledonous division, the sea-weeds
with wiiich they mingled tiieir leaves and seed-vessels were
low in their standing, — fiici and cnteromorpha, — })lants at
least not higher tiuni their kindred cryptogamia, the lichens
anJ mosses of the liiml. Far ])eyond, in the outer reaches of
the bay., where land-jiiants never approached, there were
meadows of a sub-mari»ic vegetation, of (for the sea) a compar-
atively J>'gh character. Their numerous plants (zostera ma
OR THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 881
rina) had true roots, and true leaves, and true flowers •, and
their spikes ripened amid the salt waters towards the close of
autumn, round white seeds, that, like many of the seeds of
the land, had their sugar and starch. But these plants kept
far aloof, in their green depths, from their cogeners the mono-
cotyledons of the terrestrial flora. It was merely the lew
Fticacece and Confervece of the sea that I found meeting and
mixing with the descending dicotyledons of the land. I felt a
good deal of interest in marking, about this time, how certain
belts of marine vegetation occurred on a vast boulder situated
m the neighborhood of Cromarty, on the extreme line of the
ebb of spring-tides. I detected the various species ranged in
zones, just as on lofty hills the botanist finds his agricultural,
moorland, and alpine zones rising in succession the one over
the other. At the base of the huge mass, at a level to which
the tide rarely falls, the characteristic vegetable is the rough-
stemmed tangle, — Larninaria digitata. In the zone imme-
diately above the lowest, the prevailing vegetable is the
smooth-stemmed tangle, — Larninaria saccharina. Higher
still there occurs a zone of the serrated fucus, — F. serratus, —
blent with another familiar fucus, — F. nodostis. Then comes
a yet higher zone of Fucus vesiculosus ; and higher still, a few
scattered tufts oi Fucus canaliculatus ; and then, as on lofty
mountains that rise above the line of perpetual snow, vegeta-
tion ceases, and the boulder presents a round bald head, that
rises over the surface after the first few hours of ebb have
passed. But far beyond its base, where the sea never falls,
green meadows of zostera flourish in the depths of the water,
where they unfold their colorless flowers, inifurnished with
petals, and ripen their tarinaceous seeds, that, wherever they
rise to the surface, seem very susceptible of frost. I have
seen the shores strewed with a line of green zostera., with its
spikes charged with seed, after a smart October frost, that
had been coincident with the ebb of a low spring-tide, had
nipt its rectilinear fronds and flexible stems.
But what, it may be asked, was the bearing of all this ^b-
servat'on % 1 by no means saw its ent're bearing at the time:
382 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS;
I simply observed and recorded, because I found it pleasant to
observe and record. And yet one of the wild dreams of
Maillet in his Telliamed had given a certain degree of unity,
and a certain definite direction, to my gleanings of fact on the
subject, which they would not have otherwise possessed. It
was held by this fanciful writer, that the vegetation of the
land had been derived originally from that of the ocean. " In
a word," we find him saying, " do not herbs, plants, roots,
grain, and all of this kind that the earth produces and nour-
ishes, come from the sea 1 Is it not at least natural to think so,
since we are certain that all our habitable lands came originally
from the sea ? Besides, in small islands far from the Conti
ncnt, which have appeared a few ages ago at most, and where it
is manifest that never any men had been, we find shrubs, herbs,
and roots. Now, you must be forced to own that either those
productions owed their origin to the sea, or to a new creation,
which is absurd.'''' And then Maillet goes on to show, after
a manner whicli — now that algseology has become a science —
must be regarded as at least curious, that the plants of the sea,
though not so well developed as those of the land, are really
very much of the same nature. " The fishermen of Marseilles
find daily," he says, " in their nets, and among their fish, plants
of a hundred kinds, with their fruits still upon them ; and
though these fruits are not so large nor so well nourished as
those of our earth, yet their species is in no other respects du-
bious. There they find clusters of white and black grapes,
peach trees, pear trees, prune trees, apple trees, and all sorts of
flowers." Such was the sort of wild fable invented in a tract
of natural science in which I fijund it of interest to acquaint
myself with the truth. I have since scon the extraordinary
vision of Maillet n-vived, f;rst by Oken, and then by the author
of the" Vestiges ')f Creation ;" and wIkmi, in grappling with some
of the views and statements of the latter writer, 1 set myself to
WTite the chapter of my little work wliieli deals with this spe-
cial hypothesis, I found ili.tl I had in some sort studied in the
seho(»l >n which the education necessary to its production was
most thoroughly to be acquired. Il.ul the ingenious author
OR, THE STORT OF MY EDUCATION. 388
of the " Vestiges" taken lessons for but a short time at the
same form, he would scarce have thought of reviving i"i
these latter ages the dream of Oken and Maillet. A knowl
edge of the facts would to a certainty have protected him
against the reproduction of the hypothesis.
The lesson at Nigg was of a more curious kind, tliougli,
mayhap, less certainly conclusive in its bearings. The house
of the proprietor of Nigg bordered on the burying-ground. 1
was engaged in cutting an inscription on the tombstone of his
wife, recently dead ; and a poor idiot, who found his living in
the kitchen, and to whom the deceased had shown kindness,
used to come every day to the churchyard, to sit beside me,
and jabber in broken expressions his grief I was struck with
the extremeness of his idiotcy : he manifested even more than
the ordinary inability of his class to deal with figures, for he
could scarce tell whether nature had furnished him with one
head or with two ; and no power of education could have
taught him to count his fingers. He was equally defective,
too, in the mechanical. Angus could not be got into trousers ;
and the contrivance of the button remained a mystery which
he was never able to comprehend. And so he wore a large
blue gown, like that of a beadsman, which slipped over his
head, and was bound by a belt round his middle, with a stout
woollen shirt underneath. But, though unacquainted with
the mystery of the button, there were mysteries of another kind
with which he seemed to have a most perfect acquaintance :
Angus — always a faithful attendant at church — was a great
critic in sermons ; nor was it every preacher that pfttisfied him ;
and such was his imitative turn, that he himself could preat li
by the hour, in the manner — so far at least as voice and ges-
ture went — of all the popular ministers of the district. There
was, however, rather a paucity of idea in his discourses : in
his more energetic passages, when he struck the book and
stamped with his foot, he usually iterated, in sonorous Gaelic,
— "The wicked, the wicked, O wretches the wicked '" while
a passage of a less depreciatory character served him for set-
ting oft" his middle tones and his pathos. But that for which
384 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
his character was chiefly remarkable was an instincti /e, fox
like cunning, that seemed to lie at its very basis, — a cunning
which co-existed, however, with perfect honr-sty, and a de-
voted attachment to his patron the proprietor.
Tlie town of Cromarty had its poor imbecile man of quite a
different stamp. Jock Gordon had been, it was said, " like
other people" till his fourteenth year, when a severe attack of
illness left him bankrupt in both mind and bod}'. He rose
rom his bed lame of a foot and hand, his one side shrunken
and nerveless, the one lolie of his brain apparently inopera-
tive, and with less than half his former energy and intellect;
not at all an idiot, however, though somewhat more helpless,
— the poor mutilated fragment of a reasoning man. Among
his other failings, he stuttered lamentably. He became an in-
mate of the kitchen of Cromarty House; and learned to run,
or, I should rather say, to limp, errands — for he had risen
from the fever that ruined him to run no more — with great
fidelity and success. He was fond of church-going, of read-
ing good little books, and, notwithstanding his sad stutter, of
singing. During the day, he might be heard, as he hobbled
along the streets on business, " singing in into himseff,''^ as the
children used to say, in a low unvaried undertone, somewhat
resembling the humming of a bee ; but when night fell, the
whole town heard him. He was no patronizor of modern
poets or composers. " There was a ship, and a ship of fame,"
and " Death and the Fair Lady," were his especial favorites ;
and he could repeat the " Gosport Tragedy," and the " Babet»
In the Wood," from beginning to end. Sometimes he stutter-
ed in the notes, and then they lengthened on and on into a
never-ending quaver that our (irst-ratc singers might have en-
vied. Sometimes there was a sudden break ; — Jock had been
cons\jlting the pocket in which he stored his bread ; — but no
sooner was his mouth halfcleared, than lie began again. In
midiUo-life, however, a great calamity overtook Jock. Hig
patron, the occuj)ant of Cromarty House, quilted the country
for France: Jock was left without occupation or aliment;
and the streets heard no more of his songs. He grew lank
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 885
and thin, and stuttered and limped more painfully than oe-
fore, and was in the last stage of privation and distress ;
when a benevolent proprietor of Nigg, who resided half the
year in a town-house in Cromarty, took pity upon him, and
introduced him to his kitchen. And in a few days Jock was
singing and limping errands with as much energy as ever.
But the time at length came when his new benefactor had to
quit his house in town, for his seat in the country ; and it
Dehoved Jock to take temporary leave of Cromarty and fol
low him. And then the poor imbecile mrai of the town
kitchen had, of course, to measure himself against his for-
midable rival, the vigorous idiot of the country one.
On Jock's advent at Nigg, — which had taken place a few
weeks previous to my engagement in the burying-ground of
the parish, — the character of Angus seemed to dilate in energy
and power. He repaired to the churchyard with spade and
pick axe, and began digging a grave. It was a grave, he said,
for wicked Jock Gordon ; and Jock, whether he thought it or
no, had come to Nigg, he added, only to be buried. Jock,-
however, was not to be dislodged so ; and Angus, professing
sudden friendship for him, gave expression to the magnani-
mous resolution, that he would not only tolerate Jock, but also
be very kind to him, and show him the place where he kept
all his money. He had lots of money, he said, which he had
hidden -in a dike ; but he would show the place to Jock Gor-
don, — to poor cripple Jock Gordon : he would show him the
very hole, and Jock would get it all. And so he brought
Jock to the hole, — a cavity in a turf-wall in the neighboring
wood. — and, taking care that his own way of retreat was clear
he bade him insinuate his hand. No sooner had he done so,
however, than there issued forth from between his fingers a
cloud of wasps, of the variety so abundant in the north ooun
try, that build their nests in earthy banks and old mole hills ;
and poor Jock, ill fitted for retreat in any sudden emergency,
was stung within an inch of his life. Angus returned in high
glee, preaching about " wicked Jock Gordon, whoui the very
wasps wouldn't let alone ;" but though he pretended no further
386 ivnr schools aio) schoolmastees
friendship for a few days after, he again drew to him in ap
parent kindness ; and on the following Saturday, on Jock be-
ing despatched to a neighboring smithy with a sheep's head
to singe, Angus volunteered his services to show him the way.
Angus went trotting before ; Jock came limping behind:
the fields were open and bare ; the dwellings few and far be
tween ; and after having passed, in about an hour's walking,
half-a-dozen little hamlets, Jock began to marvel exceedingly
that there should be no sign of the smith's shop. " Poor fool-
ish Jock Gordon !" ejaculated Angus, quickening his trot into
a canter: "what does he know about carrying sheep's heads
to the smithy? Jock labored hard to keep up with his
guide ; quavering and semi-quavering, as his breath served. —
for Jock always began to sing, when in solitary places, after
nightfall, as a protection against ghosts. At length the day-
light died entirely away, and he could only learn from Angus
that the smithy was farther off than ever ; and, to add to his
trouble and perplexity, the roughness of the ground showed
him that they were wandering from the road. First they went
toiling athwart Mhat seemed an endless range of fields, sep-
arated from one another by deep ditches and fences of stone;
then they crossed over a dreary moor, bristling with fiirze
and sloe-thorn ; then over a waste of bogs and quagmires :
then across a tract of newly-ploughed land; and then they en-
tered a second wood. At length, after a miserable night's
wandering, day broke upon the two forlorn satyrs ; and Jock
found himself in a strange country, with a long narrow lake
in front, and a wood behind. He had wandered after his
guide into the remote parish of Tarbet.
Tarbct abounded at that time in little muddy lakes, edi-cd
W ith water-flags and reeds, and swarming with frogs and cols ;
and it was one of the largest and deepest of these that now lay
before Jock and his guide. Angus tucked up his blue gown,
ns if to wafle across. Jock would have as soon thought of
fording the German Ocean. " O, wicked Jock Gordon !" ex-
claimed the fool, when he saw him hesitate; "the Colonel's
vvaiting, poor man, for his head, and Jock will no' take it to
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 387
the smithy." He stepped into the water. Jock followed in
sheer desperation ; and, after clearing the belt of reeds, toth
sank to the middle in the mingled water and mud. Angus
had at length accomplished the object of his journey. Extri-
cating himself in a moment, — for he was lithe and active, — he
snatched the sheep's head and trotters from Jock, and, leaping
ashore, left the poor man sticking fast. It was church-time
ere he reached, on his way back, the old Abbey of Fearn, still
employed as a Protestant place of worship ; and as the sight
of the gathering people awakened his church-going" propensity,
he went in, lie was in high spirits, — seemed, by the mouths
he made, very much to admire the sermon, — and paraded the
sheep's head and trotters through the passages and gallery a
score of times at least, like a monk of the order of St. Francis
exhibiting the relics of some favorite saint. In the evening
he found his way home, but learned, to his grief and astonish-
ment, that " wicked Jock Gordon" had got there shortly be-
fore him in a cart. The poor man had remained sticking in
the mud for three long hours after Angus had left him, until
at length the very frogs began to cultivate his acquaintance, as
they had done that of King Log of old ; and in the mud he
would have been sticking still, had he not been extricated by
a former of Fearn, who, in coming to church, had taken the
lake in his way. He left Nigg, however, for Cromarty on the
following day, convinced that he was no match for his rival,
and dubious how the next adventure might terminate.
Such was the story which I found current in Nigg, whea
working in its churchyard, with the hero of the adventure often
beside me. It led me to take special note of his class, and
to collect facts respecting it, on which I erected a sort of semi-
rnetaphysical theory of human character, which, though it
would not now be regarded as by any means a novel one, I
had thought out for myself, and which possessed for me, in
consequence, the charm of originality. In these poor creatures,
I thusi argued, we iind, amid much general dilapidation ana
brokenness of mind, certain instincts and peculiarities remain-
ing entire. Here, in Angus, for instance, there is that instinct-
888 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
ive cunning which some of the lower animals, such as the iox^
possess, existing in a wonderful degree of perfection. Pope
himself, who "could not drink tea without a stratagem,"
could scarce have possessed a larger share of it. And yet
how distinct must not this sort of ingenuity be from the
mechanical ingenuity ! Angus cannot fix a button in its
hole. I even see him baffled by a tall snuff-box, with a small
quantity of snuff at its bottom, that lies beyond the reach ol
his finger. He has not ingenuity enough to lay it on its side,
or to empty its snufl' on his palm ; but stretches and ever
stretches towards it the unavailing digit, and then gets angry
to find it elude his touch. There are other idiots, however,
who have none of Angus's cunning, in whom this mechanical
ability is decidedly developed. Many of the cretins of the
Alps are said to be remarkable for their skill as artisans ; and
it is told of a Scotch idiot, who lived in a cottage on the Maul-
buie Common in the upper part of the Black Isle, and in whom
a similar mechanical ability existed, abstracted from ability of
almost every other kind, that, among other things, he fobricated,
out of a piece of rude metal, a large sacking needle. Angus is
attached to his patron, and mourns for the deceased lady ; but
he seems to have little general regard for the species, — simply
courting for the time those from whom he expects snuft*. A
Cromarty idiot, on the contrary, is obliging and kindly to all,
and bears a peculiar love to children ; and though more ap
imbecile in some respects than even Angus, he has a turn for
dress, and can attire himself very neatly. In this last respect,
however, the Cro iiarty fool was excelled by an idiot of the
last age, known to the children of many a village and Iiamlct
as Fool Ciiarloch, who used to go wandering al)out (he coun-
try, adorned somewhat in the style of an Indian cliief, with
half a peacock's tail stuck in his cap. Yet another idiot, a
fierce and dangerous creature, seemed as invariably malignant
in his dispositions as the Cromarty one is iH'nevolent, and died
in a i)rison, to which he had been committed for killing a poor
half-witted Jissociato. Yet another idiot of the north of Scot-
huid had a strange turn for tho supernatural. 1 Ii; was a mut
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 389
terer of cliarms, and a watcher of omens, and possessed ii was
said, the second sight. I collected not a few other facts of a
similar kind, and thus reasoned regarding them : —
These idiots are imperfect men, from whose minds certain
faculties have been effaced, and other faculties left to exhibit
themselves all the more prominently from the circumstance of
their standing so much alone. They resemble men who have
lost their hands, but retain their feet, or who have lost their
sight or smell, but retain their taste or hearing. But as the
limbs and the senses, if they did not exist as separate parts of
the frame, could not be separately lost, so in the mind it-
self, or in at least the organization through which the mind
manifests itself, there must also be separate parts, or they
would not be thus found isolated by Nature in her mutilated
and abortive specimens. Those metaphysicians who deal by
the mind as if it were simply a general power existing in states,
must be scarce less in error than if they were to regard the
senses as merely a general power existing in states, instead of
recognizing them as distinct, independent powers, so various
often in their degree of development, that, from the full perfection
of any one of them, the perfection, or even the existence, of any
of the others cannot be predicated. If, for instance, it were,
— as some metaphysicians hold, — the same general warmth of
emotive power that glows in benevolence and burns in resent-
ment, the fierce, dangerous idiot that killed his companion,
and the kindly-dispositioned Cromarty one who takes home
pailfuls of water to the poor old women of the place, and parts
with his own toys to its children, would, instead of thus ex
hibiting the opposite poles of character, at least so far resemble
one another, that the vindictive fool would at times be kindly
and obliging, and the benevolent one at times violent and re-
sentful. But such is not the case ; the one is never madly
savage, — the other never genial and kind ; and so it seems
legitimate to infer, that it is not a general power or energy that
acts through them in different states, but two particular powers
or energies, as unlike in their natures, and as capable of acting
opart, as seeme; and hearing. Even powers which seem to
390 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
have so much in common, that the same words are sometimes
made use of in reference to both, may be as distinct as smelling
and tasting. We speak of the cunning workman, and we speak
of the cnnning man ; and refer to a certain taeulty of contrivance
manifested in dealing with characters and affairs on the part ot
the one, and in dealing with certain modifications of matter on
the part of the other ; but so entirely different are the two flicul-
ties, and, further, so little dependent are they, in at least their
first elements, on intellect, that we may find the cunning which
manifests itself in atlairs, existing, as in Angus, totally dissoci-
ated from mechanical skill; and, on the other hand, the cunning
of the artisan, existing, as in the idiot of the Maolbuie, totally
dissociated from that of the diplomatist, hi short, regarding
idiots as persons of fragmcntax-y mind, in whom certain primary
mental elements may be four.d standing out in a state of great
entireness, and all the more striking in their relief from the
isolation, I came to view them as bits of analysis^ if I may so
express myself, made to my hand by Nature, and from the
study of which I could conceive of the structure of minds of
a more complete, and therefore more complex, character. As
children learn the alphabet from cards, each of which contains
only a letter or two a-piece, printed large, I held at this time,
and, with a few modifications, hold still, that those primary
sentiments and propensities which form the basis of character
may be found separately stamped in the same way on the
comparatively blank minds of the imbecile; and that the
student of mental j)hilosophy might learn from them what
may l)e regarded as the alphabet of his science, much more
truthfully than from those meta])hysicians who represent mind
as a power not manifested in contemporaneous and separable
faculties, but as existing In consecutive states.
Cromarty had l)een fortunate in its parish ministers. From
the death of its last curate, shortly after the Kevolution, and
the consequent return of its old " outed minister," who liad
resigned his living for conscience' sake twenty-eight years bo-
fore, and ntw came to spend his evening of life with his people,
it had enjoyed the services of a series of devout and popular
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 391
men ; and so the cause of the Establishment was particularly
strong in both town and parish. At the beginning of the
present century, Cromarty had not its single Dissenter ; and
though a ^ew of what were known as " Haldane's people"'
might hr found in it, some eight or ten years later they failed
in effecting a lodgment, and ultimately quitted it for a neigh-
boring town. Almost all the Dissent that has arisen in Scot-
land since the Reformation has been an effect of Moderatism
and forced settlements ; and as the place had known neither,
ts people continued to harbor within the Church of their
fathers, nor wished to change. A vacancy had occurred in
the incumbency, during my sojourn in the south, through the
death of the incumbent, the respected minister of my child-
hood and youth ; and I found, on my return, a new face in
the pulpit. It was that of a remarkable man, — the late Mr.
Stewart of Cromarty, — one of at once the most original
thinkers and profound theologians I ever knew ; though he
has, alas ! left as little mark of his exquisite talent behind
him, as those sweet singers of former ages, the memory of
whose enchanting notes has died, save as a doubtful echo, with
the generation that heard them. I sat, with few interruptions,
for sixteen years under his ministry ; and for nearly twelve
of these enjoyed his confidence and friendship.
I never could press myself on the notice of superior men,
however desirous of forming their acquaintance ; and have, in
consequence, missed opportunities innumerable of coming in
friendly contact with persons whom it would be at once a pleas-
ure and an honor to know. And so, for the first two years,
or rather more, I was content to listen with profound attention,
to the pulpit addresses of my new minister, and to appear as 8
catechumen, when my turn came. At his diets of catechising.
He had been struck, however, as he afterwards told me, by mj-
sustained attention when at church ; and, on making ir quiry
regarding me among his friends, he was informed that I was a
great reader, and, it was believed, a writer of verse. And com
iug unwittingly out upon him one day as he was passing, whei»
quitting my work-place for the street, he addi essed me. " Well.
Ud," ht said, * it is your dinner hour : I hear I have a poet
392 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERP ;
among my people ?" " I doubt it much," I replied. " Well,"
he rejoined, " one may fall short of being a poet, and yet gain
by exercising one's tastes and talents in the poetic walk. The
accomplishment of verse is at least not a vulgar one." The
conversation went on as we passed together along the street ;
and he stood for a time opposite the manse door. " I am
forming," he said, "a small library for our Sabbath-school
scholars and teachers : most of the books are simple enough
little things ; but it contains a few works of the intellectual
class. Call upon me this evening, that we may look over
them, and you may perhaps find among them some volumes
you would wish to read." I accordingly waited upon him in
the evening ; and we had a long conversation together. He
was, I saw, curiously sounding me, and taking my measure in
all directions ; or, as he himself afterwards used to express it
in his characteristic way, he was like a traveller who, having
come unexpectedly on a dark pool in a ford, was dipping down
his staff, to ascertain the depth of the water and the nature of
the bottom. He inquired regarding my reading, and found
that in the belles lettres, especially in English literature, it was
about as extensive as his own. He next inquired respecting
my acquaintance with the metaphysicians. " Had I read
Reidl" "Yes." "Brown?" "Yes." ''Humer "Yes."
" Ah ! ha ! Hume ! ! By the way, has he not something very
ingenious about miracles 1 Do you remember his argument ?"
I stated the argument. " Ah, very ingenious, — most ingenious.
And how would you answer that?" I said, "I thought I
could give an abstract of the reply of Campbell," and sketched
in outline the reverend Doctor's argument. " And do you
deem that satisfactory ?" said the minister. " No, not at all,"
[ replied, " No ! no ! ! thaCs not satisliictory." " But perfectly
satisfactory," I rejoined, "that such is the general partiality
for the better side, that the worse argument has been received
IS perfectly adequate lor the last sixty years." The minister 3
face gleamed with the broad fun that entered so largely into
his composition, and the conversation shifted into other chan-
nels.
From that night fi)rward I enjoyed perhaps more of hia cod-
OR, THE STORY OF MV EDUCATION. 893
fideiice and conversation than any other man in his parish.
Many an hour did he spend beside me in the churchyard, and
many a quiet tea did I enjoy in the manse ;• and I learned to
know how much solid worth and true wisdom lay under the
somewhat eccentric exterior of a man who sacrificed scarce
anything to the conventionalities. This, with the exception of
Chalmers, sublimest of Scottish preachers, — for, little as he waa
known, I will challenge for him that place, — was a genial man,
who, for the sake of a joke, would sacrifice anything save prin-
ciple ; but, though marvellously careless of maintaining Intacl
the "gloss of the clerical enamel," never was there sincerity
more genuine than his, or a more thorough honesty. Content to
be in the right, he never thought of simulating it, and sacrificed
even less than he ought to appearances. I may mention, that
on coming to Edinburgh, I found the peculiar taste formed
under the administration of Mr. Stewart most thoroughly grati-
fied under those of Dr. Guthrie ; and that in looking round
the congregation, I saw, with pleasure rather than surprise,
that all Mr. Stewart's people resident in Edinburgh had come
to the same conclusion ; for there — sitting in the Doctor's
pews — they all were. Certainly in fertility of illusti-ation, in
soul-stirring evangelistic doctrine, and in a genial basis of rich
numor, the resemblance between the deceased and the living
minister seems complete ; but genius is always unique ; and
while in breadth of popular power, Dr. Guthrie stands alone
among living preachers, I have never either heard or read
argument in the analogical field that in ingenuity or origin-
ality equalled that of Mr. Stewart.
That in which he specially excelled all the men I ever knew,
was the power of detecting and establishing occult resem-
blances. He seemed able to read off", as if by intuition, — net
by snatches and fragments, but as a consecutive whole, — that
old revelation of type and symbol which God first gave to man;
and when privileged to listen to him. I have been constrained
to r(!COgnize, in the evident integrity of the reading, and the
profound and consistent theological system which the pictorial
record conveyed, a demonstration of the divinity of its origin,
394 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS:
not less powerful and convincing than the demonstrations (tf
the other and more familiar departments of the Christian evi-
dences. Compared with other theologians in this province, 1
have felt under his ministry as if, when admitted to the com-
pany of some party of modern savans employed in decypher-
ing a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk of the desert, and here suc-
cessful in discovering the meaning of an insulated sign, and
there of a detached symbol, we had been suddenly joined by
some sage of the olden time, to whom the mysterious inscrip-
tion was but a piece of common language written in a familiar
al[)habet, and who could read oft' fluently, and as a whole, what
the others could but darkly guess at in detached and broken
parts. To this singular power of tracing analogies there was
added in Mr. Stewart an ability of originating the most vivid
illustrations. In some instances a sudden stroke produced a
figure that at once illuminated the subject-matter of his dis-
course, like the light of a Ian thorn flashed hastily upon a paint-
ed wall; in others he dwelt upon an illustrative picture, finish-
ing it with stroke after stroke, until it filled the whole imagin-
ation, and sank deep into the memory. I remember liearing
him preach, on one occasion, on the return of the Jews as a
people to Him whom they had rejected, and the effect which
their sudden conversion could not foil to have on the unbe-
lieving and Gentile world. Suddenly his language, from its
liigli level of eloquent simplicity, became that of meta])h()r.
" When Joseph," he said, " shall reveal himself to his bret/i-
ren, the whole house of Pharaoh shall hear (he weeping.''^ On
another occasion I heard him dwell on that vast profundity,
characteristic of the scrij)tural revelation of God, which ever
decjiens and broadens the longer and more thoroughly it is ex-
plored, until at length the student — struck at first by its ex
pansiveness, but conceiving of it as if it were a mere mcasurei
t'Xpnusiveness — finds that it partakes of the inilimited inllnit)
of liie Divine nature itself. Naturally and simply, as if grow-
ing out of the sultjeet, like a berry-covered mistletoe out of the
tnassy trunk of an oak, there s[)rung up one of his more Icngth-
tned il'ustrations. A child bred up in the interior of the
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 395
country has been brought for the first time to the sea-shore,
and carried out into the middle of one of the noble friths that
indent so deeply our line of coast. And, on his return, he de
scribes to his father, with all a child's eagerness, the wonderful
expansiveness of the ocean which he had seen. He went out,
he. tells him, far amid the great waves and the rushing tides,
until at length the hills seemed diminished into mere hum-
tnocKS, and the wide land itself appeared along the waters but
as a slim strip of blue. And then, when in mid-sea, the sailois
heaved the lead ; and it went down, and down, and down, —
and the long line slipped swiftly away, coil after coil, till, ere
the plunmiet rested on the ooze below, all was well nigh ex-
pended. And was it not the great sea, asks the boy, that was
so vastly broad, and so profoundly deep ? Ah ! my child, ex
claims the father, you have not seen aught of its greatness :
you have sailed over merely one of its little arms. Had it
been out into the wide ocean that the seamen had carried you,
" you would have seen no shore, and you would have found
no bottom." In one rare quality of the orator, Mr. Stewart
stood alone among his contemporaries. Pope refers to a strange
power of creating love and admiration by "just touching the
brink of all we hate." And Burke, in some of his nobler pas-
sages, happily exemplifies the thing. He intensified the effect
of his burning eloquence by the employment of figures so
homely, — nay, almost so repulsive, — that the man of lower
powers who ventured on their use would find them effective
in but lowering his subject, and ruining his cause. I need but
refer, in illustration, to the well-known figure of the disem-
bowelled bird, which occurs in the indignant denial that the
character of the revolutionary French in aught resembled that
of the English. " We have not," says the orator, " been drawn
and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in
a museum, with chaff', and rags, and paltry blurred shreds of
paper about the rights of man." Into this perilous but sin-
gularly effective department, closed against even superior men,
Mr Stewart could enter safely and at will. One of the last
sermoES I heard him preach, — a discourse of singular power,
18
396 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
— was on the " Sin Offering" of the Jewish economy, as mi>
niitely described . in Leviticus. He drew a picture of tho
slaughtered animal, foul with dust and blood, and steaming, in
its impurity, to the sun, as it awaited the consaming fire amid
the uncleanness of ashes outside the camp — its throat gashed
across, — its entrails laid open ; a vile and horrid thing, which
no one could see without experiencing emotions of disgust,
nor touch without contracting defilement. The description
ppeared too painfully vivid, — its introduction too little in ac-
cordance with the rules of a just taste. But the master in this
difficult walk knew what he was doing. And that, he said,
pointing to the strongly-colored picture he had just completed,
— " And THAT IS SIN." Bv one stroke the intended effect
was produced, and the rising disgust and horror transferred
from the revolting material image to the groat moral evil.
How could such a man pass from earth, and leave no trace
behind him 1 Mainly, I believe, from two several causes.
As the minister of an attached provincial congregation, a sense
of duty, and the promptings of a highly-intellectual nature, to
which exertion was enjoyment, led him to study much and
deeply ; and he poured forth viva voce his full-volumod and
ever-sparkling tide of eloquent idea, as freely and richly as
the nightingale, unconscious of a listener, pours forth her mel-
ody in the shade. But, strangely diffident of his own powers, he
could not be made to believe that what so much impressed and
delighted the privileged few who surrounded him, was equally
suited to impress and delight the intellectual many outside ; or
that he was fitted to speak through the press in tones which
would compel the attention, not merely of the religious, but also
of the literary world. Further, jiractising but little the art of
elaborate composition, and master (^Cu spoken style more effect-
ive for the purposes of tlie pulpit than almost any written one,
save that of Chalmers, he failed, in all his attenips in writing,
to satisfy a fastidious taste, which he had siitrered greatly to
out<,'ro\v his ability of [nxubiction. Ami so he failed to leave
anv adequate mark behind him. I find that for my stock of
Uieological idea, not directly derived from Scripture, 1 stand
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 897
mure indebted to two Scotch theologians than to jill other
men of their profession and class. The one of these was
Thomas Chalmers, — the other, Alexander Stewart : the one a
name known wherever the English language is spoken;
while of the other it is only remembered, and by com-
paratively a few, that the impression did exist at the time
of his death, that
" A mighty spirit was eclipsed, — a power
Had ^«lS9ed from day to darkness to whose hour
Ot)ig':.t no likeness was bequeathed,— no nune."
>98 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTKTW.
CHAPTER XIX.
" See yonder poor o'er-labor'd wight.
So abject, mean, and vile.
Who begs a brother of tlie eiirlh
To give him leave to toil ;
And see liia \0T<ly felloic-icorm
The poor petition spurn."
Burns.
Work failed me about the end of June 1828 ; a jd, acting on
the advice of a friend who believed that my style of cutting in-
scriptions could not fail to secure for me a good many little
jobs in the churchyard of Inverness, I visited that place, and
inserted a brief advertisement in one of the newspapers, so-
liciting employment. I ventured to characterize my style of
engraving as neat and correct ; laying especial emphasis on the
correctness, as a quality not very common among the stone-
cutters of the north. It was not a Scotch, but an English
mason, who, when engaged, at the instance of a bereaved
widower, in recording on his wife's tombstone that a " virtuous
woman is a crown to her husband," corrupted the text, in his
simplicity, by substituting " 5s." for the '■'•crown.'''' But even
Scotch masons do make odd enough mistakes at times, espe-
cially in the provinces ; and I felt it would be something gain-
ed could I but get an opportunity of showing the Inverness
puVjlic that I had at least English enough to avoid the com-
mf>ner errors. My verses, thought I, are at least tolerably cor-
rect : could I not get some one or two copies introduced into
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 899
the poet's corner of the Inverness Courier or Journal, and thus
show that I have literature enough to be trusted with the cut-
ting of an cpitath on a gravestone ? I had a letter of intro-
duction from a friend in Cromarty to one of the ministers of
the place, himself an author, and a person of influence with the
proprietors of tiie Courier ; and, calculating on some amount
of literary sympathy from a person accustomed to court the
public through the medium of the press, I thought I might
just venture on stating the case to him. I first, however
wrote a brief address, in octo-syllabic quatrains, to the rivei
which flows through the town, and gives to it its name ; — a
composition which has, I find, more of the advertisement in it
than is quite seemly, but which would have perhaps expressed
less confidence had it been written less under the influence of
a shrinking timidity, that tried to re-assure itself by words of
comfort and encouragement.
I was informed that the minister's hour for receiving vis-
itors of the humbler class was between eleven and twelve at
noon ; and, with the letter of introduction and my copy of
verses in my pocket, I called at the manse, and was shown
into a little narrow ante-room, furnished with two seats of
deal that ran along the opposite walls. I found the place oc-
cupied by some six or seven individuals, — more than half that
number old withered women, in very shabby habiliments, who,
as I soon learned from a conversation which they kept up in a
grave under-tone, about weekly allowances, and the partialities
of the session, were paupers. The others were young men, who
had apparently serious requests to prefer anent marriage and
baptism ; for I saw that one of them was ever and anon draw-
ing from his breast-pocket a tattered copy of the Shorter Cate-
chism, and running over the questions ; and I overheard an
other asking his neighbor, " Who drew up the contract lines
for him 1" and " Where he had got the whisky ?" The min-
ister entered ; and as he passed into the inner room, we all
rose. lie stood for a moment in the doorway, and, beckoning
on one of the young men, — he of the Catechism, — they went
in togetner, and the door closed. They remain closeted to-
400 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
gethcr for about twenty minutes or half an hour, and then the
young man went out ; and another young man, — he who had
procured the contract lines and the whisky, — took his place.
The interview in this second case, however, was much shorter
than the first ; and a very few minutes served to despatch the
businessof the third young man; and then the minister, com-
ing to the doorway, looked first at the old women and then a1
tne, as if mentally determining our respective claims to pri-
ority ; and mine at length prevailing, — I know not on what
occult principle, — I was beckoned in. I presented my lettei
of introduction, which was graciously read ; and though the
nature of the business did strike me as ludicrously out of
keeping with the place, and it did cost me some little trouble
to suppress at one time a burst of laughter, that would, ot
course, have been prodigiously improper in the circumstances,
[ detailed to him in a few words my little plan, and handed
him my copy of verses. lie read them aloud with slow de-
liberation.
ODE TO THE NESS.
Child of tlie lake!* whose silvery gleam
Cheers Ihe roii^h desert, dark and lone, —
A brown, deep, sullen, restless stream,
With ceaseless speed thou luirriesl on.
And yet thy banks with llowers are gay;
The sun laughs on thy ample breast ;
And o'er thy tidis the zephyrs play.
Though nought be thine of quiet rcsL
Stream of the lake! to him who strays,
Lonely, thy winding marge along,
Not fraught with lure of other days.
And yet not all unblest in song, —
To him Uiou tell'sl of busy men.
Who nia<lly wiisle their present day,
Purnuing hopes, baseless as vain.
While life, unlosted, glides awny.
* Loch Ne»
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 401
Stream of the lake ! why hasten on ?
A boislVous ocean spreads before,
Where (lash dark tides, and wild winds moan,
And foam-wreaths skirt a cheerless shore.
Nor bending flowers, nor waving fields,
Nor aught of rest is there for thee ;
But rest to thee no pleasure yields;
Then haste and join the stormy sea I
Stream of the lake! of bloody men.
Who thirst the guilty flght to try,^
Who seek for joy in mortal pain,
Music in misery's thrilling cry, —
Thou tell'st : peace yields no joy to them,
■ Nor harmless Pleasure's golden smile ;
Of evil deed the cheerless fame
Is all the meed that crowns their toll.
Not such would prove, — if Pleasure shone, —
Stream of the deep and peaceful lake !
His course, whom Hardship urges on,
Thro\igh cheerless waste and thorny brake.
For, ah I each pleasing scene he loves.
And peace is all his heart's desire;
And, ah ! of scenes where Pleasure roves.
And Peace, could gentle minstrel tire?
Stream of the lake ! for thee await
The tempests of an angry main ;
A brighter hope, a happier fate.
He boasts, whose present course is paia.
TTes, ev'n for him may death prepare
A home of pleasure, peace, and love ;
rhus blessed by hope, little his care.
Though rough his present course may prove.
The minister paused as he concluded, and looked puzzled
" Pretty well, I dare say," he said ; " but I do not now read
poetry. You, however, use a word that is not English, — ' Tliy
winding marge along.' Marge ! — what is marge ?" " You
will find it in Johnson," I said. " Ah, but we must noi/ use
all the words we find in Johnson." " But the poets make
frequent use of it." " What poets 1" " Spenser." " Too
old, — too old : no authority now," said the minister. " But
the Wartons also use it.'' " I don't know the Wartons. "' " It
accurs also," I iterated, *■ in one of the most finished sonnets
402 irY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS ;
of Henry Kirke White." "What sonnet 1" "That to the
river Trent.
'Once more, O Trent! along thy pebbly marge,
A pensive invalid, reduced and pale,
From the close sick room newly set at large,
Woos to his woe-worn cheek the pleasant gale'
It is, in short, one of the common English words of the poetic
vocabulary," Could a man in quest of patronage, and actual-
ly at the time soliciting a fevor, possibly contrive to say any-
thing more imprudent ? And this, too, to a gentleman so
much accustomed to be deferred to when he took up his
ground on the Standards, as sometimes to forget, through the
sheer force of habit, that he was not a standard himself! Tie
colored to the eyes ; and his condescending humility, which
seemed, 1 thought, rather too great for the occasion, and was
of a kind which my friend Mr. Stewart never used to exhibit,
appeared somewhat ruffled. I have no acquaintance, he said,
with the editor of the Courier : we take opposite sides in very
important questions; and I cannot recommend your verses to
him ; but call on Mr. ; he is one of the proprietors ;
and, with my compliments, state your case to him : he will be
perhaps able to assist you. Meanwhile, I wish you all suc-
cess. The minister hurried me out, and one of the withered
old women was called in. " This," I said to myself, as I step-
ped into the street, " is the sort of patronage which letters of
introduction procure for one. I don't think I'll seek any more
of it."
Meeting on the street, however, with two Cromarty friends,
one of whom was just going to call on the gentleman named
by the minister, he induced me to accompany him. The
other said, as he took his separate way, that, having come to
visit an old townsman settled in Inverness, a man of some in-
fluencc in the burgh, he would state my case to him ; and he
was sure he would exert himself to procure me employment.
I have already referrod to the remark of Burns. It is record-
ed by his brother Gilbert, that the poet used often to say,
"That h« could not well conceive a more mortifying picture
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 408
of human life, than a man seeking work ;" and that the ex-
quisite Dirge, ' Man was made to Mourn," owes its existencb
to the sentiment. The feeling is certainly a very depressing
one ; and as on most other occasions work rather souijht me
than I the work, I experienced more of it at this time than at
any other period of my life. I, of course, could hardly ex-
pect that people should die off and require epitaphs merely to
accommodate me. That demand of employment as a right n
all cases and circumstances, which the more extreme " claims-
of-labor men" do not scruple to urge, is the result of a sort
of indignant re-action on this feeling, — a feeling which be-
came poetry in Burns and nonsense in the Communists ; but
which I experienced neither as nonsense nor poetry, but sim-
ply as a depressing conviction that I was one man too many
in the world. The gentleman on whom I now called with
my friend was a person both of business habits and literary
tastes ; but I saw that my poetic scheme rather damaged me
in his estimation. The English verse produced at this time
in the far north was of a kind ill fitted for the literary market,
and usually published, or rather printed, — for published it
never was, — by that teasing subscription scheme which so
often robs men of good money, and gives them bad books in
exchange ; and he seemed to set me down as one of the annoy-
ing semi-beggar class; — rather a mistake, I should hope. He,
however, obligingly introduced me to a gentleman of literature
and science, the secretary of a society of the place, antiquarian
and scientific in its character, termed the " Northern Institu-
tion," and the honorary conservator of its museum, — an in-
teresting miscellaneous collection, which I had previously seen,
and in connection with which I had formed my only other
scheme of getting into employment.
I wrote that old Eng.ish hand which has been revived ol
late by the general rage for the mediaeval, but which at that
time was one of the lost arts, with much neatness ; and could
produce imitations of the illuminated manuscripts that pre-
ceded our printed books, which even an antiquary would have
pronounced respectable. And, addressing the members of tlia
404b MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS;
Northen jstitntion on the character and tendency of theii
pursuits, in a somewhat lengthy piece of verse, written in what
I at least intended to be the manner of Drydcn, as exemplified
in his middle-style poems, such as the Religio Laid, I en-
grossed it in the old hand, and now called on the Secretary to
request that he would present it at the first meeting of the So-
ciety, which was to hold, I understood, in a few da^^s. The
Secretary was busy at his desk ; but he received me politely,
spoke ajiprovingly of my work as an imitation of the old
manuscript, and obligingly charged himself with its delivery
at the meeting ; and so we parted for the time, not in the least
aware that there was a science which dealt with characters
greatly more ancient than those of the old manuscripts, and
laden with profounder meanings, in which we both took a
deep interest, and regarding which we could have exchanged
facts and ideas with mutual pleasure and profit. The Secre-
tary of the Northern Institution at this time was Mr. George
Anderson, the well-known geologist, and joint author with his
brother of the admirable " Guide-Book to the Highlands,"
which bears their name. I never heard how my address
fared. It would, of course, have been tabled, — looked at, I
suppose, for a few seconds by a member or two, — and then
set aside ; and it is probably still in the archives of the Insti-
tution, awaiting the light of future ages, when its simulated
antiquity shall have become real. It was not written in a
character to be read, nor, I fear, very readable in any charac-
ter ; and so the members of the Institution must have remained
ignorant of all the wisdom I had found in their pursuits, anti-
quarian and ethnological. The following forms an' average
specimen of the production: —
"'Tia youra to Irnce
Ench (loe]>-nxcd irnitlliul murks Die humnn race;
And ns Iho K^yplinn priests, will) mytttery OauKht,
By siKiiHi not wiinl^ i>rS|ihynx iiiul llxrus taught,
So, 'mid yoiir Rlori-s, by things, nol bimkis )'0 ocan
The powcTH and liiHiory of the mind of num.
Von r.lic(|iu'ri-d wull disphiys Dio iirms of war
Of times remulu and uulionii disturil far:
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 405
Alas! the club and brand but serve to sh( w
How wide extends llie reign ol" wrong and woe.
Yes! all that man has framed his image bears;
And much of hate, and mnch of pride, appears.
" riciisant it is each <livcrse slop to scan,
By which the savage first assumes the man ;
To mark what feelins;8 sway his softening breast,
Or what strong ]«ission triumplis o'er the rest.
Narrow of heart, or free, or brave, or base,
Ev'n in the infant we the man may trace ;
And from the rude ungainly sires may know
Each striking trait the polished sons shall show
Dependent on what moods assume the reign,
Science shall smile, or spread her stores in vain :
As coward fears or gCLerous passions sway,
Shall freedom reign, or heartless slaves obey.
"Not unto chance must aught of power be given,—
A country's genius is the gift of Heaven.
What warms the poet's lays with generous fire.
To which no toil can reach, no art aspire?
Who taught the sage, with deepest wisilom fraught.
While scarce one pupil grasps the ponderous though
Nay, wherefore ask ?— as Heaven the mind bestows,
A Napier calculates and a Thomson glows
Now turn to where, beneath the city wall,
The sun's fierce rays in unbroke splendor fajl;
Vacant and weak there sits the idiot boy,
Of pain scarce conscious, scarce alive to joy ;
A thousand busy sounds around him roar;
Trade wields the tool, and Commerce plies the oar;
But, all unheeding of the restless scene,
or toil he nothing knows, and nouglil of gain:
The thoughts of common minds were strange to him,
Ev'n as to such a Napier's thoughts would seem.
Thus, as in men, in peopled states, we find
Unequal powers, and varied tones of mind;
Timid or dauntless, high of thought or low,
O'erwhelm'd with phlegm, or fraught with fire thtr gjto*
And as the sculptor's art is better shown
In Parian marble than in porous stone,
Wreaths fresh or scar'd repay reflciement'a toil.
As genius owns or dulness stamps the soil.
Where isles of coral stud the southern main,
And painted kings and cinctur'd warrioi« reign.
Nations there are who native worth possess,—
Whom every art shall court, each science bless;
And tribes there are, heavy of heart and slow-
On whom no coming age a change shall know."
406 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS;
There wat, I suspect, a waste of effort in all this planning ;
but some men seem destined to do things clumsily and ill, at
many times the expense which serves to secure success to the
more adroit. I despatched my Ode to the newspaper, accom-
panied by a letter of explanation ; but it fored as ill as my
Address to the Institution ; and a single line in italics in the
next number intimated that it was not to appear. And thus
both my schemes were, as they ought to be, knocked on the
head. I have not schemed any since. Strategy is, I fear, not
my forte ; and it is idle to attempt doing in spite of nature
what one has not been born to do well. Besides, I began to
be seriously dissatisfied with myself: there seemed to be no-
thing absolutely wrong in a man who wanted honest employ-
ment taking this way of showing he was capable of it; but I
felt the spirit within rise against it ; and so I resolved to ask
no more favors of any one, even should poets' corners re-
main shut against me forever, or however little Institutions,
literary or scientific, might favor me with their notice. I
strode along the streets, half an inch taller on the strength of
the resolution ; and straightway, as if to reward me for my
magnanimity, an ofter of employment came my way unsolic-
ited. I was addressed by a recruiting serjeant of a High-
land regiment, who asked me if I did not belong to the Aird ?
" No, not to the Aird ; to Cromarty," I replied. " Ah. to
Cromarty, — very fine place! But would you not better bid
adieu to Cromarty, and come along with me 1 We have a
capital grenadier company ; and in our regiment a stout steady
man is always sure to get on," I thanked him, but declined
his invitation ; and, with an apology on his part, which was
not in tht least needed or expected, we parted.
Though verse and old English failed me, the simple state-
ment made by my Cromarty friend to my townsman located
in Inverness, that I was a good workman, and wanted work,
procured nie at once the cutting of an inscription, and two
little jobs in Cromarty besides, which I wjis to execute on my
return home. The Inverness job was soon comj)leted ; but I
had the nvjar prospect of another; and as the little bit of the
public that came my way approved of my cutting, I trusted
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION 407
employment would flow in apace. T lodged with a worthy
old widow, conscientious and devout, and ever doing her hum-
ble work consciously in the eye of the Great Taskmaster, — •
one of a class of persons not at all so numerous in the world
as might be desirable, but sufficiently common to render it
rather a marvel that some of our modern masters of fiction
should never have chanced — 'judging from their writings — to
come in contact with any of them. She had an only son, a
working cabinetmaker, who used occasionally to annoy her
by his silly jokes at serious things, and who was courting at
this time a sweetheart who had five hundred pounds in the
bank, — an immensely large sum to a man in his circumstances.
He had urged his suit with such apparent success, that the
marriage-day was fixed and at hand, and the house which he
had engaged as his future residence fully furnished. And it
was his prospective brother-in-law who was to be my new
employer, so soon as the wedding should leave him leisure
enough to fiirnish epitaphs for two tombstones recently placed
in the family burying-ground. The wedding-day arrived ;
and, to be out of the way of the bustle and the pageant, I re-
tired to the house of a neighbor, a carpenter, whom I had
obliged by a few lessons in practical geometry and architec-
tural drawing. The carpenter was at the wedding ; and, with
the whole h6use to myself, I was engaged in writing, when up
flew the door, and in rushed my pupil the carpenter, " What
has happened V I asked. " Happened !" said the carpenter,
— " Happened ! ! The bride's away with another man ! ! The
bridegroom has taken to his bed, and raves like a madman ;
and his poor old mother — good honest woman — is crying like
a child. Do come, and see what can be done." I accompa-
nied him to my landlady's, where I found the bridegroom in a
paroxysm of mingled grief and rage, congratulating himself
on his escape, and bemoaning his unhappy disappointment, by
turns. He lay athwart the bed, which he told me in the niurn-
ing he had quitted for the last time ; but as I entered, he half
rose, and, seizing on a pair of new shoes which had been
prepared for the bride, and lay on a table beside him, he
408 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
hurled them against the wall, first the one and then the (.(thei
until they came rebounding hack across the room ; and then,
with an exclamation that need not be repeated, he dashed
himself down again. 1 did my best to comfort his poor mother,
who seemed to feel very keenly the slight done to her son,
and to anticipate with dread the scandal and gossip of which it
would render her humble household the subject. She seemed
sensible, however, that he had made an escape, and at onoe
icquiesced in my suggestion, that all that should now be done
would be to get every expense her son had been at in his prep-
arations for housekeeping and the wedding, transferred to the
shoulders of the other party. And such an arrangement could,
I thought, be easily effected through the bride's brother, who
seemed to be a reasonable man, and who would be aware also
that a suit at law could be instituted in the case against his
sister ; though in any such suit I held it might be best for both
parties not to engage. And at the old woman's request, I set
out with the carpenter to wait on the bride's brother, in order
to see whether he was not prepared for some such arrangement
as I suggested, and, besides, able to furnish us with some ex-
planation of the extraordinary step taken by the bride.
We were overtaken, as we passed along the street, by a
person who was, he said, in search of us, and who now re-
quested us to accompany him ; and, threading our way, undei
his guidance, through a few narrow lanes that traverse the as-
semblage of houses on the west bank of the Ness, we stopped
at the door of an obscure alehouse. Tliis, said our conductor,
we have found to be the retreat of the bride. He ushered us
into a room occupied by some eight or ten persons, drawn up
on the opposite sides, with a blank space l)etween. On the
one side sat the bride, a high-colored, buxom young girl, se-
rene and erect as Britaimia on the halfpennies, and guarded
by two stout fellows, masons or slaters apparently, in theii
working dresses. Tiu-y looked hard at the carpenter and me
as we enteretl, of course regarding us as the assailants against
whom liii'V would have to maintain tlieir prize. On the other
side sat a group of the bride's relatives, — among the rest her
OR, THE STO.RY OF MY EDUCATION. 409
brother, — silent, and all apparently very much grieved ; while
he space between them there stumped up and down a lame,
& > low-complexioned oddity, in shabby black, who seemed to
be making a set oration, to which no one replied, about the
sacred clainjs of love, and the cruelty of interfering with the
aflections of young people. Neither the carpenter nor myself
felt any inclination to debate with the orator, or fight with the
guards, or yet to interfere with the affections of the young
lady ; and so, calling out the brother into another room, and
expressing our regret at what had happened, we stated our
case, and found him, as we had expected, very reasonable.
We could ni^ however, treat for the absent bridegroom, nor
could he engage for his sister ; and so we had to part without
coming to any agreement. There were points about the case
which at first I could not understand. My jilted acquaintance
the cabinetmaker had not only enjoyed the countenance of
all his mistress's relatives, but he had been also as well re
ceived by herself as lovers usually are : she had written him
kind letters, and accepted of his presents ; and then, just as
her friends were sitting down to the marriage-breakfast, she
had eloped with another man. The other man, however, — a
handsome fellow, but great scamp, — had a prior claim to her
regards : he had been the lover of her choice, though detested
by her brother and all her friends, who were sufficiently well
acquainted with his character to know that he would land her
in ruin ; and during his absence in the country, where he was
working as a slater, they had lent their influence and counte-
nance to my acquaintance the cabinetmaker, in order to get
her married to a comparatively safe man, out of the slater's
reach. And, not very strong of will, she had acquiesced in the
arrangement. On the eve of the marriage, however, the slater
had come into town ; and, exchanging clothes with an ac-
quaintance, a Highland soldier, he had walked unsuspected
opposite her door, until, finding an opportunity of conversing
with her on the morning of the wedding-day, he had repre-
sented her ut-w lover as a silly, ill-shaped fellow, who had just
head enough ':o be mercenary, and himself as one of the most
ilO MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASI'ERS ;
devoted and disconsolate of lovers. And, his soft tongue and
fine leg gaining the day, she had left the marriage guests to
enjoy their tea and toast without her, and set off" with him to
the change-house. Ultimately the affair ended ill for all
parties. I lost my job, for I saw no more of the bride's
brother ; the wrong-headed cabinetmaker, contrary to the ad
vice of his mother and her lodger, entered into a lawsuit, in
which he got small damages and much vexation ; and tht
slater and his mistress broke out into such a course of dissi
pation after becoming man and wife, that they and the five
hundred pounds came to an end almost together. Shortly
after, my landlady and her son quitted the c^itry for the
United States. So favorably had the poor woman impressed
me as one of the truly excellent, that I took a journey from
Cromarty to Inverness — a distance of nineteen miles — to bid
her farewell ; but I found, on my arrival, her house shut up,
and learned that she had left the place for some sailing port
on the west coast two days before. She was a humble washer-
woman ; but I am convinced that in the other world, which
she must have entered long ere now, she ranks considerably
higliL-r.
I waited on in Inverness, in the hope that, according to
Burns, " my brothers of the earth would give me leave to toil ;"
but the hope was a vain one, as I succeeded in procuring no
second job. There was no lack, however, of the sort of em-
ployment which 1 could cut out lor myself; but the remunera-
tion — only now in the process of being realized, and that very
slowly — had to be deferred to a distant day. I had to give
more than twelve years credit to the pursuits that engaged me ;
and as my cajtilal was small, it was rather a trying matter tc
De " kept so long out of my wages." There is a wonderful
group of what are now termed osars, in the immediate neigh-
borhood of Inverness, — a group to which the Queen of Scottish
fondians, the j)ictiires(jiieTomnahuirich, belongs, and to the ex-
ttiiiination of wliich 1 devoted si-.veral days. 13ut I learned only
to state (he diflicalty which llicy form, not to solve it ; anil now
thavt Agassiz had j>romulguted his glacial theory, and that traces
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlSr. 411
of the great ice agencies have been detected all over Scotland,
the mystery of the osars remains a mystery still. I succeed-
ed, however, in determining at this time, that they belong to
a later period than the boulder clay, which I found underlying
the great gravel formation of which they form a part, in a sec-
tion near Loch Ness that had been laid open shortl^y before,
in excavating for the great Caledonian Canal. And as all, or
almost all, the shells of the boulder clay are of species that
still live, we may infer that the mysterious osars were formed
not very long ere the introduction upon our planet of the in
quisitive little creature that has been puzzling himself — hith-
erto at least with no satisfactory result — in attempting to ac-
count for their origin. I examined, too, with some care, the
old-coast line, so well developed in this neighborhood as to
form one of the features of its striking scenery, and which
must be regarded as thegeological memorial and representative
of those latter ages of the world in which the human epoch im-
pinged on the old Pre-Adamite periods. The magistrates of
the place were engaged at the time in doing their duty, like
sensible men, as they were, in what I could not help thinking
a somewhat barbarous instance. The neat, well-proportioned,
^ery uninteresting jail-spire of the burgh, about which, in its
integrity, no one cares anything, had been shaken by an earth-
quake, which took place in the year 1816, into one of the great-
est curiosities in the kingdom. The earthquake, which, for a
Scotch one, had been unprecedentedly severe, especially in the
line of the great Caledonian Valley, had, by a strange vorticose
motion, twisted round the spire, so that, at the transverse line
of displacement, the panes and corners of the octagonal broach
which its top formed, overshot their proper positions fully
seven inches. The corners were carried into nearly the middle
of the panes, as if some gigantic hand, in attempting to twirl
round the building by the spire, as one twirls round a spin-
ning-top by the stalk or bole, had, from some failure in the
cohereicy of the masonry, succeeded in turning round only
the part of which he had laid hold. Sir Charles Lyell figures,
IT his " Prinf^ples," similar shifts in the stones of two obelisks
412 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ill a Calabrian convent, and subjoins the ingenious suggestion
on the subject of Messrs. Darwin and Mallet. And here was
there a Scotch example of the same sort of ingenious pheno-
mena, not less curious than the Calabrian one and certainly
unique in its character as Scotch, which, though the injured
building had already- stood twelve years in its displaced con-
dition, and might stand for as many more as the hanging
tcwer of Piha, the magistrates were laboriously effacing at the
expense of the burgh. They were completely successful, U/O ;
And the jail-spire was duly restored to its state of original in-
significance, as a fifth-rate piece of ornamental masonry. But
how very absurd, save, mayhap, here and there to a geolo-
gist, must not these remarks appear !
But my criticisms on the magistracy, however foolish, were
silent criticisms, and did harm to no one. About the time,
however, in which I was indulging in them, I imprudently ex-
posed myself, by one of those impulsive acts of which men re-
pent at their leisure, to criticisms not silent, and of a kind that
occasionally do harm. I had been piqued by the rejection of
my verses on the Ness. True, I had no high opinion of their
merit, — deeming them little more than equal to the average
verses of provincial prints; but then I had intimated my scheme
of getting them printed to a few Cromarty friends, and was
now weak enough to be annoyed at the tliouijht that my towns
folk would regard me as an incompetent blockhead, who could
not write rhymes good enough for a newspaper. And so I
rashly determined on appealing to the public in a small vol
ume. Had I known as much as in an after-period about
newspaper afiairs. and the mode in which copies of verses are
often dealt with by editors and their assistants, — fatigued with
nonsense, and at once hopeless of finding grain in the enor-
mous heaps uf chaff submitted to them, and too much occu-
piod tc seek for it, even should they believe in its occurrence
in the form of single seeds sparsely scattered, — I would have
thought less of the matter. As the case was, however, I hasti
ly collected from among my piles of manuscripts sojne fifteen
or twenty pieces in verse, wr-tten eiiiefly during the preceding
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOJST. 413
six years, and put them into the hands of the printer of the
Inverness Courier. It would have been a greatly wiser act,
as I soon came to see, had I put them into the fire instead ;
but my choice of a printing office secured to me at least one ad-
vantage, — it brought me acquainted with one of the ablest and
most accomplished of Scottish editors, — the gentleman who
now owns and still conducts the Courier ; and, besides, having '
once crossed the Rubicon, I felt all my native obstinacy stirred
up to make good a position for myself, despite of failure and
reverses on the further side. It is an advantage in some cases
to be committed. The clear large type of the Courier office
did, however, show me many a blemish in my verse that had
escaped me before, and broke off associations which — curious-
ly linked with the manuscripts — had given to the stanzas and
passages which they contained charms of tone and color not
their own. I began to find, too, that my humble accomplish-
ment of verse was too narrow to contain my thinking ; — the
thinking ability had been growing, but not the ability of po-
etic expression; nay, much of the thinking seemed to be of a
kind not suited for poetic purposes at all ; — and though it was
of course far better that I should come to know this in time,
than that, like some, even superior men, I should persist in
wasting, in inefficient verse, the hours in which vigorous prose
might be produced, it was at least quite mortifying enough to
make the discovery with half a volume of metre committed
to type, and in the hands of the printer. Resolving, however,
that my humble name should not appear in the title page, I
went on with my volume. My new friend the editor kindly
inserted, from time to time, copies of its verses in the columns
of his paper, and strove to excite some degree of iiiterest and
expectation regarding it ; but my recent discovery had thor-
oughly sobered me, and I awaited the publication of my vol-
ume not much elated by the honor done me, and as little san-
guine respecting its ultimate success as well might be. And
ere I quitted Inverness, a sad bereavement, which greatly nar-
rowed the circle of my best-loved friends, threw very much
into the batk-ground all my thoughts regarding it.
414 MY SCHOOLS .V^D SCHOOLMASTEES ;
On quitting Croraarty, I had left my uncle James laboring
under an attack of rheumatic fever ; but though he had just
entered his grand climacteric, he was still a vigorous and ac-
tive man, and I could not doubt that he had strength of con-
stitution enough to throw it off. He had failed to rally, how-
ever ; and after reti rning one evening from a long exploratory
walk, I found in my lodgings a note awaiting me, intimating
his death. The blow fell with stunning effect. Ever since
the death of my father, my two uncles had faithfully occupied
his place ; and James, of a franker and less reserved temper
than Alexander, and more tolerant of my boyish follies, had,
though I sincerely loved the other, laid stronger hold of my
affections. He was of a genial disposition, too, that always re
mained sanguine in the cast of its hopes and anticipations ; and
he had unwittingly flattered my vanity by taking me pretty
much at my own estimate, — overweeningly high, of course, like
that of almost all young men, but mayhap necessary, in the
character of a force, to make headway in the face of obstruc-
tion and difficulty. Uncle James, like Le Balafre in the novel,
would have " ventured his nephew against the wight Wallace."
I immediately set out for Cromarty ; and, curious as it may
seem, found grief so companionable, that the four hours which
I spent by the way seemed hardly equal to one. I retained,
however, only a confused recollection of my journey, remem-
bering little more than that, when passing at midnight along
the dreary Maollbuie, I saw the moon in her wane, rising red
and lightless out of the distant sea ; and that, lying, as it were,
prostrate on the horizon, she reminded me of some o'ermatch
ed wrestler thrown helplessly on the ground.
On reaching home, I found my mother, late as the hour was,
still up, and engaged in making a dead-dress for the body.
'* There is a letter from the south, with a black seal, awaiting
you," she said ; *' I fear you have also lost your friend Wil-
liam IJoss." I opened the letter, and found her surmise too
well founded. It was a farewell letter, written in feeble char-
acters, but in no feeble spirit ; and a brief postscript, added
by a 'J^ inrade, intimated the death of the writer. " This,"
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. *JI;
wrote the dying man, with a hand fast forgetting its cunning,
"is, to all human prohability, iny last letter; hut the '■hought
gives me little trouble ; for my hope of salvation is in the
blood of Jesus. Farewell, my sinccrest friend !" There i-- a
provision through which nature sets limits to both physical and
mental suflering. A man partially stunned by a violent blow
is sometimes conscious that it is followed by other blows,
rather from seeing than from feeling them: his capacity of
sufferinw has been exhausted bv the lirst: and the others that
fall upon him, though they may injure, fail to pain. And so
also it is with strokes that fall on the affections. In other cir-
cumstances I would have grieved for the death of my friend,
but my mind was already occupied to the full by the death of
ny micle ; and though I saw the new stroke, several days
elapsed evo, I could feel it. My friend, after half a lifetime of
decline, had sunk suddenly. A comrade who lived v/ith him
— a stout, florid lad — had been seized by the same insidious
malady as his own, about a twelvemonth before ; and, pre-
viously unacquainted with sickness, in him the progress of the
disease had been rapid, and his sufterings were so great, that
he was incapacitated for work several months before his death.
But my poor friend, though sinking at the time, wrought for
both : he was able to prosecute his employments, — which, ac-
cording to Bacon, " required rather the finger than the arm," —
in even the latter stages of his complaint ; and after support-
ing and tending his dying comrade till he sank, he himself
suddenly broke down and died. And thus perished, unknown
and in the prime of his days, a man of sterling principle and
fine genius. I found employment enough for the few weeks
which still remained of the working season of this year, in
hewing a tombstone for my Uncle James, on which I inscrib-
ed an epitaph of a few lines, that had the merit of being true.
It characterized the deceased — " James Wright" — as " an hon-
est, warm-hearted man, who had the happiness of living with
ou^ reproach, and of iying without fear."
416 MY SCHOOLS AND SCH00LMASTEB8 :
CHAPTER XX.
"This while my notion's ta'en a skleni,
To try my fate in guid black prent ;
But still the mair I'm that way bent,
Something cries, Hoolie !
I red you, honest man, tak' tent ;
Ye'll Shaw your folly."
Burns
Mr vol ime of verse passed but slowly through the press ;
and as I had begun to look rather ruefully forward to its
appearance, there was no anxiety evinced on my part to
urge it on. At length, however, all the pieces were thrown
into type ; and I followed them up by a tail-piece in prose,
formed somewhat on the model of the preface of Pope, — for
I was a great admirer at the time of the English written by
the " wits of the reign of Queen Anne," — in which I gave
serious expression to the suspicion that, as a writer of verse,
I had mistaken my vocation.
•* It Is more than possible," I said, " that 1 liave completely failed In poetry.
II may appear that, while grasping at originality of description and ec.iliment
tod Klriviiig to alluin propriety of expression, I have only l)ccn dc])icling com-
tnon Images, and embodying obvious thoughts, and this, too, in inelegant Ian*
guage. Vet even tn this case, though disappointed, I shall not bo without my
•ourccs of comforL The pleasure which I enjoy in composing verses is quit*
lniei>endenl of other men's opinions of Ihi-m ; and I expect to feel as happy ua
ever in thi« amiisenient, oven though assured that others could And no pleas-
ure in reading what 1 had found so much in writing. It Is no small solace to
•eflecl, that the faL>'e of the dog and shadow cannot apply to mo, sinco my pr»
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 4.17
dilPCtion for poetry has not prevented ine from acquiring the skill of at least th«
common mechanic. I am not more ignorant of masonry and architecture than
many j)rofessor8 of these arts who never measured a stanza. Tliere is also some
satisfaction in reflecting that, unlike some would-be satirists, I have not assail-
ed private character, and .hat Ihou^'h men may deride me as an unskilful poet,
they cannot justly detest me as a bad or ill-natured man. Nay, 1 shall po.ssiljly
have the pleasure of repaying those who may be merry at my expense, in their
own coin. An ill-conditioned critic is alwa\s a more pitiable sort of person than
an unsuccessful versifier; and tlie desire of sliowing one's own discernmcMr at the
expense of one's neighbor, a greatly worse thing than the simple wish, however
divorced from the ability, of affording him harmless pleasure. Further, it would
think, not be difllcult to show that my mistake in supposing myself to bo a
poet is not a whit more ridiculous, and infinitely less mischievous, than many
of those into which myj iads of my fellow-men are falling every day. I have
«een the vicious atti-mpling to teach morals, and the weak to unfold mysteries.
• have seen nten set up for freethinkers who were born not to think at all. To
conc'ude, there will surely be cause for self-gralulation in rellecting that, by bo
coming an author, I have only lost a few pounds, not gained the reputation of
being H mean fellow, who had teased all his acquaintance until they had sub-
BcribOvl lor a woithless book; and that the severest remark of the severest critic
can only be, ' a certain anonymous rhymer is no poet.' "
As, notwithstanding the blank in the title page, the au
thorship of my volume would be known in Cromarty and
its neighborhood, I set myself to see whether I could not,
meanwhile, prepare for the press something better suited
to make an impression in my favor. In tossing the bar
or throwing the stone, the competitor who begins with a
rather iudifl'erent cast is never very unfavorably judged if
he immediately mend it by giving a better ; and I resolv-
ed on mending my cast, if I could, by writing for the In-
verness Courier — which was now open to me, through the
sindness of the editor — a series of carefully prepared let-
ters on some popular subject. In the days of Goldsmith,
the herring-fishing employed, as he tells us in one of hi^s
essavs, "all Grub Street." In the north of Scotland this
fishery was a popular theme little more than twenty years
ago. The welfare of whole communities depended in no
slight degree on its success : it formed the basis of niary a
calculation, and the subject of many an investment ; and it
was all the more suitable for mv curpose from the circum-
418 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
stance that there was no Grub Street in that part of tnt
\vorld to employ itself about. It was, in at least all its
better aspects, a fresh subject; and I deemed myself more
thoroughly acquainted with it than at least most of the
men who were skilful enough, as Utterotevrs, to comininii-
cate their knowledge in writing. I knew the peculiarities
of fishermen as a class, and the effects of this special
branch of their profession on their character : I had seen
them pursuing their employments amid the sublime of nar
ture, and had occasionally taken a share in their work ; and,
further, 1 was acquainted with not a few antique traditions
of the fishermen of other ages, in which, as in the narra-
tives of most seafaring men, there mingled with a certain
amount of real incident, curious snatches of the supernatu
ral. In short, the subject was one on which, as I knew a
good deal regarding it that was not generally known, I was
in some degree qualified to write; and so I occupied my
leisure in casting my facts respecting it into a series of let-
ters, of which the first appeared in the Coimer a fortnight
after my volume of verse was laid on the tables of the north-
country booksellers.
I had first gone out to sea to assist in catching herrings
about ten years before ; and I now described, in one of my
letters, as truthfully as I could, those features of the scene
to which I had been introduced on that occasion, which had
struck mc as novel and peculiar. And what had been
strange to me proved equally so, I found, to the readers
of the Courier. My letters attracted attention, and were
republished in my behalf by the pro])rietors of the paper,
" in consequence," said my frienrl the editor, in a note which
he kindly atlaehed to the jtaniphlet which ihcy formed
"of the interest they had excited in the northern counties.'
Tlu'ir modicMiii of success, lowly as was iheir subject, com
pared ^^ith that of some of my more ain])itious verses,
taught me my proper course. Let it be my business, I
said, to know what is not generally known ; — let me qual-
ify myself to stand as an interpreter between nature and the
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 419
public : while I strive to narrate as pleasingly, and describe
as vividly, as I can, let truth, not fiction, be my walk ;
and if I succeed in uniting the novel to the true, in prov-
inces of more general interest than the very humble one
in which I have now partially succeeded, I shall succeed
also in establishing myself in a position which, if not lofty,
will yield me at least more solid footing than that to which
I might attain as a mere litterateur^ who, mayhap, pleased
fur a little, but added nothing to the general fund. Tiie
resolution was, I think, a good one ; — would that it had
been better kept! The following extracts may servo to
show that, humble as my new subject may be deemed, it
gave considerable scope for description of a kind not often
associated with herrings, even when they employed all Grub
Street :—
" As the night gradually darkened, the sky assumed a dead and leaden hue ; llie
eea, roughened by ilio rising breeze, rcflecled its deeper hues wlih an iniensily ap-
proaching lo bliicli, and seemed a d;irk uneven pavcnicnl, tliat absorbed every
niy of the remaining W^M. A calm silvery piilcli, some firieen or Iweniy yards
in extent, came moving slowly through the black. U seemed merely a patch of
water coaled willi oil; but, obedient to soini; other moving power than ihat of
eiiher tide or wind, it sailed aslant o\ir line of buoys, a slone-casl from our bows, —
lengthened itself along the line to lluice its former extent,— paused as if for a
moment,— and then three of the buoys, after erecting themselves on their nar-
rower base, with a sudden jerk, slowly sank. 'One— two— three buoys 1' ex-
tlaimed one of the fishermen, reckoning llie^n as Ihcy disappeared \-~thcrc arc ten
barrels for us secure.' A lew momeiUs were suffered to ela))se; and then, unflx-
ing the haulser from the sicm, and bringing it aft to the stern, we commenced
hauling. The nets approached the gunwale. The first three aiipeared, from the
phosphoric light of the water, as if bursting into flames of a pale green color.
Here and there a herring glittered bright in the meshes, or went <larling away
through the pilchy darkness, visible for a moment by its own light. The fourth
net vvai> brighter than any of the olhrro, and glittered through the waves while it
was ycl se\eral fathoms away; the pale green seemed as if mingled wiili broker
meets of snow, that— flickering amid the mass of light— appcacd, with every tug
(riven by the fishermen, to shift, dissipate, and again form ; and there streamed
from it into the surrounding gloom myriads of green rays, an instant seen and then
lost,— the rclrealing fish that had avoidi d the meshes, but had lingered, unlil dis-
turbed, beside their ontimi-'lcd companions. Il contained a considerable tody of
herrings. As we raised them over the gimwale, they felt warm lo the hanil, for iu
'he middle of a large 'shoal ■•ven the lomperature of the water is raised, -a fact
well known to every herring fisherman; and in shaking thera out of the mcshea,
19
420 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
Ihc car became sensible of a shrill, chirping sound, like that of ne mouse, bat
much fainicr, — a ceaseless cheep, cheep, cheep, occasioned apparenlly-for no irun
fish is furuislied with organs of sound — by a sudden escape '-or^ the air-bladder.
The shoal, a sn)all one, had spread over only three of the nets,— the three whose
buoys hud so suddenly disappeared ; and most of the others had but tlieir mere
spriuliling of fish, some dozen or two in a net; but so thickly had they lain in
the foitunate three, that the entire haul consisted of rather nioie thaii twelve
barrels.
• • • • « _ •
j/Vf: Started up about midnight, and saw an open sea, as before; btit the scon 2 ntl
eonsiderably changed since we had hiin down. The breeze had died into a caliE ;
(he heavens, no longer dark and gray, were glowing with stars; and the sea, fioia
the smoothness of Ihc surface, appeared a second sky, as bright and starry as Iho
other; with this difference, however, that all its stars seemed lo be ctimuls: the
slightly tremulous motion of the surface elongated the reflected images, and gave
to each ils tail. There was no visible line of division at the horizon. Where the
h>lls rose high along the coast, ar.J appeared as if doubled by their undulating strip
of sh.idow, what might be deemed a dense bank of cloud lay sleeping in the heav-
ens, just where the upper and nether firmaments met; hut its presence rendered
the illusion none the less complete: the outline of the boat lay dark around us,
.ike the fragment of some broken planet sus|iended in middle space, fur from the
earth and every star; and all around we saw e-xlended the complete sphere, — un-
hidden above from Orion to the Pole, and visible beneath from the Vo'.e lo Orion.
Certainly >ublime scenery possesses in itself no virtue potent enough to develop
the faculties, or the mind of the fisherman would not have so long lain asleep.
Tliere is no profession whose recollections should rise into purer poetry than his;
but if the mirror bear not its previous amal:,'am of taste and genius, what does :.
matter though the scene which sheds upon it ils many-colored light should bo rich
In grandeur and beauty? 'Jliere is no corres])onding image produced: the sua-
ceptibilily of reflecting the lan<lsia])e is never imparled by the landscape ilsel/,
whether to the mind or to the glass. Tliere is no class of recollections more illu-
gory than those which associate— as if they existed in tho relation of cause and effecl
— some piece of ^triking scenery with some sudden development of llio intellect 01
\magiuatioii. The eyes open, and there is an external beauty seen ; but it is not lb»
cxioinal beauty that has opened the o^cs.
"It was still a dead calm,-caltn to blackness; when. In about nn hour aHei
sunrise, what seemed like fitful airs began to play on Ihc surface, imparling lo it
In irregular patches a lint of gray. Tirst one patch would form, then a second
beside il, then u third, and then for miles around, Iho surface, cl<c so silvery, wailj
aecni rr«!!ieil over with gray : the a|)))arent breeze a|)pcared as if propa^iating i ul(
from one ccnir.d point. In a few seconds al'ler, all woiMd be calm as at (Irst ciiO
then from some other centre tho patches of gray would again form and widen, till
the whole Kritli seemed covered by Iheni. A peculiar poppling noise, a« if u tliun-
(ler-showir was beating Ihc Burfnco with Us multitudinous drops, rose nronnd ou
boat; the water ixcmi-il spiiukh'd with an Inllnily of pointt of silver, that lor na
liBluiit glilleiul lo Ibe sun, and then resigned llieir places lo other ^uick gloucmg
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOISi. 421
points (ha*, in turn were succeeded by olijers. The herrings by millions, and
thousands of millions, were at play around us, leaping a few inches into the air,
and then Ailling and disappearing to rise and leap again. Shoal rose beyond shoal,
till the whole bank of Gulliam seemed beaten into foam, and the low po])pling
Bounds were multiplied iulo a roar, like that of the wind through some tall wood,
that might be heard in the calm for miles. And again, the shoals extending around
lis seemed to cover, for hundreds of square miles, the vast Moray Frith. Hut though
they played beside our buoys by thousands, not a herring swam so low as tlie
upper baulk of our drift. One of the fisUernien took up it stone, and, flinging it
right over our second buoy into the middle of the shoal, the fish disappeared from
the surface for several fathoms around. 'Ah, there they go,' he exclaimed, — 'if
they go but low enough. Four years ago I startled thirty barrels of light fish into
my drift just by throwing a stone among them.' I know not what effect the stone
might have had on this occasion; but on hauling our nets for the third and last
time, we found we had captured about eight barrels of fl.sh ; and then hoisting sail,—
for a light breeze from the east had sprung up,— we made for the shore with a cargo
of twenty barrels."
Meanwhile the newspaper critics of the south were giving
expression to all sorts of judgments on my verses. It was
intimated in the title of the volume that they had been
" written in the leisure hours of a journeyman mason ;" and
the intimation seemed to furnish most of my reviewers with
the proper cue for dealing with them, "The time has gone
by," said one, "when a literary mechanic used to be re
garded as a phenomenon : were a second Burns to spring
up now, he would not be entitled to so much praise as the
first." "It is our duty to tell this wTitcr," said another,
" that he will make more in a week by his trowel than in
half a century by his pen." " We are glad to understand,"
said a third, — very judiciously, however, — " that our author
has the good sense to rely more on his chisel than on the
Muses." The lessons taught me were of a sufficiently va/-
ried, but, on the whole, rather contradictory character. By
one writer I was told that I was a dull, correct fellow, who
had written a book in which there w^as nothing amusing and
nothing absurd. Another, however, cheered my forlorn
spirits by assuring me that I was a " man of genius, whose
poems, with much that was faulty, contained also much that
was interesting." A third was sure I had " no chance what
ever of be'ng known beyond the limits of my native place,"
i22 MY SCHOOLS AXD SCHOOLMASTERS ;
and that my "book exhibited none, or next to none, oi
those indications which sanction the expectation of battel
things to come ;" while a fourth, of a more sanguine vein,
found in my "work the evidence of " gifts of Nature, which
the stimulus of encouragement, and the tempering lights
of experience, might hereafter develop, and direct to the
achievement of something truly wonderful." There were
two names in particular that my little volume used to sug-
gest to the newspaper reviewers: the Tarn o'Shanter and
Souter Johnnie of the ingenious Tliom were in course of
beincT exhibited at the time : and it was known that Thorn
had wrought as a journeyman mason : and there was a rather
slim poet called Sillery, the author of several forgotten vol
umes of verse, one of which had issued from the press con
temporaneously with mine, who, as he had a little money,
and was said to treat his literary friends very luxuriously,
was praised beyond measure by the newspaper critics, es-
pecially by those of the Scottish capital. And Thom as a
mason, and Sillery as a poet, were placed repeatedly before
me. One critic, who was sure I would never come to any-
thinff, magnanimously remarked, however, that as he bore
me no ill will, he would be glad to find himself mistak-
en ; nay, that it would give him "unfeigned pleasure to
learn I had attained to the well-merited fame of even Mr.
ThoTn himself." And another, after deprecating the un-
due severity so often shown by the bred writer to the
working man, and asserting that the "journeyman mason"
was in this instance, notwithstanding his treatment, a man
of fair parts, ended by remarking, that it was of course not
even every man of merit who could expect to attain to the
" high poetic eminence and celebrity of a Charles D •} lo
Sillery."
All this, however, was criticism at a distance, and dis
turbed me but little when engaged in toiling in the church-
yard, or in en)(^ying my quiet evening walks. I'ut It became
more Ibrmidabh when, on one occasion, it came to beard me
u my den.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 42S
TIic place was visited by an intinerant lecturer on elocu-
tion, — one Walsh, who, as his art was not in great request
among the quiet ladies and busy gentlemen of Cromarty,
failed to draw houses; till at length there appeared one
morning, placarded on post and pillar, an intimation to
the effect, that Mr. Walsh would that evening deliver ar
elaborate criticism on the lately-published volume of
" Poems written in the leisure hours of a Journeyman ila
son," and select from it a portion of his evening readings
The intimation drew a good house ; and, curious to knov
what was awaiting me, I paid my shilling with the others
and got into a corner. First in the entertainment then
came a wearisome dissertation on harmonic inflections, dou-
ble emphasis, the echoing words, and the monotones. But,
to borrow from Meg Dods, " Oh, what a style of language !''
Ttjo elocutionist, evidently an untaught and grossly igno
rant man, had not an idea of composition. Syntax, gram
mar, and good sense, were set at nought in every sentence;
but then, on the other hand, the inflections were carefully
maintained, and went rising and falling over the nonsense
beneath, like the waves of some shallow bay over a bot-
tom of mud and comminuted sea-weed. After the disser-
tation, we were gratified by a few recitations. " Lord Ul-
lin's Daughter," the " Razor Seller," and " My Name is
Norval," were given in great force. And then came the
critique. " Ladies and gentlemen," said the reviewer, " We
cannot expect m.ich from a journeyman mason in the poetry
line. Kight poetry needs teaching. No man can be a
proper poet unless he be an elocutionist ; for, unless he oe
an elocutionist, how can he make his verses emphatic in
the right places, or manage the harmonic inftexes. or deal
with the rhetorical pauses'? And now. Ladies and Gentle-
men, I'll show you, from various passages in this book, that
the untaught journeyman mason who made it never took
lessons in elocution. I'll first read you a passage from a
piece of verse called the ' Death of Gardiner,' — the person
meant being the lato Colonel Gardiner, 1 suppose. The 1^**-
4:24 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ginning of the piece is about the running away of Johnnif
Cope's men:"* —
" Yet in that craven, drcad-slruck host.
One valVous heart beat keen and high ;
In that dark hour of shameful flight,
One staid behind to die !
Deep gash'd by many a felon blow,
He sleeps where fouglii tlie vauquish'd ran, —
Of silver'd locks and furrow'd brow,
A venerable man.
E'en when his thousand warriors fled, —
Their low-born valor quaild and gone, —
He, — the meek leader of that band, —
Remained, and fought alone.
• The foil )wing are the openin? stanzas of the piece, — quit© as obnoxious to cntt
Olam, I fear, as those selected by Wulsh :—
" Have ye not seen, on winter's eve,
When snow-rack dirnin'd the welkin's face,
Borne wave like, by the lilful breeze,
Thesnow-wiealli shillinf^ place?
Silent anil slow as driniiii,' wrcitli.
Ere <lay, Ihu clans Ironi TreslDii Hill
Mov'd downward to Iho vale beneath : —
Dark was the scene, and btill 1
In stormy aulunm day, when sad
The bodihfi peasant Irels forlorn,
Have ye not seen the mountain stream
Bear down Ihe slandin;,' corn T
At dawn, when l'rc>loii bo« was cross'd.
Like inouMlain stream llial bursts Its banka.
Charged vvid those (aiUIc hearts of lire.
On Cope's devoted ranks.
Have ye not seen, from lonesome wasto
The smoke-tower rising (all and slow,
O'erlookiiig, like (• stately tree.
The russet plaui bi low ?
And have )e inark'd that ()illar"d wreath
When HUildcn struck by northern blast,
Amid the low and stunted heath,
III broken volumes caslY
Al sunrise, as by northern blast
The pillar'd smoke is roll'il uwujr,
Fled nil dial cIou<l ol Saxon war.
lu Ueadlung disarray."
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION". 425
He stood ; fierce foeinen throng' . around ;
The hollow death-groan of despair.
The clashing sword, the cleaving axe,
The Miurd'rous dirk were there.
Valor more stark, or liamis more strong,
Ne'er urged the brand nor launch'd the spear ;
But what were these to that old man !
God was his only fear.
He stood where adverse thousands throng'd.
And long that warrior fought and well ; —
Bravely he fought, firmly he stood,
Till where he stood he fell.
He fell, — he breath'd one patriot prayer,
Then to his God his soul rcsign'd ;
Not leaving of earth's many sons
A better man behind.
His valor, his high scorn of death,
To fame's proud meed no impulse ow'd;
His was a pure, unsullied zeal,
For Britain and for God.
He fell, — he died ; — the savage foe
Trod careless o'er the noble clay ;
Yet not in vain the champion fought,
In that disastrous fray.
On bigot creeds and felon swords
Partial success may fondly smile,
Till bleeds the patriot's honest heart,
And flames the martyr's pile.
Yet not in vain the patriot bleeds ;
Yet not in vain the martyr dies!
From ashes mute, and voiceless blood.
What stirring memories rise!
The scoffer owns the bigot's creed,
Though keen the secret gibe may be;
The sceptic seeks the tyrant's dome.
And bends the ready knee.
But oh ! ill dark oppression's day,
When (lares the torch, when flames the sword,
Who are the brave in freedom's cause?
The men who fear the Lord.
*' Now Ladies and Gentlemen," continued the critic, " thi8
Is very bad poetry. I defy any elocutionist to read it satisfac-
torily with the inflexes. And, besides, only see how full it is
of tautology. Let us take but one of the verses : — ' He fell, —
he died !' T) fall in battle means, as we all know, to die in
426 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
battle ; — to die in battle is exactly the same thing as to falj
in battle. To say, 'he fell, — he died,' is therefore just tanta-
mount to saying that he fell, he fell, or that he died, he died,
and is bad poetry and tautology. And this is one of the ef-
fects of ignorance, and a want of right education." Here, how-
over, a low grumbling sound, gradually shaping itself into
words, interrupted the lecturer. There was a worthy old cap-
fain among the audience, who had not given himself very
much to the study of elocution or the belles lettres ; he had been
too much occupied in his younger days in dealing at close
quarters with the French under Howe and Nelson, to leave
him much time for the niceties of recitation or criticism. But
the brave old man had a genial, generous heart; and the stric-
tures of the elocutionist, emitted, as all saw, in the presence
of the assailed author, jarred on his feelings. " It was not
gentlemanly," he said, " to attack in that way an inotlensive
man : it was wrong. The poems were, he was told, very good
poems. He knew good judges that thought so ; and unpro-
voked remarks on them, such as those of the lecturer, ought
not to be permitted." The lecturer replied, and in glibness and
fluency would have been greatly an overmatch for the worthy
captain ; but a storm of hisses backed the old veteran, and
the critic gave way. As his remarks were, he said, not to the
taste of the audience, — though he was taking only the ordi-
nary critical liberty, — he would go on to the readings. And
with a fftw extracts, read without note or comment, the enter-
tainnieiit of the evening concluded. There was nothing very
formidable in the critique of Walsh ; but having no great pow-
ers of tace, I felt it rather unpleasant to be stared at in my
quiet corner by every one in the room, and looked, I dare
Gay, very much put out ; and the sympathy and condolence
of such of my townsfolk as coiuforled mo in the state of sup-
posed annihilation an! nothingness to which his criticism had
rirJuced me, were just Ji little annoying. Poor Walsh, how-
ever, had he but known what threatened him, would have
been (Mjnsidorably less at easo than his victim.
The Cousin Walter introduced to the reader iu an early
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 427
chapter as ihc companion of one of nriy Highland journeys,
had grown up into a handsome and very powerful young man
One might have guessed his stature at about five feet ten or
so, but it in reality somewhat exceeded six feet : he had amaz-
ing length and strength of arm ; and such was his structure of
bene, that, as he tucked up his sleeve to send a bowl along the
town links, or to fling the hammer, or throw the stone, the knob-
bed protuberances of the wrist, with the sinews rising sharp
over them, reminded one rather of the framework of a horse's
leg, than of that of a human arm. And Walter, though a fine,
sweet-tempered fellow, had shown, oftener than once or twice,
that he could make a very formidable use of his great strength.
Some of the later instances had been rather interesting in their
Kind. There had been a large Dutch transport, laden with
troops, forced by stress of weather into the bay shortly before,
and a handsome young soldier of the party, — a native of
Northern Germany, named Wolf, — had, I know not how,
scraped acquaintance with Walter. Wolf" who, like many of
his country-folk, was a great reader, and intimately acquainted,
through German translations, with the Waverley Novels, had
taken all his ideas of Scotland and its people from the descrip-
tionfi of Scott ; and in Walter, as handsome as he was robust,
he found the beau ideal of a Scottish hero. He was a man
cast in exactly the model of the Harry Bertrams, Halbert Glen-
dinnings, and Quentin Durwards of the novelist. For the
short time the vessel lay in the harbor. Wolf and Walter
were inseparable. Walter knew a little, mainly at second
hand, through his cousin, about the heroes of Scott ; and Wolf
delighted to converse with him, in his broken English, about
Balfour of Burley, Rob Roy, and Vich Ian Vohr ; and ever
and anon would he urge him to exhibit before him some feat
of strength or agility, — a call to which Walter was never slow
to respond. There was a serjeant among the troops, — a Dutch-
man, — regarded as their strongest man, who used to pride him-
self much on his prowess; and who, on hearing Wolf's de-
scription of Walter, expressed a wish to be introduced to him.
Wolf soon found the means of gratifying the serjeant. The
428 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
strong Dutchman stretched out nis hand, and, on getting nold
of Walter's, grasped it very hard. Walter saw his design,
and returned the grasp with such overmastering firmness, that
the hand became powerless within his. " Ah !" exclaimed the
Dutchman, in his broken English, shaking his fingers and
blowing upon them, " me no try squeeze hand with you again ;
you very, very strong man." Wolf for a minute after stood
laughing and slapping his hands, as if the victory were his,
not Walter's. When at length the day arrived on which the
transport was to sail, the two friends seemed as unwilling to
part as if they had been attached for years. Walter present-
ed Wolf with a favorite . snuff'-box ; Wolf gave Walter hia
fine German pipe.
Before I had risen on the morning of the day succeeding
that in which I had been demolished by the elocutionist, Cou-
sin Walter made his way to my bedside, with a storm on his
brow dark as midnight. " Is it true, Hugh," he inquired, " that
the lecturer W^alsh ridiculed you and your poems in the Coun-
cil House last night ?" " Oh, and what of that ?" I said ; " who
cares anything for the ridicule of a blockhead ?" " Ay !" said
Walter, " that's always your way ; but /care for it ! Had I
been there last night, I would have sent the puppy through
the window, to criticise among the nettles in the yard. But
there's no time lost ; I shall wait on him when it grows dark
this evening, and give him a lesson in good manners." •' Not
For your life, Walter !" I exclaimed. " Oh," said Walter, " I
shall give Walsh all manner of fair play." " Fair play !" I re-
joined ; " you cannot give Walsh fair play ; you are an over-
match fur five Walshes. If you meddle with hiiu at all, you
will kill the poor slim man at a blow, and then not only will
you be apjirohcnded fur manslaughter, — mayhap fur murder,
— but it will also be said that I was mean enough to set you
on to do what 1 had not courage enough to do myself You
must give up all thoughts of meddling with Walsh." hi short,
I at length partially succeeded in convincing Waller that he
might do me a great mischief by assaulting my critic; but so
tiitle coulit'ent was I of his seeing the matter in its proper
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 429
light, that when the lecturer, unable to get audiences, quitted
the place, and Walter had no longer opportunity of avenging
my cause, I felt a load of anxiety taken from off my mind.
There reached Cromarty shortly after, a criticism that dif-
fered considerably from that of Walsh, and restored the shaken
confidence of some of my acquaintance. The other criticisms
which had appeared in newspapers, literary gazettes, and jour-
nals, had been evidently the work of small men ; and, feeble
and commonplace in their style and thinking, they carried
with them no weight, — for who cares anything for the judg-
ment, on one's writings, of men who themselves cannot write ?
But here, at length, was there a critique eloquently and power-
fully written. It was, however, at least as extravagant in its
praise as the others in their censure. The friendly critic knew
nothing of the author he commended; but he had, I suppose,
first seen the depreciatory criticisms, and then glanced his eye
over the volume which they condemned ; and finding it con-
siderably better than it was said to be, he had rushed into gen
erous praise, and described it as really a great deal better than
it was. After an extravagantly high estimate of the powers
of its author, he went on to say, — " Nor, in making these ob-
servations, do we speak relatively, or desire to be understood
as merely saying that the poems before us are remarkable
productions to emanate from a 'journeyman mason.' That
this is indeed the case, no one who reads them can doubt ; but
in characterizing the poetical talent they display, our obser-
vations are meant to be quite absolute ; and we aver, without
fear of contradiction, that the pieces contained in the humble
volume before us bear the stamp and impress of no ordinai-y
genius; that they are bespangled -with gems of genuine po-
etry ; and that their unpretending author well deserves- -
what he will doubtless obtain — the countenance and support
of a discerning public. Nature is not an aristocrat. To the
ploughboy following his team a-field, — to the shepherd tend-
ing his flocks in the wilderness, — or to the rude cutter uf
stone, cramped over his rough occupation in the wooden shed
— she ^sometimes dispenses her richest and rarest gifts at. ^''oer
4:30 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ally as to the proud patrician, or the titled representative of
a long line of illustrious ancestry. She is no respecter of per-
sons ; and all other distinctions yield to the title which her
favors confer. The names, be they ever so humble, which she
illustrates, need no other decoration to recommend them ; and
hence even that of our 'journeyman mason' may yet be des-
tined to take its place with those of men who, like him. first
poured their ' wood-notes wild' in the humblest and Icwlies*
sphere of life, but, raised into deathless sona, have become \[>r
miliar as household words to all who love and admire the un-
sophisticated productions of native genius." The late Dr. James
Browne of Edinburgh, author of the " History of the High-
lands," and working Editor of the '''Encyclopedia Britannica,"
was, as I afterwards learned, the writer of this over-eulogistic,
but certainly, in the circumstances, generous critique.
Ultimately I found my circle of friends very considerably
enlarged by the publication of my Verses and Letters. Mr.
Isaac Forsyth of Elgin, the brother and biographer of the well
known Joseph Forsyth, whose classical volume on- Italy still
holds its place as perhaps the best work to which the traveller
of taste in that country can commit himself, exerted himself,
as the most influential of north-country booksellers, with dis-
interested kindness in my behalf The late Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder, too, resident at that time at his seat at Relugas in
Moray, lent me, unsolicited, his influence ; and, distinguished
by his fine taste and literary ability, he ventured to pledge
both in my favor. I also received much kindness from the
late Miss Dunbar of Boath, — a literary lady of the high type
of the last ago, and acquainted in the best literary circles; but
who, now late in lile, admitted among her select friends one
friend more, and cheered me with many a kind letter, and in
vitcd my frequent yisits to her hospitable mansion. If, in my
course as a working man, I never incurred jtecuniary obliga-
tions, and never spent a shilling for which I had not [ireviously
labored, it was certainly not from want of o]>purtunity ailbrd-
ed me. Miss Dunbar meant what she said, and oflcner than
once did she press her purse on my acceptjince. I received
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 43 1
much kindness, too, from the late Principal Baird. The ven
erable Principal, when on one of his Highland jonrnoys, —
benevolently undertaken in behalf of an educational scheme
of the General Assembly, in the service of which he had trav-
elled, after he was turned of seventy, more than eight thou-
sand miles, — had perused my Verses and Letters ; and. ex-
pressing a strong desire to know their author, my friend the
editor of the Courier despatched one of his apprentices to Cro-
marty, to say that he thought the opportunity of meeting with
sucn a man ought not to be neglected. I accordingly went up
to Inverness, and had an interview with Dr. Baird. I had
known him previously by name as one of the correspondents
of Burns, and the editor of the best edition of the poems of
Michael Bruce ; and, though aware at the time that his esti-
mate of what I had done was by much too high, I yet felt
flattered by his notice. He urged me to quit the north for
Edinburgh. The capital furnished, he said, the proper field
for a literary man in Scotland. What between the employ-
ment furnished by the newspapers and the magazines, he was
sure I would effect a lodgment, and work my way up ; and,
until I gave the thing a fair trial, I would, of course, come and
live with him. I felt sincerely grateful for his kindness, but
declined the invitation. I did think it possible, that in some
subordinate capacity, — as a concocter of paragraphs, or an
abi'idger of parliamentary debates, or even as a writer of occa-
sional articles, — I might find more remunerative employment
than as a stone-mason. But though I might acquaint myself
in a large town, when occupied in this way, with the world of
books, I questioned whether I could enjoy equal opportnnitieg
of acquainting myself with the occult and the new in natui al
science, as when plying my labors in the provinces as a me-
chanic. And so I determined that, instead of casting my-
self on an exhausting literary occupation, in which I would
have to draw incessantly on the stock of fict and reflection
which I had already accumulated, I should continue for at
least several years more to purchase independence by my la-
bors as a mason, and employ my leisure lours in adding to
432 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS i
my fund, gleaned from original observation, and in walks not
previously trodden.
The venerable Principal set me upon a piece of literary task-
work, of which, save for his advice, I would never have thought,
and of which these autobiographic chapters are the late but
legitimate offspring. " Literary men," he said, " are sometimes
spoken of as consisting of two classes, — the educated and the
meducated ; but they must all alike have an education before
-hey can become literary men ; and the less ordinary the mode
in which the education has been acquired, the more interest-
ing always is the story of it. I wish you to write for me au
account of yours." I accordingly wrote an autobiographic
sketch for the Principal, which brought up my story till my
return, in 1825, from the south country to my home in the
north, and which, though greatly overladen with reflection
and remark, has preserved for me both the thoughts and inci-
dents of an early time more freshly than if they had been
suffered to exist till now as mere recollections in the me-
mory. I next set myself to record, in a somewhat elaborate
form, the traditions of my native place and the surrounding
district ; and, taking the work very leisurely, not as labor,
but as amusement, — for my labors, as at an earlier period,
continued to be those of the stone-cutter, — a bulky volume
grew up under my hands. I had laid down for myself two
rules. There is no more fatal error into which a working
man of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming
himself too good for his humble employments ; and yet it is a
mistake as common as it is fatal. I had already seen several
poor wrecked mechanics, who, believing themselves to be
\)(»ets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they
ctjuld alone live in independence as beneatli them, had become
in consequenfie little better than mendicants ; too good to work
for their bread, but not too good virtually to beg it ; and, look-
ing upon them as beacons of warning, 1 determined that, with
God's help, I should give their error a wide ofling, and nevei
associate the idea of meanness w'ith an honest calling, oi deem
myself too good to be independent. And, in the second place
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 433
as I saw that the notice, and more especially the hospitalities,
of persons in the upper walks, seemed to exercise a deteriorat-
ing effect on even strong-minded men in circumstances such as
mine, I resolved rather to avoid than court the attentions from
this class which were now beginning to come my way. John-
son des'^ribes his " Ortogrul of Basra" as a thoughtful and med-
itative man ; and yet he tells us, that after he had seen the pa-
lace of the Vizier, and " admired the walls hung with golden
tapestry, and the floors covered with silken carpets, he despised
the simple neatness of his own little habitation." And the
lesson of the fiction is, I fear, too obviously exemplified in the
real history of one of the strongest-minded men of the last age,
— Robert Burns, The poet seems to have left behind him
much of his early complacency in his humble home, in the
splendid mansions of the men who, while they tailed worthily
to patronize him, injured him by their hospitalities. I found it
more difficult, however, to hold by this second resolution than
by the first. As I was not large enough to be made a lion of,
the invitations which came my way were usually those of real
kindness; and the advances of kindness I found it impossible
always to repel ; and so it happened that I did at times find
myself in company in which the working man might be deem-
ed misplaced and in danger. On two several occasions, for
instance, after declining previous invitations not a few, I had
to spend a week at a time as the guest of my respected friend
Miss Dunbar of Boath ; and my native place was visited by
few superior men that I had not to meet at some hospitable
board. But I trust I may say, that the temptations failed to
injure me ; and that on such occasions I returned to my ob-
scure employments and humble home, grateful for the kind
noss I had received, but in no degree discontented with my
let.
Miss r>unbar belonged, as I have said, to a type of literary
lady now well nigh passed away, but of which we find frequent
trace in the epistolary literature of tlie last century. The
chiss comes before us iu elegant and tasteful letters, indicative
of minds embued with literature though mayhap not ambv
4:34 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
tious of authorsnip, and that show what ornaments their writers
must have proved of the society to v.hich they belonged, and
what delight they must have given to the circles in which they
more immediately moved. The Lady Russel, the Lady Lux-
horoiigh, the Countess of Pomfret, Mrs. Elizabeth Montague,
&c., &c., — names well fixed in the epistolary literature of
England, though unknown in the walks of ordinary author
ship, — may be regarded as specimens of the class. Even in
the cases in which its members did become authoresses, and
produced songs and ballads instinct with genius, they seem to
have had but little of the author's ambition in them ; and
their songs, cast carelessly upon the waters, have been found,
after many days, preserved rather by accident than design.
The Lady Wardlaw, who produced the noble ballad of" Hardy-
knute," — the Lady Ann Lindsay, who wrote "' Auld Robin
Gray," — the Miss Blamire, whose " Nabob" is so charming a
composition, notwithstanding its unfortunately prosaic name,
— and the late Lady Nairne, authoress of the " Land o' the
Leal," "John Tod," and the "Laird o' Cockpcn," — are speci-
mens of the class that fixed their names among the poets with
apparently as little cfibrt or design as singing birds pour forth
their melodies.
The north had, in the last age, its interesting group of ladies
of this type, of whom the central figure might be regarded as
the late Mrs. Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock, the correspondent of
Burns, and the cousin and associate of Henry Mackenzie, the
" Man of Feeling." Mrs. l^ose seems to have been a lady of a
singularly fine mind, — a little touched, mayhap, by the prevail-
ing scntimentalism of the age. The Mistress of Harley, Miss
Walton, might have kept exactly such journals as hers ; bnttho
talent wliicii they exhibited was certainly of a high order; and
the feeling, though cast in a somewhat artilirial mould, was, I
diubt not, sincere. Portions of those journals, by the way, I
had an opportunity of perusing when on my visits to my friend
Miss Dinibar; and there is a copy of one of tliem now in my
possessicn. Ant^ther member of this group was the late Mrs.
Graut of Laggan, — at the time when it existed unbroken, the
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 435
misfress of a remote Highland manse, and known but to her
personal tViends by those earlier letters which form the first
half of her " Letters from the Mountains," and which, in ease
and freshness frrcatly surpass aught which she produced after
she began hei ..areer of authorship. Not a few of her letters,
and several of her poems, were addressed to my friend Miss
Dunbar. Some of the other members of the group were
greatly younger than Mrs. Grant and the Lady of Kilravock.
And of these, one of the most accomplished was the late Lady
Gordou Gumming of Altyro, knowu to scientific men by her
geologic labors among the ichlhyolitic formations of Moray,
and mother of the famous lion-hunter, Mr. Gordon Gumming.
My friend Miss Dunbar was at this time considerably ad-
vanced in life, and her health far from good. She possessed,
however, a singular buoyancy of spirits, which years and fre-
quent illness had failed to depress ; and her interest and enjoy-
ment in nature and iu books remained as high as when, long
before, her friend Mrs. Grant had addressed her as
"Helen, by every sympathy allied.
By love of virtue and by love of song,
Compassionate In youth and beauty's pride."
Her mind was imbued with literature, and stored with literary
anecdote : she conversed with elec;ance, civin^ interest to what-
ever she touched ; and, though she seemed never to have
thought of authorship in her own behalf, she wrote pleasingly
and with great facility, in both prose and verse. Her verses,
usually of a humorous cast, ran trippingly off the tongue, as
if the words had dropped by some ha|)py accident, — for the
arrangement bore no mark of cflbrt, — into exactly the placea
where they at once best brought out the writer's meaning, and
ndiressed themselves most pleasingly to the ear. The open-
ing stanzas of a Wghtjeu d'' esprit on a young naval orticer en-
gaged in a lady-killing expedition in Cromart}^ dwell in my
memory ; and — first premising, by way of explanation, that
Miss Dunbar's brother, the late Baronet of Boath, was a cap-
tain iu the navy, and that the lady-killer was his first lieuteD-
436 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
ant — ] may take the liberty of giving all I remember of tho
piece, as a specimen of her easy style : —
" In Cromarty Bay,
As the ' Driver' snug lay,
The Lieutenant would venture ashore;
And, a figure to cut,
From the head to the foot
He was fashion and fiuery ;dl o'er.
A hat richly lac'd.
To tlie left side was plac'd.
Which made him look martial and bold;
His coat of true blue
Was spick and span new,
And his buttons were burnished with gold.
His neckcloth well puff'd,
Which six handkerchiefs stuflf'd,
And in color with snow might have vied.
Was put on with great care,
As a bait for the fair,
And the ends in a love-knot were tied," &c., &0.
I greatly enjoyed my visits to this genial-hearted and accom-
plishcd lady. No chilling condescensions on her part meas-
ured out to me my distance : Miss Dunbar took at once the
common ground of literary tastes and pursuits ; and if I did
not feel my inferiority there, she took care that I should feel
it nowhere else. There was but one point on which we diC
fered. While hospitably extending to me every facility for
visiting the ol)jects of scientific interest in her neighborhood,
— such as those sand-wastes of Culbin, in which an ancient
barony finds l)urial, and the geologic sections presented by
the banks of the Findhorn, — she was yet desirous to fix me
down to literature as my proper walk ; and I, on the otbpr
hand, was equally desirous of escaping into science.
OR THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 437
CHAPTER XXI.
" He who, witb pocket hammer, smites the edge
Of luckless rock or prominent stone, dijiguised
In weather stains, or crusted o'er by nature
With her first growths, — detaching by the stroke
A chip or splinter, to resolve his doubts ;
And, with that ready answer satisfied,
The substance classes by some barbarous name,
And hurries on."
Wordsworth.
It the course of my two visits to Miss Dunbar, I had sev
eral opportunities of examining the sand-wastes of Culbin, and
of registering some of the peculiarities which distinguish the
arenaceous sub-aerial formation from the arenaceous sub-aque-
ous deposit. Of the present surface of the earth, considerably
more than six millions of square miles are occupied in Afi'ica
and Asia alone by sandy deserts. With but the interruption
of the narrow valley of the Nile, an enormous zone of arid
sand, full nine hundred miles across, stretches from the east-
ern coast of Africa to within a few days' journey of the Chinese
frontier : it is a belt that girdles nearly half the globe ; — a vast
" ocean,'* according to the Moors, " without water." The
sandy deserts of the rainless district of Chili are also of great
extent; and there aie few countries in even the higher lati-
tudes that have not their tracts of arenaceous waste. These
sandy tracts, so common in the present scene of things, could
438 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMAaTi<:Ke* ;
not, I argued, be restricted to the recent geologic period*, i* .cj
must have existed, like all the commoner phenomena oi nature,
under every sueceedins; svstem in which ihe sun shone, and
the winds blew, and ocean-beds were ufiheaved to the air and
the light, and the waves threw upon the shore, from arena-
ceous sea-bottoms, their accumulations of light sand. And 1
was now^ employed in acquainting myself with ihe marks by
«hi(h I might be able to distinguish sub-aerial from sub-aque-
ous formation, among the ever-recurring sandstone-beds of the
geologic deposits. I have spent, when thui engaged, very de-
lightful hours amid the waste. In pursumg one's education,
it is always very pleasant to get into those forms that are not
yet introduced into any school.
One of the peculiarities of the sub-aerial formation which 1
at this time detected struck me as curious. On approaching,
among the sand-hills, an open level space, covered thickly
over with water-rolled pebbles and gravel, I was surprised to
see that, dry and hot as the day was elsewhere, the little open
space seemed to have been subjected to a weighty dew or smart
shower. The pebbles glistened bright in the sun, and bore the
darkened hue of recent wet. On examination, however, 1
found that the rays were reflected, not from wetted, but from
polished surfaces. The light grains of sand, dashed against
the pebbles by the winds during a long series of years, — grain
after grain repeating its minute blow, where, mayhap, millions
of grains had struck before, — had at length given a resinous-
looking, uneven polish to all their exposed portions, while the
portions covered up retained the dull unglossy coat given them
of old by the agencies of friction and water. I have not
heard the peculiarity described as a characteristic of the are-
naceous deserts; but though it seems to have escaped no
lice, it will, I doid)t not, be found to obtain wherever there
arc sands for the winds to waft along, and hard pel)l)les against
which tilt grains may be propelled, hi examining, many
years afler, a few specimens of siliccfied wood brought from
the Egyptian desert, I at once recognized on their flinty sur-
faces the resinous-like gloss of the pebbles of Culbin ; nor cau
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 439
I doubt that, if geology has its sub-aerial formations of consol-
idated sand, they will be found characterised by their polished
pebbles. I marked several other peculiarities of the forma-
tion. In some of the abrupter sections laid open by the winds,
tufts of the bent-grass {^Arundo arenaria, — common here, as
in all sandy wastes) that had been buried up where they
grew, might be distinctly traced, each upright in itself, but
rising tuft above tuft in the steep angle of the hillock which
they had originally covered. And though, from their dark
color, relieved against the lighter hue of the sand, they remind-
ed me of the carbonaceous markings of sandstones of the Coal
Measures, I recognised at least their arrangement as unique.
It seems to be such an an-angement, — sloping in the general
line, but upright in each of the tufts, — as could take place in
only a sub-aerial formation. I observed further, that in frequent
instances there occurred on the surface of the sand, around de-
caying tufts of the bent-grass, deeply-marked circles, as if drawn
by a pair of compasses, or a trainer, — effects, apparently, of eddy
winds whirling round, as on a pivot, the decayed plants ; and
yet further, that footprints, especially those of rabbits and birds,
were not unfrequent in the waste. And as lines of stratification
were, I found, distinctly preserved in the formation, I deemed it
not improbable that, in cases in which high winds had arisen,
immediately after tracts of wet weather, and covered with sand,
rapidly dried on the heights, the damp beds in the hollows,
both the circular markings and the footprints might remain
fixed in the strata, to tell of their origin. I found in several
places, in chasms scooped out by a recent gale, pieces of the
ancient soil laid bare, which had been covered up by the sand
flood nearly two centuries before. In one of the openings
he marks of the ancient furrows were still discernible ; in an-
other, the thin stratum of ferruginous soil had apparently never
been brought under the plough ; and I found it charged w-ith
roots of the common brake (P/eris aquilina), in a perfect
state :>f keeping, but black and })rittle as coal. Beneath this
layer of soil lay a thin deposit of the stratified gravel of what
's now known as the later glacial period, — the age ofosats and
i40 MY SCHO)LS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
moraines ; and beneath all — for the underlying Old Red Sand-
stone of the district is not exposed amid the level wastes of
Culbin — rested the boulder clay, the memorial of a time of
submergence, when Scotland sat low in the sea as a wintry
arcliipelago of islands, brushed by frequent icebergs, and when
sub-arctic molluscs lived in her sounds and bays. A section
of a few feet in vertical extent presented me with four distinct
periods. There was, first, the period of the sand-flood, repre-
sented by the bar of pale sand ; then, secondly, the period of
cultivation and human occupancy, represented by the dark
plough-furrowed belt of hardened soil ; thirdly, there was the
gravel ; and, fourthly, the clay. And that shallow section ex-
hausted the historic ages, and more ; for the double band of
gravel and clay belonged palpably to the geologic ages, ere
man had appeared on our planet. There had been found in the
locality, only a few years previous to this time, a considerable
number of stone arrow-heads, — some of them only partially
finished, and some of them marred in the making, as if some
flctchcr of the stone-age had carried on his work on the spot ;
and all these memorials of a time long anterior to the iirsl
beginnings of history in the island were restricted to the
stratum of hardened mould.
I carried on my researches in this — what I may term the
chronological — direction, in connection with the old-coast line,
which, as I have already said, is finely developed in the
neighborhood of Cromarty on both sides of the Frith, and
represented along the precipices of the Sutors by its line of
deep caves, into which the sea never now enters. And it,
too, pressed upon me the fact of the amazing antiquity of the
globe. I found that the caves hollowed by the surf, when
the sea had stood from fifteen to five-and-twenty feet above its
present level, or, as I should perhaps rather say, when the
land liad stood that much lower, were deeper, on the average, by
about one-third, than those caves of the present coast-line that
are still in the course of being hollowed by the waves. And
yet the waves have been breaking against the present coast-
line during the whole of the historic period. The ancient
OR, THE STORY \)F MY EDDCATION". 441
wall of Antoninus, which stretched between the Friths of Forth
and Clyde, was built at its terminations with reference to the
existing levels ; and ere Coesar landed in Britain, St. Michael's
Mount was connected with the mainland, as now, by a narrow
neck of beach laid bare by the ebb, across which, according
to Diodorus Siculus, the Cornish miners used to drive, at low
water, their carts laden with tin. If the sea has stood for
two thousand six hundred years against the present coast-line
—and no geologist would fix his estimate of the term lower,- -
then must it have stood against the old line, ere it could
have excavated caves one-third deeper than the modern ones,
three thousand nine hundred years. And both sums united
more than exhaust the Hebrew chronology. Yet what a mere
beginning of geologic history does not the epoch of the old-
coast line form ! It is but a starting point from the recent pe-
riod. Not a single shell seems to have become extinct during
the last six thousand years. The organisms which I found
deeply imbedded in the soil beneath the old-coast line were
exactly those which still live in our seas ; and I have been since
told by Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, one of our highest authorities
on the subject, that he detected only three shells of the period
with which he was not familiar as existing forms, and that he
subsequently met with all three, in his dredging expeditions,
still alive. The six thousand years of human history form but
a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us : they do
not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the
myriads of ages spread out beyond. Dr. Chalmers had taught,
more than a quarter of a century previous to this time, that
the Scriptures do not fix the antiquity of the earth. " If they
fix anything," he said, " it is only the antiquity of the human
species." The Doctor, though not practically a geologist at
the time, had shrewdly weighed both the evidence adduced
and the scientific character of the men who adduced it, and
arrived at a conclusion, in consequence, which may now be
safely regarded as the final one. I, on the other hand, who
knew comparatively little about the standing of the geologists,
or the weight which ought to attach to their testimony, based
442 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
my findings regarding the vast antiquity of the earth on ex
actly the data on which they had founded theirs ; and the more
my acquaintance with the geologic deposits has since extend-
ed, the firmer have my convictions on the subject become, and
the more pressing and inevitable have I felt the ever-giowing
demand for longer and yet longer periods for their formation.
As certainly as the sun is the centre of our system, must our
earth have revolved around it for millions of years. An
American theologian, the author of a little book entitled the
" Epoch of Creation," in doing me the honor of referring to
my convictions on this subject, states, that I " betray indubi-
table tokens of being spell-bound to the extent of infetuation,
by the foregone conclusion of" my " theory concerning the high
antiquity of the earth, and the succession of animal and vege-
table creations." He adds further, in an eloquent sentence, a
page and a half long, that had I first studied and credited my
Bible, I would have failed to believe in successive creations
and the geologic chronology. I trust, however, I may say I did
first study and believe my Bible. But such is the structure of
the human mind, that, save when blinded by passion or warped
by prejudice, it must yield an involuntary consent to the force
of evidence; and I can now no more refuse believing, in op-
position to respectable theologians such as Mr. Granville Penn,
Professor Moses Stuart, and Mr. Eliezar Lord, that the earth is
of an antiquity incalculably vast, than I can refiise believing,
in opposition to still more respectable theologians, such as St.
Augustine, Lactantius, and Turrotin, that it has antipodes, and
moves round the sun. And further, of this, men such as the
Messrs. Penn, Stuart, and Lord may rest assured, that what I
believe in this matter now, all theologians, even the weakest,
will be content to believe filly years hence.
Sometimes a chance incident taught me an interesting geo
logical lesson. At the close of the year 1830, a tremendous
hurricane from the south and west, unequalled in the north of
Scolliuid, from at li'ast the time of the great hurricane of
Christmas 1800, blew down in a single hour four tiiousand full-
grown trees on the Hill of Cromarty. The vast gaps and ave-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlSr. 443
flues which it opened in the wood above could be seen from
the town ; and no sooner had it began to take off than I set out
for the scene of its ravages. I had previously witnessed, from
a sheltered hollow of the old-coast line, the extraordinary ap-
pearance of the sea. It would seem as if the very violence of
the wind had kept down the waves. It brushed off their tops
^as they were rising, and swept along the spray m one dense
cloud, white as driving snow, that rose high into the air as i
receded from the shore, and blotted out along the horizon the
line between sky and water. As I approached the wood, I
met two poor little girls of from eight to ten years, coming
running and crying along the road in a paroxysm of conster-
nation ; but, gathering heart on seeing me, they stood to tell
that when the storm was in its worst, they were in the midst
of the falling trees. Setting out for the Hill on the first
rising of the wind, in the expectation of a rich harvest of
withered boughs, they had reached one of its most exposed
ridges just as the gale had attained to its extreme height, and
the trees began to crash down around them. Their little tear-
bestained countenances still continued to show how extreme
the agony of their terror had been. They would run, they said,
for a few paces in one direction, imtil some huge pine would
come roaring dowii, and block up their path ; when, turning
with a shriek, they would run for a few paces in another ;
and then, terrified by a similar interruption, again strike off
in a third. At length, after passing nearly an hour in the ex-
tremest perH, and in at least all the fear which the circum-
stances justified, they succeeded in making their way unhurt to
the outer skirts of the wood. Bewick would have found in the
incident the subject of a vignette that would have told its own
story. In getting into the thick of the trees, I was struck by
the extraordinary character of the scene presented. In some
places, greatly more than half their number lay stretched upon
the ground. On the more exposed prominences of the Hill,
scarce a tree was left standing for acres together : they covered
the slopes, tree stretched over tree, like tiles on a roof, with here
and there some shattered trunk whose tup had been blown oft,
20
444 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS :
and carried by the hurricane some fifteen or twenty jard
away, leaning in sad ruin over its fallen comrades. Wha*
however, formed the most striking, because less expected, part-
of the scene, were the tall walls of turf that stood up every
where among the fallen trees, like the ruins of dismantled cot
tages. The granitic gneiss of the Hill is covered by a thick de-
posif of th red boulder clay of the district, and the clay, in turn,
by a thin layer of vegetable mould, interlaced in every direction
by the tree roots, which, arrested in their downward progress
by the stift' clay, are restricted to the upper layer. And, save
where here and there I tbund some tree snapped across in the
midst, or divested of its top, all the others had yielded at the
line between the boulder clay and the soil, and had torn up,
as they fell, vast walls of the felted turf, from fifteen to twenty
feet in length, by from ten to twelve feet in height. There
were quite enough of these walls standing up among the pros-
trate trees, to have formed a score of the eastern S-Utan's ruined
villages ; and they imparted to the scene one of its strangest
features. I have mentioned in an early chapter that the Hill
had its dense thickets, which, from the gloom that brooded in
their recesses even at mid-day, were known to the boys of the
neighboring town as the " dungeons." Thoy had now fared,
however, in this terrible overturn, like dungeons elsewhere in
times of revolution, and were all swept away ; and piles of pros-
trate trees — in some instances tun or twelve in a single heap
— marked where they had stood. In several localities, where
they fell over swampy hollows, or where deep-seated springs
came gushing to the light, I found the water partially dammed
up, and saw that, were they to he left to cumber the ground as
the debris of forests destroyed by luirrieaiies in the earlier ages o/
Scottish history would certainly have been left, the deep shade
and the moisture could not have failed to induce a total change
in the vegetation, I marked, too, the fallen trees all lying one
way, in the direction of the wind ; and the thought at once
Btruck me, tliat in this recent scene of devastation 1 had the ori
gin of full one half of our Scottish mosses exemplified. Some
of the mosses of the south date from the times of Rcanan iii'
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 445
vasion. Their lower tiers of trunk bear the mark of the Ro-
man axe, and, in some instances, the sorely wasted axe itself
— a narrow, oblong tool, somewhat resembling that of the
American backwoodsman — has been found sticking in the bur-
ied stump. Some of our other mosses are of still more mod-
ern origin : there exist Scottish mosses that seem to have been
formed when Robert the Bruce felled the woods and wasted
♦■he country of John of Lorn. But of the others, not a few
have palpably owed their origin to violent hurricanes, such as
the one which on this occasion ravaged the Hill of Cromarty.
The trees which form their lower stratum are broken across,
or torn up by the roots, and their trunks all lie one way. Much
of the interest of a science such as geology must consist in the
ability of making dead deposits represent living scenes ; and
from this hurricane I was enabled to conceive, pictorially, if
I may so express myself, of the origin of those comparatively
recent deposits of Scotland which, formed almost exclusively
of vegetable matter, contain, with rude works of art, and oc-
casional remains of the early human inhabitants of the coun-
try, skeletons of the wolf, the bear, and the beaver, with horns
of the bos primigenius and bos longifrons, and of a giganiic
variety of red deer, unequalled in size by animals of the same
species in these later ages.
Occasionally I was enabled to vivify in this way even the
ancient deposits of the Lias, with their vast abundance of
cephalopodous mollusca, — belemnites, ammonites, and nautili.
My friend of the Cave had become parish schoolmaster of
Nigg ; and his hospitable dwelling furnished me with an ex-
cellent centre for exploring the geology of the parish, especial-
ly its Liasic deposits at Shandwick, with their huge gryphites>
and their numerous belemnites, of at least two species, com-
paratively rare at Eathie, — the belemnite abreviatus and be
iemnite elongatus. I had learned that these curious sheila
i)nce formed part of the internal framework of a mollusc moie
nearly akin to the cuttle-fishes of the present day than aught
else that now exists ; and the cuttle-fishes — not rare in at least
one of their species (loligo vidgare) in the Frith of Cromartv
l46 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
— I embraced every opportunity of examining. I have seen
from eighteen to twenty individuals of this species enclosed at
once in the inner chamber of one of our salmon wears. The
greater number of these shoals I have ordinarily found dead,
and tinged with various shades of green, blue, and yellow, —
for it is one of the characteristics of the creature to assume,
when passing into a state of decomposition, a succession of
brilliant colors ; but I have seen from six to eight individuals
of their number still alive in a little pool beside the nets, and
still retaining their original pink tint, freckled with red. And
these, I have observed, as my shadow fell across their little
patch of water, darting from side to side in panic terror within
the narrow confines, emitting ink at almost every dart, until
the whole pool had become a deep solution of sepia. Some
of my most interesting recollections of the cuttle-fish are as-
sociated, hoM^ever, with the capture and dissection of a single
specimen. The creature, in swimming, darts through the water
much ill the manner that a boy slides down an ice-crusted
declivity, feet foremost ; — the lower or nether extremities gc
first, and the head behind ; it follows its tail, instead of be-
ing followed by it; and this curious peculiarity in its mode
of progression, though, of course, on the whole, the mode
best adapted to its conformation and instincts, sometimes
proves fatal to it in calm weather, when not a ripple breaks
upon the pebbles, to warn that (he shore is near. An enemy
appears ; the creature ejects its cloud of ink, like a sharp
shooter discharging his rille ere he retreats; and then, darting
away, tail foremost, under cover of the cloud, it grounds it-
self high upon the beach, and perishes there. I was walking,
one very calm day, along the Cromarty shore, a little to the
west of the town, when 1 heard a peculiar soiuid, — a squelch,
\S I may cmi)loy such a word, — and saw that a large loligo,
fully a foot and a half in lengtli, liad thrown itscH" liigli and
dry upon the beach. 1 laid hold of it i)y its sheath or sack ;
and the loligo, in turn, laid hold of the pel)l)lcs, ap[)ar( ntly to
render its ahduction as dilliciilt as |)ossii)le, just as 1 have
seen a boy, when borne olF against his will by a stronger than
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION-. 447
himself, grasping fast to door-posts and furniture. The pebblea
were hard and smooth, but the creature raised them very readi-
ly with its suckers. I subjected one of my hands to its grasp,
and it seized fast hold ; but though the suckers were still em-
ployed, it made use of them on a different principle. Around
the circular rim of each there is a fringe of minute thorns,
hooked somewhat like those of the wild rose. In clinging to
the hard polished pebbles, these were overlapped by a fleshy
membrane, much in the manner that the cushions of a cat'
paw overlap its claws when the animal is in a state of tran
quillity ; and by means of the projecting membrane, the hol-
low interior was rendered air-tight, and the vacuum complet-
ed : but in dealing with the hand — a soft substance — the thorns
were laid bare, like the claws of the cat when stretched out in
anger, and at least a thousand minute prickles were fixed in
the skin at once. They failed to penetrate it, for they were
short, and individually not strong ; but, acting together by
hundreds, they took at least a very firm hold.
What follows may be deemed barbarous ; but the men who
gulp down at a sitting half-a-hundred live oysters to gratify
their taste, may surely forgive me the destruction of a single
mollusc to gratify my curiosity ! I cut open the sack of the
creature with a sharp penknife, and laid bare the viscera.
What a sight for Harvey, when prosecuting, in the earlier
stages, his grand discovery of the circulation ! There^ in the
centre, was the yellow muscular heart, propelling into the tran-
sparent, tubular arteries, the yellow blood. Beat — beat — beat :
— I could see the whole as in a glass model ; and all I lacked
were powers of vision nice enough to enable me to detect the
fluid passing through the minuter arterial branches, and then
returning by the veins to the two other hearts of the creature ;
for, strange to say, it is fui'nished with three. There in the
midst I saw the yellow heart, and, lying altogether detached
from it, two other deep-colored hearts at the sides. I cut
a little deeper. There was the gizzard-like stomach, filled
with fragments of minute mussel and crab shells ; and there,
ir^serted in the spongy, conical, yellowish-colored liver, and
448 MY SCHOOLS ANr SCHOOLMASTERS;
somewhat resembling in form a Florence flask, was the ink-bag
distended, with its deep dark sepia, — the identical pigment sold
imder that name in our color-shops, and so extensively used
in landscape drawing by the limner. I then dissected and laid
open the circular or ring-like brain that surrounds the crea-
ture's parrot-like beak, as if its thinking part had no other
vocation than simply to take care of the mouth and its perti-
nents, — almost the sole employment, however, of not a few
brains of a considerably higher order. I next laid open the
huge eyes. They were curious organs, more sim])le in their
structure than those of the true fishes, but admirably adapted,
I doubt not, for the purpose of seeing. A camera obscura may
be described as consisting of two parts, — a lens in front and
a darkened chamber behind ; but in the eyes of fishes, as in
the brute and human eye, we find a third part added : there
is a lens in the middle, a darkened chamber behind, and a
lighted chamber, or rather vestibule, in front. Now, this
lighted vestibule — the cornea — is wanting in the eye of the
cuttle-fish. The lens is placed in front, and the darkened
chamber behind. The construction of the organ is that of »
common camera obscura. I found something worthy of re
mark, too, in the peculiar style in which the chamber is dark
ened. In the higher animals it may be described as a cham-
ber hung with black velvet, — the j^iff^nentum nigi-vm which
covers it is of the deepest black ; but in tlic cuttle-fish it is a
chamber hung with velvet, not of a black, but of a dark pur-
ple hue, — the pigmentum nigrum is of a purplish red color.
There is something interesting in marking this first departure
from an iiivarial)le condition of eyes of the more perfect struc-
ture, and in then tracing tlie peculiarity downwards through
almost every shade of color, to the emerald-like eye-specks of
the pccten, and the still more rudimentary red eye-specks of
the star-fish. After examining the eyes, I next laid open, in
all its k'nglli, from tlio neck to the point of the sack, the dorsal
bone of the creature, — its internal shell, 1 should rather say,
for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species \%
that of a feather, equally developed vn the web on both sidea
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 449
ft gives rigidity to the body, and furnishes the muscles with
a fulcrun:; ; and we find it composed, like all other shells, of a
mixture of animal matter and carbonate of lime. Such was
the lesson taught me in a single walk ; and I have recorded it
at some length. The subject of it, the loligo, has been described
by some o^' our most distinguished naturalists, such as Kirby
in his Bridgewater Treatise, as " one of the most wonderful
works of the Creator ;" and the reader will perhaps remenibei
how fraught with importance to natural science an inciden
Bimilar to the one related proved in the life of the youthful
Cuvier. It was when passing his twenty -second year on the sea-
coast, near Fiquainville, that this greatest of modern naturalists
was led, by finding a cuttle-fish stranded on the beach, which
he afterwards dissected, to study the anatomy and character of
the mollusca. To me, however, the lesson served merely to
vivify the dead deposits of the Oolitic system, as represented
by the Lias of Cromarty and Ross. The middle and later ages
of the great secondary division were peculiarly ages of the Ce-
phalopodous molluscs : their belemnites, ammonites, nautili,
baculites, hamites, turrilites, and scaphites, belonged to the
great natural class — singularly rich in its extinct orders and
genera, though comparatively poor in its existing ones — which
we find represented by the cuttle-fish ; and when engaged in
disinterring the remains of the earlier-born members of the
family — ammonites, belemnites, and nautili — from amid the
shades of Eathie or the mud stones of Shandwick, the incident
of the loligo has enabled me to conceive of them, not as mere
dead remains, but as the living inhabitants of primaeval seas,
stirred by the diurnal tides, and lighted up by the sun.
When pursuing my researches amid the deposits of the Lias,
I was conducted to an interesting discovery. There are two
great systems of hills in the north of Scotland, — an older and
a newer, — that bisect each other like the furrows of a field that
had first been ploughed across and then diagonally. The dia
gonal furrows, as the last drawn, are still very entire. The great
Caledonian Valley, open from sea to sea, is the most remark-
able of these; but the parallel valleys of the Nairn, of the
450 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
Findhorn, and of the Spey, are all well-defined furrows ; nol
are the mountain ridges which separate them less defaiitely
ranged in continuous lines. The ridges and furrows of the
earlier ploughing are, on the contrary, as ]night be anticipated,
broken and interrupted : the eflacing plough has passed over
them ; and yet there are certain localities in which we find the
fragments of this earlier system sufficiently entire to form one
of the main features of the landscape. In passing through
the upper reaches of the Moray Frith, and along the Caledo-
nian Valley, the cross furrows may be seen branching off to the
west, and existing as the valleys of Loch Fleet, of the Dornoch
Frith, of the Frith of Cromarty, of the Bay of Munlochy, of
the Frith of Beauly, and, as we enter the Highlands proper, as
Glen Urquhart, Glen Morrison, Glen Garry, Loch Arkaig, and
Loch Eil. The diagonal system, — represented by the great
valley itself, and known as the system of Ben Nevis and the
Ord of Caithness in our own country, and, according to De
Beaumont, as that of Mount Pilate and Cote d'Or on the Con-
tinent, — was upheaved after the close of the Oolitic ages. It
was not until at least the period of the Weald that its "hills had
been formed and its mountains brought forth ;" and in the line
of the Moray Frith the Lias and Oolite lie uptilted, at steep
angles, against the sides of its long ranges of precipice. It is
not so easy determining the age of the older system. No for-
mation occurs in the North of Scotland l)ctween the Lias and
the Old Red Sandstone ; the vast Carboniferous, Permian,
and Triasic deposits arc represented by a wide gap ; and all
*hat can be said regarding the older hills is, that they disturbed
and bore up with them the Old Red Sandstone ; but that as
there lay at their basis, at the time of their upheaval, no more
modern rock to bo disturbed, it socuis impossible definitely to
fix their era. Neither does there appear among tlieir estuaries
or valleys any trace of the Oolitic deposits. Existing, in all
probability, during even the times of the Lias, as the sub-
aerial framework of Oolitic Scotland, — as the framework on
which llie Oolitic vegetables grew, — no deposit of the system
could of course have taken place over tiicni. I had uot yet,
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 461
however, formed any very definite ideas regarding the two sys-
tems, or ascertained that they belonged apparently to a different
time; and, finding the Lias upheaved against the steeper sides
of the Moray Frith, — one of the huge furrows of the more
modern system, — I repeatedly sought to find it uptilted also
against the shores of the Cromarty Frith, — one of the furiowa
of the greatly more ancient one. I had, however, prosecuted
the search in a somewhat desultory manner ; and as a pause
of a few days took place in my professional labors in the au-
tumn of 1830, between the completing of one piece of work
and the commencement of another, I resolved on devoting the
time to a thorough survey of the Cromarty Frith, in the hope
of detecting the Lias. I began my search at the granitic gneiss
of the Hill, and, proceeding westwards, passed in succession,
in the ascending order, over the uptilted beds of the lower
Old Red Sandstone, from the Great Conglomerate base of the
system, till I reached the middle member of the deposit, which
consists, in this locality, of alternate beds of limestone, sand-
stone, and stratified clay, and which we find represented in
Caithness by the extensively developed flag-stones. And
then, the rock disappearing, I passed over a pebbly beach
mottled with boulders ; and in a little bay, not half a mile
distant from the town, I again found the rock laid bare.
I had long before observed that the rock rose to the surface
in this little bay ; I had even employed, when a boy, pieces
of its stratified clay as slate-pencil ; but I had yet foiled mi-
nutely to examine it. I was now, however, struck by its re-
semblance, in all save color, to the Lias. The strata lay at
a low angle : they were composed of an argillaceous shale,
and abounded in limestone nodules ; and, save that both
shale and nodules bore, instead of the deep liasic gray, an
olivaceous tint ; I might have almost supposed I had fallen
on a continuation of some of the Eathie beds. I laid open
a nodule with a blow of the hammer, and my heart leaped
up when I saw that it enclosed an organism. A lark, ill de-
fined, bituminous mass occupied the centre ; but I could dis*
tinguish what seemed to be spines and small ichthyic bones
4:52 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
projecting from its edges ; and when I subjected them to th«
scrutiny of the glass, unlike those mere chance resemblances
which sometimes deceive for a moment the eye, the more dis-
tinct and unequivocal did their forms become. I laid open a
second nodule. It contained a group of glittering rhomboidal
scales, with a few cerebral plates, and a jaw bristling with
teeth. A third nodule also supplied its organism, in a well-
defined ichthyolite, covered with minute, finely-striated scales,
and furnished with a sharp spine in the anterior edge of every
fin. I eagerly wrought on, and disinterred, in the course of a
single tide, specimens enough to cover a museum table ; and
it was with intense delight that, as the ripple of the advancing
tide was rising against the pebbles, and covering up the ich
thyolitic beds, I carried them to the higher slopes of the beach,
and, seated on a boulder, began carefully to examine them in
detail, with a common botanist's microscope. But not a plate,
spine, or scale could I detect among their organisms, identical
with the ichthyic remains of the Lias. I had got amid the
remains of an entirely different and incalculably more ancient
creation. My new-found organisms represented, not the first,
but merely the second age of vertebrate existence on our
planet; but as the remains of the earlier age exist as the mere
detached teeth and spines of placoids, which, though they give
full evidence of the existence of the fishes to which they be-
long, tln-ow scarce any light on their structure, it is from the
ganoids of the second age that the palaeontologist can with
certainty know under what peculiarities of form, and associ-
ated with varieties of mechanism, vertebral life existed in the
earlier ages of the world. In my new-found deposit, — to
which I soon added, however, within the limits of the parish,
some six or eight deposits more, all charged with the same
ichthyic remains, — I found had work enough before me fo!
the patient study of years
OIL THE STORY OF MY EDUCA.TION. 458
CHAPTER XXII
" They lay aside their private cares,
To mend llie Kiric and State affairs;
They'll Ijilk o' patronage and priests,
Wi' kindling fury in their breasts ;
Or tell what new taxation's comin',
An' ferlie at the folk in />on'o;i."
Burns.
We had, as I have already stated, no Dissenters in the pang^i
of Cromarty. What were known as the Haldane's People had
tried to effect a lodgment among us in the town, but without
success : in the course of several years they failed to acquire
more than six or eight members ; and these were not of the
more solid people, but marked as an eccentric class, fond of
argument, and possessed by a rage for the novel and the ex-
treme. The leading teachers of the party were a retired Eng-
lish merchant and an ex-blacksmith, who, quitting the forge
in middle life, had pursued the ordinary studies to no very
great effect, and become a preacher. And both were, I believe,
ood men, but by no means prudent missionaries. They said
very strong things against the Church of Scotland, in a place
where the Church of Scotland was much respected ; and it
was observed, that while they did not do a great deal to con-
vert the irreligious to Christianity, they were exceedingly
zealous in their endeavors to make the religi:us Baptists.
Much to my aimoyance in my jounger days, they used to
404 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASI'Elto:
waylay Uncle Sandy on his return from the Hill, on evenings
when I had gone to get some lesson from him regarding sand-
worms, or razor-fish, or the sea-hare, and engage him in long
controversies about infant baptism and Church Establishments.
The matters which they discussed were greatly too high for
me, nor was I by any means an attentive listener ; but I picked
up enough to know that Uncle Sandy, though a man of slow
speech, held stiffly to the Establishment scheme of Knox, and
the defence of Presbyterianism ; and it did not require any
particularly nice perceptive powers to observe that both his
antagonists and himself used at times to get pretty warm, and
to talk tolerably loud, — louder, at least, than was at all neces-
sary in the quiet evening woods. I remember, too, that in
urging him to quit the National Church for theirs, they usually
employed language borrowed from the Revelations ; and that,
calling his Church Babylon, they bade him come out of her, thdt
he might not be a partaker of her plagues. Uncle Sand;; had
seen too much of the world, and read and heard too muf n of
controversy, to be out of measure shocked by the phrase , but
with a decent farmer of the parish the hard words of the pro-
selytizers did them a mischief. The retired merchanr liad
irgcd him to quit the Establishment ; and the farmer haU re-
plied by asking, in his simplicity, whether he thought he ought
to leave his Church to sink in that way ? "Yes," exclaimed the
merchant with great emphasis ; "leave her to sink to her place,
— the lowest hell !" This was terrible : the deocnt former open-
ed huge eyes at hearing what he deemed d bold blasphemy.
The C:hurch of which the Baptist spoivc ^yas, in Oomarty at
least, the Church of the outed Mr. Hugh Anderson, who gave
up his all in the time of the persecution, for conscience' sake;
it was the Church of Mr. Gordon, whose ministry had been s<
signally countenanced during the p(>riod of tlie great revival ; i
was the Church of devout Mr.Munro, and of worthy Mr. Smith,
and of many a godly elder and God-fearing member who had
held by Christ the Head ; and yet here was it denounced as a
Church whose true place was hell. The farmer turned away,
Bick of the controversy; and the imprudent speech of the re-
OR. THE STORY OF UY EDUCATION. 455
nred merchant flew liki wildfire over the paiish. ''Surely,'*
says Bacon, " princes have need, in tender matters and tick-
lish times, to beware what they say, especially in those short
speeches which fly about like darts, and are thought to bo
shot out of their secret intentions." Princes are, however, r.ot
the only men who would do well to be aware of short speeches.
The short speech of the merchant ruined the Baptist cause in
Cromarty ; and the two missionaries might, on its delivery
have just done, if they but knew the position to which it re-
duced them, what they were content to do a few years after,
— pack up their movables and quit the place.
Having for years no antagonists to contend with outside the
pale of the Establishment, it was of course natural that we
should find opponents within. But during the incumbency of
Mr. Smith, — the minister of the parish for the first one-and-
twenty years of my life, — even these were wanting ; and we
passed a very quiet time, undisturbed by controversy of any
kind, political or ecclesiastical. Nor were the first few years
of ]\Ir. Stewart's incumbency less quiet. Tlie Catholic Relief
Bill was a pebble cast into the pool, but a very minute one ;
and the ripple which it raised caused scarce any" agitation.
Mr. Stewart did not see his way clearly through all the di^
Acuities of the measure : but, influenced in part by some of
his brethren in the neighborhood, he at length made up his
mind to petition against it ; and to his petition, praying that
no concessions should be made to the Papists, greatly more
than nineteen-twentieths of the male parishioners aflixed their
names. The few individuals who kept aloof were chiefly
lads of an extra liberal turn, devoid, like most extreme poli-
ticians, of the ordinary ecclesiastical sympathies of their
countryfolk ; and as I cultivated no acquaintance with ihem,
and was more ecclesiastical than political in my leanings,
I had the satisfaction of finding myself standing, in oppo-
sition to all my friends, on the Catholic Relief measure, in
a respectable minority of one. Even Uncle Sandy, after
some little demur, and an explosion against the Irish Estab-
lishment, set off and signed the petition. I failed, howevei.
456 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
to see that I was in the wrong. With the two great facts of
the Irish Union and the Irish Church before me, I could not
petition against Uoman Catholic emancipation. I felt, too,
that were I mvself a Roman Catholic, I would listen to no Pro-
testant argument until what I held to be justice had first been
done me. I would have at once inferred that a religion asso-
ciated with what I deemed injustice was a false, not a true, re-
igion •, and, on the strength of the inference, would have re-
jected it without farther inquiry ; and could I fail to believe
that what I myself would have done in the circumstances,
many Roman Catholics were actually doing % And believing
I could defend my position, which was certainly not an obtru-
bive one, and was at times assailed in conversation by my
friends, in a way that showed, as I thought, they did not un-
derstand it, I sat down and wrote an elaborate letter on the
subject, addressed to the editor of the Inverness Courier ; in
which, as I afterwards found, I was happy enough to anticipate
in some points the line taken up, in his famous emancipation
speech, by a man whom I had early learned to i-ecognize as
the greatest and wisest of Scottish ministers, — the late Dr.
Chalmers. On glancing over my letter, however, and then
looking round me on the good men among my townsfolk, —
including my uncle and my minister, — with whom it would
have the effect of placing me in more decided antagonism
than any mere refusal to sign their petition, I resolved, in-
stead of dropping it into the post-oflice, to drop it into the
fire, which I accordingly did ; and so the matter took end ;
and what I had to say in my own defence, and in that of
emancijiation, was in consequence never said.
This, however, was but the mere shadow of a controversy :
t was UKTcly a possil)le controversy, strangled in the birth.
But some three years after, the parish was agitated by a
dire ecclesiastical dispute, which set us altogether by the
ears. The jilace had nol only its parish church, but also its
Gaelic chapel, which, though on the ordinary foundation of a
chapel of east', was endowed, and under the patronage of
the crown. \\ had been built about sixty years previous, by
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 457
A benevolent proprietor of the lands of Cromarty, — '• George
Ross, the Scotch Agent," — whom Junius ironically described
as the " trusted friend and worthy confidant of Lord Mans
fiftld ;" and who, whatever the satirist may have thought of
either, was in reality a man worthy the friendship of the accom-
plished and philosophic lawyer. Cromarty, originally a Low-
land settlement, had had from the Reformation down till the
att er quarter of the last century no Gaelic place of w orship.
On the breaking up of the feudal system, however, the High-
landers began to drop into the place in quest of employment ;
and George Ross, aftected by their uncared-for religious con-
dition, built for them, at his own expense, a chapel, and had
influence enough to get an endowment for its minister from
the Government. Government retained the patronage in its
own hands ; and as the Highlanders consisted of but laborers
and form-servants, and the workers in a hempen manufactory,
and had no manner of influence, their wishes were not always
consulted in the choice of a minister. About the time of
Mr. Stewart's appointment, through the late Sir Robert Peel
who had courteously yielded to the wishes of the English con-
gregation, the Gaelic people had got a minister presented to
them whom they would scarcely have chosen for themselves,
but who had, notwithstanding, popular parts about him.
Though not of high talent, he was frank and genial, and vis-
ited often, and conversed much ; and at length the Highland-
ers came to regard him as the very beau ideal of a minister.
He and Mr. Stewart belonged to the antagonist parties in the
Church. Mr. Stewart took his place in the old Presbyterian
section, under Chalmers and Thomson ; while the Gaelic min-
ister held by Drs. Inglis and Cook ; and so thoroughly were
their respective congregations influenced by their views, that
at the Disruption in 1843, while considerably more than nine-
tenths of the English-speaking parishioners closc^d their con-
aection with the State, and became Free Churchmen, at least
an equal proportion of the chapel Highlanders clung to the
Establishment. Curiously enough, however, there arose a con
troversy Htween the congregations at this time, in which each
458 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
seemed, in relation to the general question at issue, to takt
the part proper to the other.
I do not think the English congregation were in any de-
gree jealous of the Gaelic one. The English contained the
elite of the place, — all its men of property and influence, from
its merchants and heritors, down to the humblest of the clasa
that afterwards became its ten-pound franchise-holders ; whoie-
as the Gaelic people were, as I have said, simply poor labor
ers and weavers; and if the sense of superioritv did at time?
show itself on the more potent side, it was only among the
lowlier people of the English congregation. When, on one
occasion, a stranger fell asleep in the middle of one of Mr.
Stewart's best sermons, and snored louder than was seemly,
an individual beside him was heard muttering, in a low whis-
per, that the man ought to be sent up to " the Gaelic,'''' for he
was not fit to be among them ; and there might be a few
other similar manifestations ; but the parties were not on a
sufficiently equal level to enact the part of those rival congre-
gations that are forever bemoaning the shortcomings each of
the other, and that in their days of fasting and humiliation
have the sins of their neighbors at least as strongly before
them as their own. But if the English congregation were not
jealous of the Gaelic one, the Gaelic one, as was perhaps natu-
ral in their circumstances, were, I am afraid, jealous of the
English : they were poor people, they used sometimes to say,
but their souls were as precious as those of richer folk, and they
were surely as well entitled to have their just rights as the
English people, ^ — axioms which, I believe, no one in the other
congregation disputed, or even canvassed at all. We were all,
however, roused one morning to consider the case, by learning
that on the previous day the minister of the Gaelic chapel had
petitioned the Presbytery of the district, cither to be assign-
ed a jKirish within the bounds of the parish of Cromarty, or
to have the charge erected into a collegiate one, and his half
of it, of course, rendered co-ordinate with Mr, (Stewart's.
The English people were at once very angry and very much
alarmed. Ai the two aggregations were scattered all over
OR, THE STO^Y OF MY EDUCATION. 459
the same piece of territory, it would be impossible to cut it dp
into two parishes, without separating between a portion of Mr.
Stewart's people and their minister, and mailing them the
parishioners of a man whom they had not yet learned to like ;
and, on the other hand, by erecting the charge into a collegiate
one, the minister whom they had not yet learned to like would
acquire as real a jurisdiction over them as that possessed by
the minister of their choice. Or — as the case was somewhat
quaintly stated by one of themselves — by the one alternativ
" the Gaelic man would become whole minister to the half of
them, and, by the other, half minister to the whole of them."
And so they determined on making a vigorous resistance. Mr.
Stewart himself, too, liked the move of his neighbor the Gae-
lic minister exceedingly ill. He was not desirous, he said, to
have a colleague thrust upon him in his charge, to keep him
right on Moderate principles, — a benefit for which he had not
bargained when he accepted the presentation ; nor yet, as the
other alternative, did he wish to see his living child, the parish,
divided into two, and the half of it given to the strange claimant
that was not its parent. There was another account, too, on
which he disliked the movement : the two great parties in the
Church were equally represented at the time in the Presbytery ;
they had their three members apiece ; and he, of course, saw
that the introduction of the Gaelic minister into it would have
the effect of casting the balance in favor of Moderatism. And
so, as both minister and people were equally in earnest, counter
petitions were soon got up, praying the Presbytery, as a first
step in the process, that copies of the Gaelic minister's docu^
ment should be served upon them. The Presbytery decided,
in terms of their prayer, that copies should be served ; and
the Gaelic minister, on the somewhat extreme ground that the
people had no right to appear in the business at all, appealed
to the General Assembly. And so the people had next to pe-
tition that venerable court in behalf of what they deemed their
imperilled rights ; whUe the Gaelic congregation, under the
full impression that their overbearing English neighbors weie
treating them " as if they had no souls," got up a counter pe
460 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
tition virtually to the effect that the parish might be eitner
cut iu two, and the half of it given to their minister, or thai
he might be at least made second minister to every man in it.
The minister, however, finding at the General Assembly that
the ecclesiastical party on whose support he had relied were
opposed in toto to the erecting of chapels of ease into regular
charges, and that the peculiarities of the case were such as to
cut off all chance of his being supported by their opponents,
fell from his appeal, and the case was never called in Court.
Some of our Cromarty fisher-folk, who were staunch on the
English side, though they could not quite see the merits, had
rather a different version of the business. " The Gaelic man
had no sooner entered the Kirk o' the General Assembly,"
they said, " than the maister of the Assembly rose, and,
speaking very rough, said, ' Ye contrarious rascal, what tak's
you here? What are ye aye troubling that decent lad Mr.
Stewart for"? I'm sure he's no meddlin' wi' you ! Get about
your business, ye contrarious rascal !' "
I took an active part in this controversy ; wrote petitions
and statements for my brother parishioners, with paragraphs for
the local newspapers, and a long letter for the Caledonian Mer-
cury, in reply to a tissue of misrepresentation which appear-
ed in that print, from the pen of one of the Gaelic minister's
legal agents ; and, finally, I replied to a pamphlet by the same
hand, which, though miserable as a piece of writing, — for it
resembled no other composition ever produced, save, mayhap,
a very badly-written law paper, — contained statements which
I deemed it necessary to meet. And such were my first at-
tempts in the rough field of ecclesiastical controversy, — a field
into which inclination would never have led me, but which
has certainly lain very much in my way, and in which I have
spent many a laborious hour. My first pieces were rather stiffly
written, somewhat on the perilous model of Junius; but as it
was hardly possible to write so ill as my opponent, I could ap-
peal to even his friends wlictlier it was quile right in him to
call me illiterate and unlaiighl, in prost; so much worse than
mj own. Chiefly by gettinsr the laughers now and then on
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATIOlSr. 461
my side, I succeeded in making him angry ; and he replied to
my jokes by calling names, — a phrase, by the way, which, for-
getting his Watts' Hymns, and failing to consult his Johnson,
he characterized as not English. 1 was, he said, a " shallow,
pretending ninny ;" an " impudent illiterate lad ;" " a fanatic,"
and a " frantic person ;" the " low underling of a faction," and
" Peter the Hermit ;" and finally, as the sum total of the whole,
he assured me that I stood in his " estimation as the most ignobk
and despised in the whole range of the human species." This
was frightful ! but I not only outlived it all, but learned, I fear,
after in this way first tasting blood, to experience a rather too
keen delight in the anger of an antagonist. I may add, that
when, some two or three years after the period of this contro-
versy, the General Assembly admitted what were known as the
Parliamentary ministers, and the ministers of chapels of ease,
to a seat in the church courts, neither my townsmen nor my-
self saw aught to challenge in the arrangement. It contained
none of the elements which had provoked our hostility in the
Cromarty chapel case : it did not make over the people of one
minister to the charge of another, whom they would never
have chosen for themselves ; but, without encroaching on pop-
ular rights, equalized, on the Presbyterian scheme, the stand-
ing of ministers and the claims of congregations.
The next matter which engaged my townsfolK was a con-
siderably more serious one. When, in 1831, cholera first
threatened the shores of Britain, the Bay of Cromarty was
appointed by Government one of the quarantine ports ; and
we became familiar with the sight, at first deemed suffi
ciently startling, of fleets of vessels lying in the upper road-
stead, with the yellow flag waving from their mast-tops. The
disease, however, failed to find its way ashore ; and when, in
the summer of the following year, it was introduced into the
north of Scotland, it went stalking around the town and parish
for several months, without visiting either. It greatly more
than decimated the villages of Portmahomak and Inver, and
visited the parishes of Nigg and Urquhart, with the towns of
Inverness. Nairn, Avoch, Dingwall, and Kosemarkie ; and, ir.
462 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
fine, the quarantine seaport town that seemed at first to be most
in danger appeared latterly to be almost the only place of any
size in the locality exempted from its ravages. It approached,
however, alarmingly near. The opening of the Cromarty Frith
is little more than a mile across ; a glass of the ordinary power
enables one to count every pane in the windows of the dwellings
that mottle its northern shore, and to distinguish their inhab-
itants ; and yet among these dwellings cholera was raging ;
and we could see, in at least one instance, a dead body borne
fortli by two persons on a hand-barrow, and buried in a neigh
boring sand-bank. Stories, too, of the sad fate of individuals
with whom the townsfolk were acquainted, and who had resid-
ed in well-known localities, told among them with powerful
effect. Such was the general panic in the infected places, that
the bodies of the dead wore no longer carried to the church-
yard, but huddled up in solitary holes and corners ; and the pic-
tures suggested to the fancy, of familiar faces lying uncoffmed
in the ground beside some lonely wood, or in some dark morass
or heathy moor, were fraught to many with a terror stronger
than that of death. We knew that the corpse of a young robust
fisherman, who used occasionally to act as one of the Cromarty
ferrymen, and with whose appearance, in consequence, every
one was familiar, lay festering in a sand-bank ; that the iron
firame of a brawny blacksmith was decomposing in a mossy hole
beside a thorn-bush ; that half of the inhabitants of the little fish-
ing village of Inver were strewn in shallow furrows along the
arid waste which surrounded their dwellings; that houses di-
vested of their tenants, and become foul dens of contagion, had
been set on fire and burnt to the ground ; and that around the
infected fishing-hamlets of Hilton and Baliiitore the country
[)e()ple had drawn a sort of barrier sanitaire, and cooj)ed up
witliin the limits of their respective villages the wretched in^
habitants. And in the general consternation, — a constema
tion much more extreme than that evinced when the disease
ac'tiinlly visited the place, — it was a.skcd by the townsfolk
wliether t/icj/ ought not, so long as the ])lace remained unin-
fected, to draw a similar cordon round themselves. A publlo
OK, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 463
meeting was accordingly held, to deliberate on the best means
of shutting themselves in ; and at the meeting almost all the
adult male inhabitants attended, with the exception of the gen
tlemen in the commission of the peace, and the town officials,
who, though quite prepared to wink hard at our irregularities,
failed to see that, on any grounds tenable in the eye of the
law, they themselves could take a share in them.
Our meeting at first threatened to be stormy. The extra
Liberals, who, in the previous ecclesiastical struggle, had taken
)art to a man with the Gaelic people, as they did, in the sub-
sequent church controversy, with the Court of Session, began
by an attack on the town Justices. We might all see now,
said a Liberal writer lad who addressed us, how little these
people were our friends. Now when the place was threaten-
ed by the pestilence, they would do nothing for us ; they
would not even so much as countenance our meeting ; we saw
there was not one of them present : in short, they cared no-
thing at all about us, or whether we died or lived. But he
and his friends would stand by us to the last ; nay, while the
magistrates were evidently afraid, with all their wealth, to
move in the matter, terrified, no doubt, by the prosecutions
for damages which might be instituted against them were they
to stop the highways, and turn back travellers, he himself,
though far from rich, would be our security against all legal
processes whatever. This, of course, was very noble ; all the
more noble from the circumstance that the speaker could not,
as the Gazette informed us, meet his own actual liabilities at the
time, and yet was fully prepared, notwithstanding, to meet with
all our possible ones. Up started, however, almost ere he had
done speaking, a friend of the Justices, and made so angry a
speech in iheir defence, that the meeting threatened to <all into
tv c parties, and explode in a squabble. I rose in the extrem-
ity, and, though unhappily no orator, addressed my towns-
folk in a few homely sentences. Cholera, I reminded them,
was too evidently of neither party ; and the magistrates were,
I was sure, nearly as much frightened as we were. But they
?eally could do nothing for us. lu matters of life and death.
164 MY SCHOOJ.S AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
howe 7er, when laws and magistrates failed to protect quiet
people, the people were justified in asserting the natural right
to protect themselves ; at.d, whatef er laws and lawyers might
urge to the contrary, that right was now ours, hi a neighbor-
ing county, the inhabitants of certain infected villages were
fairly shut up amid their dwellings by the countryfolk around,
who could themselves show a clean bill of health ; and we, if
in the circumstances of these villagers, would very possibly
be treated after the same manner. And what remained to us
in our actual circumstances was just to anticipate the process
of being ourselves bottled in, by bottling the country out. The
town, situated on a promontory, and approachable at only a
few points, could easily be guarded ; and, instead of squabbling
about the merits of Justices of the Peace, — very likely some-
what Conservative in their leanings, — or of spirited Reformers
who would like very well to be Justices of the Peace too, and
would doubtless make very excellent ones, I thought it would
be far better for us immediately to form ourselves into a De-
fence Association, and proceed to regulate our watches and set
our guards. My short speech was remarkably well received.
There was a poor man immediately beside me, who was in
great dread of cholera, and who actually proved one of its first
victims in the place, — for in little more than a week after, he
was in his grave, — who backed me by an especially vigorous
Hear, hear ! — and the answering Hear, hears, of the meeting
bore down all reply. We accordingly at once Ibrmed our Uo-
fence Association ; and ere midnight our rounds and stations
were marked out, and the watches set. All power passed at
once out of the hands of the magistrates ; but tlic worthy men
themselves said very little about it; and we had the satisfac-
tion of knowing that their families — especially their wives and
laughters — were very friendly indeed both to the Association
and the temporary suspension of the law, and that, on both their
own ac(.'ouiit and ours, they wished us all manner of success.
We kept guard for several days. All vagabonds and tramp-
ers were turned back without remorse ; but there was a re-
spectable class of travellers from whom there was less danger
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 465
to be apprehended ; and with these we found it somev Oi ( dit-
^icult to deal. I woidd have admitted them at once ; ^^ut the
majority of the Association demurred ; — to do that would be,
according to Corporal Trim, to " set one man greatly o'^'er the
head of another ;" and it was ultimately agreed that, instead
of at once admitting them, they would be first brought, ink> a
wooden building fitted up for the purpose, and thoroughly fu':!!-
gated with sulphur and chloride of lime. I know not with w\v>r>
the expedient first orig nated : it was said to have been suggosl
d by some medical man who knew a great deal about cholera
And though, for my own part, I could not see how the demon oJ
the disease was to be expelled by the steam of a little sulphui
and chloride, as the evil spirit in Tobit was expelled by the
smoke of the fish's liver, it seemed to satisfy the Association
wonderfully well ; and a stranger well smoked came to be re-
garded as safe. There was a day at hand which promised an
unusual amount of smoking. The au'itation of the Reform Bill
had commenced ; — a great court of appeal was on that day to
hold at Cromarty ; and it was known that both a Whig and
Tory party from biverness, in which cholera was I'aging at
the time, would to a cei tainty attend it. What, it was asked,
were we to do with the politicians, — the formidable bankers,
factors, and lawyers who would form, we knevr, the Inverness
cavalcade ? Individually, the question seemed to be asked
under a sort of foreboding terror that calculated consequences ;
but when the Association came to ask it collectively, and to
.answer it in a body, it was in a bold tone, that set fear at de-
nance. And so it was resolved 7ie7n. con. that the Inverness
politicians should be smoked like' the others. My turn to
mount guard had come round on the previous night at tw(;Ive
■)'clock ; but I had calculated on being ofi" the station ere the
Inverness people came up. Unluckily, however, instead of
Dcing appointed a simple sentry, I was made officer for tho
night. It was the duty assigned me to walk round tho sev-
3ral posts, and see that the various sentinels were keeping a
smart lookout, which I did very faithfully ; buc when the term
of my watch had expired I found no relieving officer coming
406 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
up to take my place. The prudent man appointed on the oo
cusion was, I feared, tiding over the coming difficulty in some
quiet corner ; but I continued my rounds, maugre the suspi-
cion, in the hope of his appearance. And as I approached
one of our most important stations, — that on the great high-
way which connects the town of Ci'omarty with Kestock
Ferry, there was the Wliig portion of the Inv'erness ca\alcade
just coming up. The newly-appointed sentinel stood aside
tO let his officer deal with the Whig gentlemen, as, of course^
best became both their quality and his official standing. 1
would rather have been elsewhere ; but I at once brought the
procession to a stand. A man of high spirit and influence, — a
banker, and very nmch a Whig, — at once addressed me with
a stern — " By what authority. Sir?" By the authority, I re-
plied, of five hundred able-bodied men in the neighboring
town, associated for the protection of themselves and their
families. " Protection against what V " Protection against
the pestilence ; — you come from an infected place." " Do
you know what you are doing. Sir?" said the banker, fiercely.
" Yes, — doing what the law cannot do fcM- us, but what we have
determined to do for ourselves." The banker grew pale with
anger ; and he was afterwards heard to say, that had he a pistol
at the time, he would have shot upon the spot the man who
stopped him ; but not having a pistol, he could not shoot me ;
and so I sent him and his party away under an escort, to be
smoked. And as they were somewhat obstreperous by the
way, and knocked the hat of one of their guards over his noso
they got, in the fumigating process, as I was sorry to learn,
double portion of the sulphur and the chloride ; and came into
court, to contend with the Tories, gasping for breath. 1 was
aware I had acted on this occasion a very fooli.-h part; I ough'
to a certainty to have run away on the approacii of the Inver
ness cavalcade ; but the running away would have involved, ac-
cording to Rochester, an amount of moral courage which I did
iKjt |i()ssess. I fear, too, I must admit, that the I'ongli tones
of the banker's address stirred up what had long lain quietly
2)>ough in my veins, — some of the wild buccaneering blood oi
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 467
Tolin Fcddcs and the old seafaring Millers ; and so I weakly
remained at my post, and did what the Association deemed
my duty. I trust the banker did not recognize me, and that
now, after the lapse of more than twenty years, he will be in-
clined to extend to me his forgiveness. I take this late op-
portunity of humbly begging his pardon, and of assuring him,
that at the very time I brought him to bay I was heartily at
one with him in his polities. But then my townsfolk, being
much frightened, were perfectly impartial in smoking Whigs
and Tories all alike ; and I could bethink me of no eligible
mode of exempting my friends from a process of fumigation
which was, I dare say, very unpleasant, and in whose virtues
my faith was assuredly not strong.
When engaged, however, in keeping up our cordon with ap-
parent success, cholera entered the place in a way in which it
Ava.^ impossible we could have calculated. A Cromarty fish
erman had died of the disease at Wick rather more than a
month previous, and all the clothes which had been in con-
tact with the body were burnt by the Wick authorities in the
open air. lie had, however, a brother on the spot, who had
stealthily appropriated some of the better pieces of dress ; and
these he brought home with him in a chest; though such was
the dread with which he rcg;irded them, that for more than
four weeks he suflered the chest to lie beside him unopened.
At length, in an evil hour, the pieces of dress were taken out,
and, like the " goodly Babylonish garment" which wrought
the destruction of Achau and the discomfiture of the camp,
they led, in the lirst instance, to the death of the poor impru-
dent fisherman, and to that of not a few of his townsfolk im
mediately after. He himself was seized by cholera on the ful
lowing day ; in less than two days more he was dead and bu-
ried ; and the disease went creeping about the streets and
lanes for weeks after,— here striking down a strong man in the
full vigoi of middle life, — there shortening, apparently by but
a few months, the span of eomc worn-out creature, ali-eady on
the verge of the grave. The visitation hiid its wildly picturesquo
accompaniments. Pitch aud tar were kept buruu g during the
21
468 MT SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
night in the openings of tlie Infected lanes ;' ai.d the imsteadj
light flickered with ghastly elVect on house and wall, and the
flitting figures of the watchers. By day, the frequei t coffins,
borne to the grave by but a few bearers, and the fi-equent
smoke that rose outside the'^place from fires kindled to con
snnie the clothes of the infected, had their sad and startling
etfect ; a migration, too, of a considerable portion of the fi;5lier
population to the caves of the hill, in which they continued
to reside till the disease left the place, formed a striking ao
companiment of the visitation ; and yet, curiously enough, as
the danger seemed to increase, the consternation lessened, and
there was much less fear among the people when the disease
was actually ravaging the place, than when it was merely
stalking within sight around it. We soon became fomiliar,
too, with its direst horrors, and even learned to regard them as
comparatively ordinary and commonplace. I had read, about
two years before, the passage in Southcy's"Co/fo5'?;«'s"in which
Sir Thomas More is made to remark, that modern Englishmen
have no guarantee whatever, in these latter times, that their
shores shall not be visited, as of old, by devastating plagues.
"As touching the pestilence," says Sir Thomas (or rather the
poet in his name), " you f mcy yourselves secure because the
plague has not appeared among you for the last hundred and
fifty years, — a portion of time which, long as it may seem, com-
pared with the brief term of mortal existence, is as nothing in
the physical history of the globe. The importation of that
scourge is as possible now as it was in former times ; and were
it once imported, do you suppose it would rage with less vio-
lence among the crowded population of your metropolis than it
did before the fire? What," he adds, "if the sweating sick
ness. cMiphntically called the English disease, were to show it'
self again I Can any cause be assigned why it is not as lik* ly
to break out in the nineteenth century as in the fiftceiuh ?'"
And, striking as the passage is, I remembered perusing it with
that incredulous feeling, natural to men in aquiet time, which
leads them to draw so broail a line between thi- experience of
history, if of a comparatively remote age, or of a distant olace,
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 46P
and their own person<al experience. In the loose sense cf the
sophist, it was contrary to my experience that Britain sliould
become the seat of any such fatal and widely-devastating dis-
ease as used to ravage it of old. And yet, now that I saw
ji,s terrible and unwonted an infliction as either the plague or
the sweating sickness decimating our towns and villages, and
the terrible scenes described by De Foe and Patrick Walker
I'uUy rivalled, the feeling with which I came to regard it was
not one of strangeness, but of familiarity.
When thus unsuccessfully employed in keeping watch and
ward against our insidious enemy, the Reform Bill for Scot-
land passed the House of Lords, and became the law of the
land. I had watched with interest the growth of the popular
element in the country, — ^had seen it gradually strengthening
from the despotic times of Liverpool and Castlereagh, through
the middle period of Canning and Goderich, down till even
Wellington and Peel, men of iron as they were, had to yield to
the pressure from without, and to repeal first the Test and Cor-
poration Acts, and next to carry. Against their own convictions,
their great Poman Catholic Emancipation measure. The
people, during a season of undisturbed peace, favorable to the
growth of opinion, were becoming more decidedly a power
in the country than they had ever been before ; and, of course,
as one of the people, and in the belief, too, that the influence
of the many would be less selfishly exerted than that of the
few, 1 was pleased that it should be so, and looked forward to
better days. For myself personally, I expected nothing. I
had early come to see that toil, physical or intellectual, was
to be my portion throughout life, and that through no possi-
ble improvement in the government of the country could I
be exem[>ted from laboring for my bread. From State pat-
ronage I never expected anything, and I have received froiu
it about as much as I expected.
was employed in laboring pretty hard for my bread one
fine evening in the summer of 1830, — engaged in hewing, with
bare breast and arms, in the neighborhood of the harbor of
Cromarty, a large tombstone, which, on the following day, was
470 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
to be carried across the ferry to a churchyard on the opposite
side of the Frith. A group of French fishermen, who had
gathered I'ound me, were looking curiously at my mode of
U'orlving, and, as I thought, somewhat curiously at myself, a?
if sp^iculating on the physical powers of a man with whom
(here was at least a possibility of their having one day to deal
They formed part of the crew of one of those powerfully
manned French luggers which visit our northern coasts every
year, ostensibly with the design of prosecuting the herring
fishery, but which, supported mainly by large Governmcnl
bounties, and in but small part by their fishing speculations
are in reality kept up by the State as a means of rearing sailon
for the French navy. Their lugger — an uncouth-looking ves
sel, representative rather of the navigation of three centurieS'
ago than of that of the present day — lay stranded in the har
bor beside us; and, their work over for the day, they seemed
as quiet and silent as the calm evening whose stillness they
were enjoying, when the letter-carrier of the place came up
to where I was working, and handed me, all damp from the
press, a copy of the Inverness Courier, which I owed to th»
kindness of its editor. I was at once attracted by the heading
in capitals, of his leading article, — " Revolution in France-
Flight of Charles X." — and pointed it out to the Frenchmen
None of them understood English ; but they could here an*
there catch the meaning of the more important words, and, ex
claiming " Revolution en France ! ! — Fuite de Charles X. ! P
— they clustered round it in a state of the cxtremest excite
ment, gabbling faster and louder than thrice as many English
men could have done in any circumstances. At length, how
over, their resolution seemed taken ; curiously enough, theii
lugger bore the name of" Charles X. ;" and one of tliem, lay
ing hold of a large lump of chalk, repaired to the vessel's stern,
and, by covering over the white-lead letters with (he clialk,
eflliced (he royal name. Charles was virtually declared by
the little bit of France that sailed in the lugger to be no
longer king ; and the incident struck me, trivial as it may
*ecm, as significantly illustrative of the extreme slightness of
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 471
that hold which the rulers of modern France possess on the
affections of their people, I returned to my home as the even-
ing darkened, more moved by this unexpected revolution than
by any other political event of my time, — brim-fidl of hope
for the cause of freedom all over the civilized world, and, iu
especial — misled by a sort o^ analogical experience^ .sanguine
in my expectations for France. It had had, like our own coun-
try, its fu'st stormy revolution, in which its monarch had lost
his nead ; and then its Cromwell, and then its Restoration
and its easy, luxurious king, who, like Charles II., had died in
possession of the throne, and who had been succeeded by a
weak bigot brother, the very counterpart of James II. And
now, after a comparatively orderly revolution like that of 1G88,
the bigot had been dethroned, and the head of another branch
of the royal family had been called in to enact the part of
William III. The historical parallel seemed complete ; and
could I doubt that what would next follow would be a long
period of progressive improvement, in which the French peo-
ple would come to enjoy, as entirely as those of Britain, a
well-regulated freedom, under which revolutions would be
unnecessary, mayhap impossible 1 Was it not evident, too,
that the success of the French in their noble struggle would
immediately act with beneficial effect on the popular cause in
our own country and everywhere else, and greatly quicken
the progress of reform.
And so I continued to watch with interest the course of the
Reform Bill, and was delighted to see it, after a passage sin-
gidarly stormy and precarious, at length safely moored in port.
In some of the measures, too, to which it subsequently led, 1
greatly delighted, especially in the emancipation of our negro
slaves in (he colonies. Nor could I join many of my person-
al friends in their denunciation of that appropriation meas-
vire, as it was termed, — also an effect of the altered constitu-
ency, — which suppressed the Irish bishopricks. As I ventured
to tell ni}' minister, who took the other side, — if a Protestant
Church failed, after enjoying for three hundred years the bene
dts of a large en'iowment,and every advantage of position which
4:72 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
the statute-book could confer, to erect herself into the Church,
of the many, it was high time to commence dealing with her iu
her true character, — as the Church of the few. At home,
however, within the narrow precincts of my native town, there
were effects of the measure which, though comparatively trifl-
ing, I liked considerably worse than the suppression of tii3
bishopricks. It broke up the townsfolk into two portions, —
the one consisting of elderly or middle-aged men, who had
been in the CDmmission of the peace ere the passing of the
bill, and who now, as it erected the town into a parliamentary
burgh, became our magistrates, in virtue of the support of a
majority of the voters ; and a younger and weaker, but clever
and very active party, few of whom were yet in the commis-
sion of the peace, and who, after standing unsuccessfully for
the magistracy, became the leaders of a patriotic opposition,
which succeeded in rendering the seat of justice a rather un-
easy one in Cromarty. The younger men were staunch Lib-
erals, but great Moderates, — the elder, sound Evangelicals, but
decidedly Conservative in their leanings ; and as I held ec-
clesiastically by the one party, and secularly by the other, I
foimd my position, on the whole, a rather anomalous one.
Both parties got involved in lawsuits. When the Whig Mem
bers of Parliament for the county and burgh came the way,
they might be seen going about the streets arm-in-arm with
the young Whigs, which was, of course, a signal honor; and
during the licat of a contested election, young Whiggism, to
show itself grateful, succeeded in running off with a Conserva-
tive voter, whom it had caught in his cujis, and got itself in-
volved in a lawsuit in consequence, which cost it several hun-
dred pounds. The Conservatives, on the other hand, also got
entangled in an expensive lawsuit. The town had its annual
fair, at which from fifty to a hundred children used to buy gin-
gerbread, and which had held for many years at the eastern end
of the town links. Tlinm^h, however, some unexplained piece
)f strategy on the |)art of tlio young Liberals.a markcl-day cjuno
round, on which the gingerbread women took their stand on a
green a little above the harbor ; and, of course, where the gin
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 473
gcrbrcad was, there the children were gathered together ; and
the magistrates, astonished, visited the spot in order to asccp
tain, if possible, the philosophy of the change. They found
the ground occupied by a talkative pedlar, who stood up strong
ly for the young Liberals and the new site ; and the magis-
trates straightway demanded the production of his license.
The pedlar had none. And so he was apprehended, and sum-
marily tried, oi a charge of contravening the statute 54 Geo.
III. cap, 71 ; and, being found guilty of hawking without a
license, he was committed to prison. The pedlar, backed, it
was understood, by the young Liberals, raised an action for
wrgngous imprisonment ; and, on the ground that the day on
which he had sold his goods was a fair or market-day, on which
anybody might sell anything, the magistrates were cast in
damages. I liked the lawsuits very ill, and held that the
young Liberals would have been more wisely employed in
making money by their shops and professions, — secure that
the coveted honors would ultimately get into the wake of the
good bank-accounts, — than that they should be engaged either
in scattering their own means in courts of law, or in imping-
ing on the means of their neighbors. And ultimately I found
my proper political position as a supporter in all ecclesiasti-
cal and municipal matters of my Conservative townsmen, and
•a supporter in almost all the national ones of the Whigs,
whom, however, I ahvays liked better, and deemed more vir-
tuous, when they were out of office than when they were in.
On one occasion, I even became political enough to stand
for a councillorship. My friends, chiefly through the death of
elderly voters and the rise of younger men, few of whom were
Conservative, felt themselves getting weak in the place ; and,
fearing that they could not otherwise secure a majority at the
Council board, they urged me to stand for one of the vacancies,
which I accordingly did, and carried my election by a swim-
ming majority. And in duly attending the first meeting of
Council, I heard an eloquent speech from a gentleman in the
opposition, directed against the individuals who, as he finely
expressed it, " were wielding the destinies of his native town ;"
474 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS t
and saw, as the only serious piece of business before the meet-
ing, the Councillors clubbing pennies apiece, in order to d*
fray, in the utter lack of town funds, the expense of a nine-
penny postage. And then, with, I fear, a very inadequate
sense of the responsibilities of my new office, I stayed away
from the Council board, and did nothing whatever in its be-
half, with astonishing perseverance and success, for three
years together. And thus began and terminated my muni-
cipal career, — a career which, I must confess, failed to secure
for me the thanks of my constituency ; and then, on the other
liand, I am not aware that the worthy people ever seriously
complained. There was absolutely nothing to do in the c^un-
cilship ; and, unlike some of my brother office-bearers, the
requisite nothing I did, quietly and considerately, and very
much at my leisure, without any uimecessary display of
stumporatory, or of anything else.
OB. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 47o
CHAPTER XXIII
"Dayvj passed ; an' now my palieut steps
That maidcMi's walks allciid ;
My vows had reach'd that maiden's ear,
Aye, an' she ca'il ine friend.
An' I was bless'd, as bless'd can be ;
Tlie fond, daft dreamer Ilnpo
Ne'er dream'd o' happier days than raino,
Or joys o' ampler scope."
IIknrison's Sako.
I USED, as I have said, to have occasional visitors when work
iiig in the churchyard. My minister has stood beside me foi
hours together, discussing every sort of subject, from the mis-
deeds of the Moderate divines, — whom he lilted all the worse
for being brethren of his own cloth, — to the views of Isaac
Taylor on the corruptions of Christianity or the possibilities
of the future state. Strangers, too, occasionally came the way,
desirous of being introduced to the natural curiosities of the
district, more especially to its geology ; and I reinember first
meeting in the churchyard, in this way, the late Sir Thomas
Dick Lauder; and of having the opportunity aflbrdcd me of
questioning, mallet in hand, the present distinguished Pro
fessor of Humanity in the Edinburgh University,* respecting
• Professor PiUansi
476 MY SCHOOLS AND SCH00LMASTEH8 :
tlic nature of the cohesive agent in the non-calcarcons sand
stone -which I was engaged in hewing. I had sometimes a
diflerent, but not less irtercsting, class of visitors. The town
liad its small but very choice circle of accomplished intellec-
tual ladies, who, earlier in the century, would have been per-
haps described as members of the blue-stocking sisterhood ;
but the advancing intelligence of the age had rendered the
jilirase obsolete : and they simply took their place as wcU-
hiformcd, sensible women, whose acquaintance with the best
Quthors was regarded as in no degree disqualifying them
from their proper duties as wives or daughters. And my
circle of acquaintuv.ee mcluded the entire class. I used to
meet them at delightful tea-parties, and sometimes borrowed
a day from my work to conduct them through the picturesque
burn of Eathie, or the wild scenes of the Cromarty ilill, or
to introduce them to the fossiliforous deposits of the Lias or
the Old Red Sandstone. And not unfrequently their evening
walks used to terminate where I wrought, in the old chapel
of St. Rcgulus, or in the parish burying -ground, beside a
sweet wooded dell known as the '' Ladies' Walk ;" and my
labors for the day closed in what I always very much relish
cd, — a conversation on the last good book, or on some nev/
organism, recently disinterred, of the Secondary or Pakeozoic
period.
I had been hewing, about this time, in the upper part of my
uncle's garden, and had just closed my work for the evening,
when I was visited by one of my lady friends, accompanied by
a stranger lady, who had come to sec a curious old dial-stone
which 1 hud dug out of the earth long before, when a boy, and
whicii had originally belonged to the ancient Castlo garden of
Cromarty. 1 was standing with them beside the dial, which I
had placed in my uncle's garden, and remarking, that as it ex-
hiljited in its structure no little mathematical skill, it had prob-
ably been cut under the eye of the eccentric but accom[)lishcd
Sir Thomas Unpiliarl ; when a third laily, greatly younger than
the others, and whom I had never seen before, came Hurried-
ly tripping down the garden-walk, and, addressing the other
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 4:77
two, apparently quite in a flurry, — " come, ccme away," she
said, '•! have been seeking you ever so long." " Is this you,
L 1" was the staid reply : "Why, what now"? — you have
run yourself out of breath." The young lady was, I saw, very
pretty ; and, though in her nineteenth year at the time, her
light and somewhat petite figure, and the waxen clearness of
her complexion. Avhich resembled rather that of a fiiir child
than of a grown woman, made her look from three to four
years younger. And as if in some degree still a child, her
two lady friends seemed to regard her. She stayed with them
scarce a minute ere she tripped oil" again; nor did I observe
that she favored me with a single glance. But what else
could be expected by an ungainly, dust-besprinkled mechanic
in his shirt-sleeves, and with a leathern apron bef<jrc him ?
Nor did the mechanic expect aught else ; and when informed
long after, by one whose testimony was conclusive on the
point, that he had been pointed out to the young lady by some
such distinguished name as " the Cromarty poet," and that
she had come up to her friends somewhat in a flurry, simply
that she might have a nearer look of him, he received the in-
telligence somewhat with surprise. All the first interviews
in all the novels I ever read are of a more romantic and less
homely cast than the special interview just related ; but 1
know not a more curious one.
Only a few evenings after, I met the same young lady, in
circumstances of which the writer of a tale might have made
a little more, I was sauntering, just as the sun was sinking,
along one of my favorite walks on the Hill, — a tree-skirted
glade, — now looking out through the openings on the ever-
fresh beauties of the Cromarty Frith, with its promontories,
ind bays, and long lines of winding shore, and anon mark
iiig how redly the slant light fell through intersticial gapsi
on pale lichened trunks and huge boughs, in the deeper re-
cesses of the wood, — when I found myself unexpectedly in the
presence of the young lady of the previous evening. She was
sjiuntering through the wood as leisurely as myself, — now and
then dipping into a rather bulky volume which she carried.
478 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
that had not in the least the look of a novel, and which,
as I subsequently ascertained, was an elaborate essay on Can-
sation. We, of course, passed each other on our several ways
without sign of recognition. Quickening her pace, however,
she was soon out of sight ; and I just thought, on one or two
occasions afterwards, of the apparition that had been pre-
sented as she passed, as much in keeping with the adjuncts,
^the picturesque forest and the gorgeous sunset. It would
not be easy, I thought, were the large book but away, to fur-
nish a very lovely scene with a more suitable figure. Short-
ly after, I began to meet the young lady at the charming tea-
parties of the place. Her father, a worthy man, who, from
unfortunate speculations in business, had met with severe
losses, was at this time several years dead ; and his widow had
come to reside in Cromarty, on a somewhat limited income,
derived from property of her own. Liberally assisted, how-
ever, by relations in England, she had been enabled to send
her daughter to Edinburgh, where the young lady received all
the advantages which a first-rate education could confer. By
some lucky chance, she was boarded, with a few other ladies,
all in early womanhood, in the family of Mr. George Thom-
son, the well-known correspondent of Burns ; and passed
under his roof some of her happiest years. Mr. Thomson, —
himself an enthusiast in art, — strove to inoculate the youthful
Inmates of his house with the same fervor, and to develope
whatever seeds of taste or genius might be found in them ;
and, characterized till the close of a life extended far beyond
the ordinary term, by the fine chivalrous manners of the
thorough gentleman of the old schdol, his influence over hia
young friends was very great, and his endeavors, in at least
some of the instances, very successful. In none, however, was
he nnre so than in the case of the young lady of my narra-
tive. From Edinburgh she was sent to reside with the fi-icnda
in ICngland to whose kindness she had been so largely indebt
ed ; and with them she might have permanently remained, to
enjoy the advantages of superior position. She was at an age,
however, which rarely occupies itself in adjusting the balance
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 479
of temporal advantage; and her only brother having been ad
mittcd through the interest of her friends, as a pupil into
(Christ'*' Hospital, she preferred returning to her widowed
mother, left solitary in consequence, though with the prospect
of being obliged to add to Iier resources by taking a few of
the children of the town as day-pupils.
Her claim to take her place in the intellectual circle of the
burgh was soon recognized. I found that, misled by the extreme
youthfulness of her appearance, and a marked juvenility of
manner, I had greatly mistaken the young lady. That she sliould
be accomplished in the ordinary sense of the term, — that she
should draw, play, and sing well, — would be what I should have
expected ; but as I was not prepared to find that, mere girl as
she seemed, she should have a decided turn, not for the light-
er, but for the severer walks of literature, and should have al-
ready acquired the ability of giving expression to her thoughts
in a style formed on the best English models, and not in the
least like that of a young lady. The original shyness wore
away, and we became great friends. I was nearly ten years
her senior, and had read a great many more books than she ,
and, finding me a sort of dictionary of feet, ready of access,
and with explanatory notes attached, that became long or
short just as she pleased to draw them out by her queries,
she had, in the course of her amateur studies, frequent occa-
sion to consult me. There were, she saw, several ladies of
her acquaintance, who used occasionally to converse with me
in the churchyard ; but in order to make assurance doubly
sure respecting the perfect propriety of such a proceeding on
lier part, she took the laudable precaution of stating the case
to her niotiier's landlord, a thoroughly sensible man, one of
the magistrates of the burgh, and an elder of the kirk ; and
he at once certified that there was no lady of the place whc
might not converse, without remark, as often and as long as she
pleased, with me. And so, fully justified, both by the example
of her friends — all very judicious women, some of them only
0. few years older than herself — and by the deliberate judg
480 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ment of a very sensible man, the magistrate and elder, — mj
young lady friend learned to visit me in the churchyard, just
like the other ladies ; and, latterly at least, considerably oftencr
than any of them. We used to converse on all manner of
subjects connected with the belles lettres and the philosoj)hy
of mind, with, so for as I can at present remember, only one
marked exception. On that mysterious affection which some-
times springs up between persons of the opposite sexes when
thrown much toTether, — though occasionally discussed by the
metaphysicians, and much sung by the poets,-^we by no
chance ever touched. Love formed the one solitary subject
which, from some curious contingency, invariably escaped us.
And yet, latterly at least, I had begun to think about it a
good deal. Nature had not foshioned me one of the sort of peo-
ple who foil in love at first sight. I had even made up my
mind to live a bachelor life, without being very much impress-
ed by the magnitude of the sacrifice ; but I dare say it did
mean something, that in my solitary walks for the preceding
fourteen or fifteen years, a f<;male companion often walked in
fancy by my side, with whom I exclianged many a thought,
and gave expression to many a feeling, and to whom I pointed
out many a beauty in the landscape, and communicated many
a curious fact, and whose understanding was as vigoi-ous as
her taste was faultless and her feelings exquisite. One of the
English essayists, — the elder Moore, — has drawn a very per-
fect personage of this airy character (not, however, of the soft-
ci', but of the masculine sex), under the name of the "maid's
flusband ;" and described him as one of the most formidable
rivals that the ordinary lover of flesh and blood can possibly
encounter. My day-dream lady — a person that may be termed
with equal propriety the "bachelor's wife" — has not been so
distinctly recognized ; but she occupies a large place in our
iileraluro, as the mistress of all the poets who ever wrote ou
lovo without af'tiially oxpoririiciiig it, from the days of Cowley
d<)\N II to those of J leiiry KirUc White ; and her presence servos
alwavs to intimate a heart capable of occupation, but still
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 481
onocnipied. I find the bachelor's wife delicately drawn in
one of the posthumous poems of poor Alexander Bcthune, as
a "fair being," — the frequent subject of his day-dreams,—
" Whose soft voice
Should he the swoetost music to his ear,
Awakening all the chords of harmony;
Wliose eye should speak a language to his soul,
More el()(|ueiit than au!j;hl which (Jreecc or Rome
Could boa.^t of in its best and liappiest days;
U'hose smile should be his rich reward lor toil ;
Whose pure transparent chock, when press'd to his,
Should calm the lever of his troubled thoughts,
Anil woo his s])iril to tl-.ose fields Klysiau, —
The paradise which strong alfeclion guards."
Ft may be always predicated of these bachelor's wives, that
they never very closely resemble in their lineaments any living
v/omen : poor Bethunc's would not have exhibited a single
feature of any of his poor neighbors, the lasses of Upper Ran-
keillour or Ncwburgh. Were the case otherwise, the dream
maiden would be greatly in danger of being displaced by the
real one whom she resembled ; and it was a most significant
event which, notwithstanding my inexperience, I learned by-
and-byc to understand, that about this time my old companion,
the " bachelor's wife," utterly forsook me, and that a vision of
riy young friend took her place. I can honestly aver, that I
entertained not a single hope that the feeling should be mu-
tual. On whatever other head my vanity may have flatter-
ed me, it certainly never did so on the score of personal ap-
pearance. My personal strength was, I knew, considerably
above the average of that of my follows, and at this time my
activity also ; but I was perfectly conscious that, on the other
hand, my good looks rather foil below than rose above the
medial line. And so, while I suspected, as I well might, that,
Qs in the famous fairy story, " Beauty" had made a conquest
of the " Beast," I had not the most distant expectation that
the "Beast" would, in turn, make a conquest of "Beauty."
My young friend had, I knew, several admirers, — men who
were vounger and dressed better, and who, as they had all
482 snr schools and schoolmastees
chosen the liberal professions, had fliirer prospects than I ; and
as for the item of goftd looks, had she set her affections on
even the least likely of them, I could have addressed him,
with perfect sincerity, in the words of the old ballad : —
•'Nae wonder, uv.c wonder, Gil Morricc,
My l;idy lo'os ye weel :
The fairest part o' my budy
Is bliicker Ihan Ihy heel."
Strange to say, however, much about the time that I made my
discovery, my young friend succeeded in making a disco\ery
also ; — the maid's husband shared on her part the same fato
as the bachelor's wife did on mine ; and her visits to the
churchyard suddenly ceased.
A twelvemonth had passed ere wc succeeded in finding all
this out ; but the young lady's mother h;id seen the danger
somewhat earlier ; and deeming, as was quite right and prop
er, an operative mason no very fitting mate for her daughter,
my opportunities of meeting my friend at conversazione or
tea-party had become few. I, however, took my usual even-
ing walk through the woods of the Hill ; and as my friend's
avocations set her free at the same delightful hour, and as she
also was a walker on the Hill, we did sometimes meet, and
witness together, from amid the deep solitudes of its bosky
slopes, the sun sinking behind the distant Ben Wevis. Theso
were very happy evenings ; the hour wc passed together
always seemed exceedingly short ; but, to make amends fji
its briefiiess, there were at length few working days in the
milder season of which it did not form the terminal one ; — •
from the circumstance, of cour.-^e, that the similarity of oui*
tastes for natural scenery led us always into the same lonely
walks aliout the same delicious sun-set hour. For months
together, even during this second stage of our friendship, there
was one interesting subject on which wc never talked. At
length, however, we came to a mutual understanding. It was
settled that wc should remain for three years more in Scotland
on (he existing terms ; and if, during that time, there should
open to mo no suitable fuld of exertion at home, wo should
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 483
then quit the c 'untry for America, and share together in a
strange land whatever fate might be in store for us. My young
friend was considerably more sanguine than I. I had laid
faithfully before her those defects of character which rendered
me a rather inefficient man-at-arms for contending in my own
behalf in the battle of life. Inured to labor, and to the hard-
ships of the bothie and the barrack, I believed that in the
backwoods, where I would have to lift my axe on great trees,
I might get on with my clearing and my crops like most of
my neighbors ; but then the backwoods would, I feared, be
no place for her ; and as for effectually pushing my way in the
long-peopled portions of the United States, among one of the
most vigorous and energetic races in the world, I could not
sec that I was in the least fitted for that. She, however,
thought otherwise. The tender passion is always a strangely
exaggerative one. Lodged in the male mind, it gives to the
object on which it rests all that is excellent in woman, and in
the female mind imparts to its object all that is noble in man ;
and my friend had come to regard me as fitted by nature either
to head an army or lead a college, and to deem it one of the
weaknesses of my character, that I myself could not take an
equally favorable view. There was, however, one profession
of which, measuring myself as carefully as I could, I deemed
myself capable : I saw men whom I regarded as not my supe-
riors in natui-al talent, and even possessed of no greater com-
mand of the pen, occupying respectable places in the period-
ical literature of the day, as the editors of Scotch newspapers,
provincial, and even metropolitan, and deriving from their la
bors incomes of from one to three hundred pounds per annum
and were my abilities, such as ihcy were, to be fairly set by
sample before the public, and so brought into the literary mar-
ket, they might, I thought, possibly lead to my engagement
as a newspaper editor. And so, as a first step in the process,
I resolved on publishing my volume of traditional history, — a
work on which I had bestowed considerable care, and which,
regarded as a specimen of what I could do as a litterateuf
484 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
would, 1 believed, show not inadequately my ability of tieat
ing at least those lighter subjects with which newspapex' edi-
tors are occasionally called on to deal.
Nearly two of the three twelvemonths passed by, however,
and I was still an operative mason. With all my solicitude, 1
could not give myself heartily to seek work of the kind which
I saw newspaper editors had at that time to do. It might be
quite well enough, I thought, for the lawyer to be a special
pleader. With special pleadmgs ecpially extreme on the oppo-
site sides of a case, and a qualified judge to hold the balance be-
tween, the cause of truth and justice might be even more thor-
roughly served than if the antagonist agents were to set them-
selves to be as impartial and equal-handed as the magistrate
himself But I could not extend the same tolerance to the spe-
cial pleading of the newspaper editor. I saw that, to many of
the readers of his paper, the editor did not hold the place of a
law-agent, but of a judge : it was his part to submit to them,
therefore, not ingenious pleadings, but, to the best of his judg-
ment, honest decisions. And not only did no place present
itself for me in the editorial field, but I really could see no
place in it that, with the views which I entertained on this
head, I would not scruple to occupy. I saw no party cause
for which I could honestly plead. My ecclesiastical friends
had, willi a few exceptions, cast themselves into the Conserva-
tive ranks, and there I could not follow them. The Liberals,
on the other hand, being in oflice at the time, had become at
least as like their old o])pononts as their ibrmer selves, and I
could by no means defend all that they were doing. In Kadi-
jalism I had no faith ; and Chartism, — with my recollectiou
of the kind of treatment which 1 liad received from the work-
men of the south still strongly impressed upon my mind, — I
thoroughly detested. And so I began seriously to think of
the backwoods of America. But tiiere was another destiny
in store for me. My native town, up till this time, though a
place of considerable trade, was unfurnished with a branch
bank ; but on the representation of some of its more cxteusiv*
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 485
traders, and of the proprietors of the neighboring lands, the
Commercial Bank of Seotland had agreed to make it the scene
of one of its agencies, and arranged with a sagacious and suc-
cessful merchant and shipowner of the place to act as its agent.
It had fixed, too, on a young man as its accountant, at the sug-
gestion of a neighboring proprietor ; and I heard of the pro-
jected bank simply as a piece of news of interest to the town
and its neighborhood, but, of course, without special bearing
on any concern of mine. Receiving, however, one winter
morning, an invitation to breakfast with the future agent, —
Mr. Ross, — I was not a little surprised, after we had taken
a quiet cup of tea together, and beaten over half-a-dozen sev-
eral subjects, to be offered by him the accountantship of the
branch brank. After a pause of a full half-minute, I said
that the walk was one in which I had no experience what-
ever, — that even the little knowledge of figures which I had
acquired at school had been suffered to fade and get dim in
my mind, from want of practice, — and that I feared I would
make but a very indifferent accountant. I shall undertake
for you, said Mr. Ross, and do my best to assist you. All
you have to do at present is just to signify your acceptance
of the offer made. I referred to the young man who, I under-
stood, had been already nominated accountant. Mr. Ross
stated that, being Avholly a stranger to him, and as the office
was one of great trust, he had, as the responsible party, sought
the security of a guarantee, which the gentleman who had rec-
ommended the young man declined to give ; and so his rec-
ommendation had fallen to the ground. " But / can give
you no guarantee," I said. " From you," rejoined Mr. Ross,
" none shall ever be asked." And such was one of the more
special Providences of my life ; for why should I gi\ v it a
humbler name 1
In a few days after, I had taken leave of my young friend
iu good hope, and was tossing in an old and !:;omc\vhat QVhzy
coasting vessel, on my way to the patent bank at Edinbuigh,
to receive there the instructions necessary to the branch ac-
countaut. I had wrought as an operative mason, including
486 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEKS ;
my term of apprenticeship, for fifteen years, — no inconsider
able portion of the more active part of a man's life ; but
the time was not altogether lost. I enjoyed in these years
fully the average amount of happiness, and learned to know
more of the Scottish people than is generally known. Let
me. add, — for it seems to be very much the fashion of the
time to draw dolorous pictures of the condition of the labor-
mg classes, — that from the close of the first vear in which I
wrought as a journeyman, up till I took final leave of the mal
let and chisel, I never knew what it was to want a shilling ;
that my two uncles, my grandfather, and the mason with
whom I served my apprenticeship, — all working men, — had
had a similar experience ; and that it was the experience of
my fixthcr also. I cannot doubt that deserving mechanics
may, in exceptional cases, be exposed to want ; but I can as
little doubt that the cases are exceptional, and that much
of (he suffering of the class is a consequence either of im-
providence on the part of the competently skilled, or of a
course of trifling during the term of apprenticeship, — quite as
common as trifling at school, — that always lands those who
indulge in it in the hapless position of the inferior workman.
I trust 1 may further add, that I was an honest mechanic. It
was one of the maxims of Uncle James, that as the Jews, re-
stricted by law to their forty stripes, always fell sliort of the
legal number by one, lest they should by any accident exceed
it, so a working man, in order to balance any disturbing ele-
ment of selfishness in his disposition, should bring his charges
for work done, slightly but sensibly within what he deemed
the proper mark, and so give, as he used to express himself,
his "customer the cast of the baulk." I do think I acted up
to the maxim ; and that, without injuring my brother work-
men by lowering their prices, I never yet charged an employ-
er fur a piece of work that, fairly measunnl and valued, would
not be rated at a slightly higher sum tiian that in which it
stood in my account.
I had quitted Cromarty for the south late in November, and
dnded at Leith on a bleak December morning, just in time
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 487
fco escape a tremend .us storm of wind and rain frc m the wes^
which, had it caught the smack in which I sailed en the Frith,
would have driven us all back to Fraserburgh, and, as the
vessel was hardly sea-worthy at the time, perhaps a great deal
farther. The passage had been stormy ; and a very noble,
but rather unsocial fellow-passenger — a fine specimen of the
golden eagle — had been sea-sick, and evidently very uncom-
fortable, for the greater part of the way. The eagle must have
Deen accustomed to motion a great deal more rapid than
that of the vessel, but it was motion of a different kind ; and
so he fared as persons do who never feel a qualm when hur-
ried along a railway at the rate of forty miles an hour, but
who yet get very squeamish in a tossing boat, that creeps
through a rough sea, at a speed not exceeding, in the same pe-
riod of time, from four to five knots. The day preceding the
storm was leaden-hued and sombre, and so calm, that though
the little wind there was blew the right way, it carried us
on, from the first light of morning, when we found ourselves
abreast of the Bass, to only near Inchkeith ; for when night
fell, we saw the May light twinkling dimly far astern, and
that of the Inch rising bright and high right ahead. I spent
the greater part of the day on deck, marking, as they came into
view, the various objects, — hill, and island, and seaport town,
of which I had lost sight nearly ten years before ; feeling, the
while, not without some craven shrinkings, that, having got to
the end, in the journey of life, of one very definite stage, with
its peculiar scenery and sets of objects, 1 was just on the eve
of entering upon another stage, in which the scenery and ob-
jects would be all unfamiliar and new. I was now two years
turned of thirty ; and though I could not hold that any very
great amount of natural endowment was essentially necessary
to the bank accountant, I knew that most men turned of thirty
might in vain attempt acquiring the ability even of heading a
pin with the necessary adroitness, and that I might fail, on the
same principle, to pass muster as an accountant. I deter-
mined, however, obstinately to set myself to acquire, whatever
might bg the result ; and entered Edinburgh in something like
488 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
spirits on the strength of the resolution. I had transmitted
the manuscript of my legendary work, several months before,
to Sir Thomas Dick Lauder ; and as he was now on terms, in
its behalf, with Mr. Adam Black, the well-known publisher, I
took the liberty of waiting on him, to see how the negotiation
was speeding. He received me with great kindness ; hospit-
ably urged that I should live with him so long as I resided in
Edinburgh, in his noble mansion, the Grange House ; and, as
an inducement, introduced me to his library, full charged with
the best editions of the best authors, and enriched with many
a rare volume and curious manuscript. " Here," he said, " Ivob-
ertson the historian penned his last work, — the Disquisition ;
and here," opening the door of an adjoining room, "he died."
I, of course, declined the invitation. The Grange House, with
its books, and its pictures, and its hospitable master, so rich
in anecdote, and so full of the literary sympathies, would have
been no place for a poor pupil-accountant, too sure that he
was to be stupid, but not the less determined on being busy.
Besides, on calling immediately after at the bank, I found that
I would have to quit Edinburgh on the morrow for some
country agency, in which 1 might be initiated into the system
of book-keeping proper to a branch bank, and where the busi-
ness transacted would be of a kind similar to what might be
expected in Cromarty. Sir Thomas, however, kindly got Mr.
Black to meet me at diimer; and, in the course of the even-
ing, that enterprising bookseller agreed to undertake the pub-
lication of my work, on terms which the nameless author of
a volume somewhat local in its character, and very local in
its name, might well regard as liberal.
Linlithgow was the place fixed on by the parent bank as
the scene of my initiation into the mysteries of branch bank-
ing ; and, taking my passage in one of the track-boats which
at that time plied on the Canal between Edinburgh and Glas-
gow, I reached the fine old b\irgh as the brit-f winter day was
'joining to a close, and was seated next morning at my desk, not
a hundred yards from the spot on which llamillon ofliothwell-
haugli had taken his stand when he shot the good Ilcgent. I
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 489
was, as I had anticipated, very stupid ; and must ha^^e looked,
I suppose, even more obtuse than I actually was ; for my tem-
porary superioi the agent, having gone to Edinburgh a fe>\ days
after my arrival, gave expression, in the head bank, to the con-
viction that it would be in vain attempting making " yon man"
an accountant. Altogether deficient in the cleverness that can
promptly master isolated details, when in ignorance of their
bearing on the general scheme to which they belong, I could lit-
erally do nothing until I had got a hold of the system ; which,
ocked up in the ponderous tomes of the agency, for some little
time eluded my grasp. At length, however, it gradually un-
rolled itself before me, in all its nice proportions, as one of
perhaps the completest forms of " book-keeping" which the wit
of man has yet devised ; and I then found that the details
which, when 1 had approached them as if from the outside,
had repulsed and beaten me back, could, like the outworks
of a fortress, be commanded from the centre with the utmost
ease. Just as I had reached this stage, the regular accountant
of the branch was called away to an appointment in one of
the joint stock banks of England ; and the agent, again going
into Edinburgh on business, left me for the greater part of a
day in direction of the agency. Little more than a fortnight
had elapsed since he had given his unfavorable verdict ; and
he was now asked how, in the absence of the accountant, he
could have got away from his charge. He had left me in the
office, he said. What! the Incompetent? O, that, he replied,
is all a mistake ; the Incompetent has already mastered our
system. The mechanical ability, however, came but slowly ;
and I never acquired the facility, in running up columns of
summations, of the early taught accountant ; though, making
up by diligence what I wanted in speed, I found, after my
first few weeks of labor in Linlithgow, that I could give, as
of old, an occasional hour to literature and geology. The
proof sheets of my book began to drop in upon me, demanding
revision ; and to a quarry in the neighborhood of the town,
rich in the organisms of the Mountain Limestone, and over-
flown by a bed of basalt so regularly columnar, that one of the
490 MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS;
legends of the district attributed its formation to the " ancient
Pechts," I was able to devote, not without profit, the even
ings of several Saturdays. I formed, at this time, my first
acquaintance with the Palteozoic shells, as they occur in the
rock, — an acquaintance which has since been extended m some
measure through the Silurian deposits. Upper and Lower ; and
these shells, though marked, m the immensely extended ages
of the division to which they belong, by specific, and even
generic variety, I have found exhibiting throughout a unique
family type or pattern, as entirely dift'erent from the family
type of the Secondary shells as both are different from the
family types of the Tertiary and the existing ones. Each of
the three great periods of creation had its own peculiar fash
ion ; and after having acquainted myself with the fashions of
the second and third periods, I was now peculiarly interest-
ed in the acquaintance which I was enabled to commence
with that of the first and earliest also. I foinid, too, in a bed
of trap beside the Edinburgh road, scarce half a mile to the
east of the town, numerous pieces of carbonized lignite, which
still retained the woody structure, — probably the broken re-
mains of some forest of the Carboniferous period, enveloped
in some ancient lava bed, that had rolled over its shrubs and
trees, annihilating all save the fragments of charcoal, which,
locked up in its viscid recesses, had resisted the agency that dis-
sipated the more exposed embers into gas. 1 had found, in like
manner, when residing at Conon-side and Inverness, fragments
of charcoal locked up in the glassy vesicular stone of the old
vitrified forts of Craig Phadrig and Knock Farril, and existing
as the sole representatives of the vast masses of fuel which must
have been ciiiployed in fusing the ponderous walls of these
unique fortalices. And I was now interested to find exactly
the same phenomena among the vitrified rocks of the Coa
Measures. Brief as the days were, I had always a twilight
hour to myself in Linlitligow ; and as the evenings were iino
for the season, the old lioyal Park of the place, with its noble
church, its massive palace, and its sweet lake, still mottled
bv the hereditary swans whose progenitors had sailed over itd
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDTTCATION. 491
waters in the days when James IV. worshipped in the spectre
aisle, formed a delightful place of retreat, little frequented by
the inhabitants of the tOAvn, but only all the more my own
in consequence ; and in which I used to feel the fatigue of
the day's figuring and calculation drop away into the cool
breezy air, like cobwebs from an unfolded banner, as I climb-
ed among the ruins, or sauntered along the glassy shores of
the Joch. My stay at Linlithgow was somewhat prolonged,
by the removal, first, of the accountant of the branch, and then
of its agent, who was called south to undertake the manage-
ment of a newly-erected English bank; but I lost nothing by
the delay. An admirable man of business, one of the offi-
cials of the parent bank in Edinburgh (now its agent in Kir-
esldy. and recently provost of the place), was sent temporari-
ly to conduct the business of the agency ; and I saw, under
him, how a comparative stranger arrived at his conclusions re-
specting the standing and solvency of the various customers
with whom, in behalf of the parent institute, he was called on
to deal. And, finally, my brief term of apprenticeship ex-
pired, — about two months in all, — I returned to Cromarty ;
and, as the opening of the agency there waited only my ar-
rival, straightway commenced my new course as an account-
ant. My minister, when he first saw me seated at the desk,
pronoiniced me " at length fairly caught ;" and I must confess
I did feel as if my latter days were destined to difier from my
earlier ones, well nigh as much as those of Peter of old, who,
when he was "young, girded himself, and walked whither he
would, but who, when old, was girded by others, and carried
ffhither he would not."
Two long years had to pass from this time ere my young
friend and I could be united, — for such were the terms on
which we Had to secure the consent of her mother ; but,
with our union in the vista, we could meet more freely than
before ; and the time passed not unpleasantly away. Foi
the first six months of my new employment, I found myself
unable to make my old use of the leisure hours which, 1
found, 1 could s'Ul command. There was nothing very in
492 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS
tellectual, in the higher sense of the term, in recording the
bank's transactions, or in summing up columns of figures, or
in doing business over the counter ; and yet the fatigue induced
was a fatigue, not of sinew and muscle, but of nerve and brain,
which, if it did not quite disqualify me for my former intel
lectual amusements, at least greatly disinclined me towards
them, and rendered me a considerably more indolent sort of
person than either before or since. It is asserted by artists of
discriminating eye, that the human hand bears an expression
stamped upon it by the general character, as surely as the hu-
man face ; and I certainly used to be struck, during this tran
sition period, by the relaxed and idle expression that had on
the sudden been assumed by mine. And the slackened hands
represented, I too surely felt, a slackened mind. The unin
tellectual toils of the laboring man have been occasionally
represented as less favorable to mental cultivation than the.
semi-intellectual employments of that class immediately above
him, to which our clerks, shopmen, and humbler accountants
belong ; but it will be found that exactly the reverse is the
case, and that, though a certain conventional gentility of man-
ner and appearance on the side of the somewhat higher class
may serve to conceal the fixct, it is on the part of the labor-
ing man that the real advantage lies. The mercantile account-
ant or law-clerk, bent over his desk, his foculties concentrat-
ed on his columns of figures, or on the pages which he has
been carefully engrossing, and unable to proceed one step in
his work without devoting to it all his attention, is in greatly
lo,ss favorable circumstances than the ploughman or operative
mechanic, whose mind is free though his body labors, and who
thus finds, in the very rudeness of his emplovments, a con;
pensation for their hiiml)le and laborious character. And it
will be found that the humbler of the two classes is much more
largely represented in our literature than the class by one degree
less humble. IJimged against the poor clerk of Nottingham,
Henry Kirke White, and the still more ha|tless Edinburgh en-
grossing clerk, lioberl Ferguson, with a very few olliers. we lind
in our literature a numerous and vigorous phalanx, composed
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 493
of men such as the Ayrshire Ploughman, the Ettrick Shepherd,
the Fifeshire Foresters, the sailors Dampier and Falconer, —
Bunyan, Bloomfield, Ramsay, Tannahill, Alexander Wilson,
John Clare, Allan Cunningham, and Ehenezer Elliott. Aind J
wae taught at this time to recognize the simple princij)lo on
which the greater advantages lie on the side of the liumhler
olass. Gradually, however, as I became more inured to a se-
dentary life, my mind recovered its spring, and my old ability
returned of employing my leisure hours, as before, in intcllec*
tiial exertion. Meanwhile my legi'ndary volume issued from
the press, and was, with a few exceptions, very favorably re-
ceived by the critics. Leigh Hunt gave it a kind and genial
notice in his Journal ; it was characterized by Robert Cham-
bers not less fivoraljly in his ; and Dr. Iletherington, the fu-
ture historian of the Church of Scotland and of the Westminster
Assembly of Divines, — at that time a licentiate of the Church,
— made it the subject of an elaborate and very friendly critique
in the Presbyterian Revien. Nor was I less gratified by the
terms in which it was spoken of by the late Baron Hume, the
nephew and residuary legatee of the historian, — himself very
much a critic of the old school, — in a note to a north-country
friend. He described it as a work " written in an English style
which*' he " had begun to regard as one of the lost arts." But
It attained to no great popularity. For being populor, its
subjects were too local, and its treatment of them perhaps too
quiet. My publishers tell me, however, that it not only con-
tinues to sell, but moves off considerably better in its later
editions than it did on its first appearance.
The branch bank furnished me with an entirely now and cu
rious field of observation, and formed a very admirable school.
For the cultivation of a shrewd common sense, a bank oflice
is one of perhaps the best schools in the world. Mere clever,
ness serves often only to befool its possessor. He gets en
tangled among his own ingenuities, and is caught as in a net
But ingenuities, plausibilities, special pleadings, all that make
the stump-orator great, must be brushed aside by the banker.
The q-estior with him comes always to be a sternly naked
494 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
one : — Is, or is not, Mr. a person fit to be trusted ■with
the bank's money? Is his sense of monetary obligation nice,
or obtuse 1 Is his judgment good, or the contrary ? Are hia
speculations sound, or precarious 1 What are liis resources 1 —
what his liabilities 1 Is he facile in lending the use of his name 1
Does he float on wind bills, as boys swim on bladders ? or is
his paper representative of only real business transactions ?
Such are the topics which, in the recesses of his own mind, the
banker is called on to discuss ; and he must discuss them, not
merely plausibly or ingeniously, but solidly and truly ; seeing
that error, however illustrated or adorned, or however capable
of being brilliantly defended in speech or pamphlet, is sure al-
ways with him to take the form of pecuniary loss. My supe-
rior in the agency — Mr. Ross, a good and honorable-minded
man, of sense and experience — was admirably fitted for cal-
culations of this kind ; and I learned, both in his behalf, and
from the pleasure which I derived from the exercise, to take
no little interest in them also. It was agreeable to mark the
moral efiects of a well conducted agency such as his. How-
ever humbly honesty and good sense may be rated in the great
world generally, they always, when united, bear premium in a
judiciously-managed bank office. It was interesting enough,
too. to see quiet silent men, like " honest Farmer Flambwrgh,"
getting wealthy, mainly because, though void of display, they
were not wanting in integrity and judgment ; and clever, un-
scrupulous follows, like " Ephraim Jenkinson," who " spoke
to good purpose," becoming poor, very much because, with
all their smartness, they lacked sense and principle. It was
worthy of being noted, too, that in looking around fiom my
peculiar point of view on the agricullur.i! classes, I found the
farmers, on really good farms, usually thriving, if not them-
Belves in fault, however high their rents ; and that, on the
other hand, farmers on sterile fiirms were not thriving, how-
ever moderate the demands of the landlord. It was more
melancholy, Imt not less instructive, t© learn, from authori-
ties whose evidence could not he questioned, — hills j)aid by
small irstahncnts, or lying under protest, — that the small
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 49.*^
farm system, so excellent in a past age, was getting rather un-
suited for the energetic competition of the present one : and
that the small farmers — a comparatively comfortable class
some sixty or eighty years before, who used to give doweries
to their daughters, and leave well-stocked farms to their sons —
were flilling into straitened circumstances, and becoming, how
ever respectable elsewhere, not very good men in the bank,
[t was interesting, too, to mark the character and capabilities
of the various branches of trade carried on in the place, — hoi»
the business of its shop-keepers fell always into a very few
hands, leaving to the greater number, possessed, apparently, of
the same advantages as their thriving compeers, only a mere
show of custom, — how precarious in its nature the fishing trade
always is, especially the herring fishery, not more from the un-
certainty of the fishings themselves, than from the fluctuations
of the markets, — and how in the pork trade of the place a
judicious use of the bank's money enabled the curers to trade
virtually on a doubled capital, and to realize, with the deduc-
tion of the bank discounts, doubled profits. In a few months
my acquaintance with the character and circumstances of the
business men of the district became tolerably extensive, and
essentially correct ; and on two several occasions, when my
superior left me for a time to conduct the entire business of
the agency, I was fortunate enough not to discount for him a
single bad bill. The implicit confidence reposed in me by so
good and sagacious a man was certainly quite enough of it-
self to set me on my metal. There was, however, at least one
item in my calculations in which I almost always found my-
self incorrect : I found I could predict every bankruptcy in
the district ; but I usually fell short from ten to eighteen
months of the period in which the event actually took place.
I could pretty nearly determine the time when the difficulties
and entanglements which I saw ought to have produced their
proper eflfects, and landed in failure ; but I missed taking into
account the desperate eflbrts which men of energetic tempera-
ment make in such circumstances, and which, to the signal
injury of *heir fi'iends and the loss of their creditors, succeed
496 Ml' SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS;
usually in staving off the catastrophe fo7 a season. In short,
the school of the branch bank was a very admirable school ;
and I profited so far by its teachings, that when questions con-
nected with banking are forced on the notice of the public,
and my brother editors have to apply for articles on the sub-
ject to literary bankers, I find I can write my banking articles
for myself
The seasons passed by ; the two years of probation came to
a close, like all that had gone before ; and after a long, and, in
its earlier stages, anxious courtship of in all five years, I re-
ceived from the hand of Mr. Ross that of my young friend, in
her mother's house, and was united to her by my minister, Mr.
Stewart. And then, setting out, immediately after the cere-
mony, for the southern side of the Moray Frith, we spent two
happy days together in Elgin ; and, under the guidance of one
of the most respected citizens of the place, — my kind friend
Mr. Isaac Forsyth, — visited the more interesting objects con-
nected with the town or its neighborhood. lie introduced us
to the Elgin Cathedral ; — to the veritable John Shanks, the
eccentric keeper of the building, who could never hear of the
Wolf of Badenoch, who had burnt it four hundred years be-
fore, without flying into a rage, and becoming what the dead
iTian would have deemed libellous ; — to the font, too, under a
dripfting vault of ribbed stone, in which an insane mother used
X) sing to sleep the ])0or infant, who, afterwards becoming
Lieutenant-General Anderson, built for poor paupers like his
mother, and poor children such as he himself had once been,
the princely institution which bears his name. And then, after
passing from the stone font to tl\^ institution itself, with its
happy children, and its very unhappy old men and women,
Mr. Forsyth conveyed us to tlu' |)astoral, semi-Highland valley
of Pluscardine, with its beautiful wood-embosomed priory,—
one of perhaps the finest and most symmetrical specimens of
the unornameitod Gothic of the times of Alexander 11. to be
seen anywliere in Scotland. Finally, after passing a delight-
ful evening at his hospitable board, and meeting, among other
(juowts, my friend Mr. Patrick Dull", — the author of the " Goo-
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 497
log) of Moray," — I returned with my young wife to Cro
marty, and found her mother, Mr. Ross, Mr. Stewart, and a
party of friends, waiting for us in the house which my facher
had built for himself forty years before, but which it had been
his destiny never to inhabit. It formed our home for the three
following years. The subjoined verses, — prose, I suspect,
rather than poetry, — for the mood in which they were written
was too earnest a one to be imaginative, I introduce, as repre-
sentative of my feelings at this time : they were written pre
vious to m}' man-iage, on one of the blank pages of a pocket-
Bible, with which I presented my future wife : —
TO LYDrA.
Lydia, since ill by sordid gift
Were love like mine express'd,
Take Heaven's besl boon, this Sacred Book,
From him who loves thee best.
Love strong as that 1 bear to thee,
Were sure unaptly told
By dying flowers, or lifeless gems.
Or soul-ensnaring gold.
1 know 'iwas He who formed this heart
Who seeks this heart to guide ;
For why ?— lie bids me love thee more
Than all on earth beside.*
Yes, LydisL, bids me cleave to thee,
As long this heart has cleav'd :
Would, dearest, that His other laws
Were half so well received 1
Full many a change, my only love,
On huniaa life attends ;
And at the cold sepulchral stone
Th' uncertain vista ends.
How best to bear each various change,
Should weal or woe befall,
To love, live, die, this Sacred Book,
Lydia, it tells us all.
• " For this Ciuiso shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to hli
irif»; and the twain shall be one desh."
•198 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
O, much-beloved, our coming day
To Qs is all unknown ;
But sure we stand a broader mark
Than they who stand alone.
One knows it all : not His an eye,
Like ours, obscured and dim;
And knowing us. He gives this book,
That we may know of Him.
His words, my love, are gracious worda,
And gracious thoughts express:
He cares e'en for each liitle bird
That wings the blue abyss.
Of coming wants and woes He thought,
Ere want or woe began ;
And took to Him a human iieart,
That He might feel for man.
Then O, my first, my only love.
The kindliest, dearest, best!
On Him may all our hopes repont, i
On Him our wishes rest.
His be the future's doubtful day,
I^t joy or grief befall :
In life or death, in weal or wo%
Oar CkKl, our guidoi our aU.
OR. THE STORY OF M:v EDUCATION. 499
CHAPTEE XXIV.
" Life is a drama of a few brief acts ;
The actors shift, the scene is often chang'd
Pauses and revolutions intervene,
The mind is set to many a varied tune,
And jars and plays in harmony by turns."
Alexander Bethurb
TuoiMJH my wife continued, after our marriage, to teach a
few pupils, the united earnings of the household did not much
exceed a hundred pounds per annum, — not quite so large a
sum as I had used to think it a few years before ; and so
I set myself to try whether I could not turn my leisure hours
to some account, by writing for the periodicals. My old in-
ability of pressing for work continued to be as embarrassing as
ever, and, save for a chance engagement of no very promising
kind, which presented itself to me unsolicited about this time,
I might have failed in procuring the employment which 1
sought. An ingenious self-taught mechanic, — the late Mr.
John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed, — after making
good his upward way from his original place at the composi-
tor's frame, to the editorship of a provincial paper, started, in
the beginning of 1835, a weekly periodical, consisting of " Bor
der Tales," which, as he possessed the story-telling ability,
met with considerable success. lie did not live, however, to
complete the first yearly volume ; the forty -ninth weekly num-
ber intimated his death j but as the publication had been a
500 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,
not uc profitable one, the publisher resoxved on carrying it on ;
and it was stated in a brief notice, which embodied a few par-
ticulars of Mr, Wilson's biography, that, his matei-ials being un-
exhausted, "tales yet untold lay in reserve, to keep alive his
memory.'" And in the name of Wilson the publication was
kept up for, I believe, five years. It reckoned among its con-
tributers the two Bethunes, John and Alexander, and the late
Professor Gillespie of St. Andrew's, with several other WTiters,
none of whom seem to have been indebted to any original mat-
ter collected by its first editor ; and I, who, at the publisher's
request, wrote for it, during the first year of my marriage, tales
enough to fill an ordinary volume, had certainly to provide all
my materials for myself The whole brought me about twenty-
five pounds, — a considerable addition to the previous hundred
and odds of the household, but, for the work done, as inadequate
a remuneration as ever poor writer got in the days of Grub
Street. My tales, however, though an English critic did me
the honor of selecting one of them as the best in the monthly
part in which it appeared, were not in the highest order ; it
took a great deal of writing to earn the three guineas, which
were the stipulated wages for filling a weekly number ; and
though poor Wilson may have been a fine enough fellow in
his way, one had no great encouragement to do one's very best,
in order to " keep alive his memory." In all such matters,
according to Sir Walter Scott and the old proverb, " every
herring should hang by its own head."
I can show, however, that at least one of my contributions
did gain Wilson some little credit. In the perilous attempt
to bring out, in the dramatic form, the characters of two of
^ ur national poets, — Burns and Fergusson, — I wrote for the
" Tales" a series of " Recollections," drawn ostensibly from
the memory of one who had been personally acquainted with
them both, but in reality based on my own conceptions of
the men, as exhil)ited in their lives and writings. And in
an elaborate life of Fergusson, lately published, 1 find a bor-
rowed extract from my contribution, and an approving reP
ercncc to the whole, coupled with a piece of information eu-
OR, THE STORY OF MY El UCAriON. 50i
tirely new to me. " These Recollections," says the biographer,
" are truly interesting and touching, and were the result of
various communications made to Mr. Wilson, whose pains-
taking researches I have had frequent occ^ision to verify in the
course of my owi ." Alas, no ! Poor Wilson was more than
a twelvemonth in his grave ere the idea of producing these
" Recollections" first struck the writer, — a person to whom
no communications on the subject were ever made by any
one, and who, unassisted save by one of the biographies of
the poet, — that in Chambers' " Lives of Illustrious Scotsmen,"
— wi'ote full two hundred miles from the scene of his sad
and brief career. The same individual who, in Mr. Wil-
son's behalf, is so complimentary to my " pains-taking re-
search," is, I find, very severe on one of Fergusson's previous
biographers, — the scholarly Dr. Irving, author of the Life of
Buchanan, and the lives of the older Scottish Poets, — a
gentleman who, whatever his estimate of the poor poet may
have been, would have spared no labor in elucidating the
various incidents which composed his history. The man of
research is roughly treated, and a compliment awarded to tlie
diligence of the man of none. But it is always thus with
Fame.
" Some she disgraced, and some with Vioncrs crown'd ;
Unlike successes equal merils found :
So her blind sister, tickle I'ortuiie, reigns,
And, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains."
In the memoir of John Bethune by his brother Alexandei,
the reader is told that he was much depressed and disap-
pointed, about a twelvemonth or so previous to his decease,
by the rejection of several of his stories in succession, which
weie returned to him, " with an editor's sentence of death
passed upon them." I know not whether it was by the edi-
tor of the " Tales of the Borders" that sentence in the case was
passed ; but I know he sentenced some of mine, which were,
I dare say, not very good, though well nigh equal, I thought,
to most of his own. Instead, however, of yielding to de-
pression, like poor Bethune, I simply resolved to write fo*
502 MY SCHOOLS AND S(. "SOOlM ASTERS ;
hnn no more ; anc straightway made an offer of my services
to Mr. Robert Chambers, by whom they were accepted ; &u.(\
during the two following years I occasionally contributed to
his Journal, on greatly more liberal terms than those on which
I had labored for the other periodical, and with n\y name
attached to my several articles. I must be permitted to avail
myself of the present opportunity of acknowledging the kind-
ness of Mr. Chambers. There is perhaps no other \\-i-iter of
the present day who has done so much to encourage Strug
gling talent as this gentleman. I have for many years ob-
served, that publications, however obscure, in which he finds
aught really praiseworthy, are secure always of getting, in his
widely-circulated periodical, a kind approving word, — that his
criticisms invariably bear the stamp of a benevolent natur
which experiences more of pleasure in the recognition of merit
than in the detection of defect, — that his kindness does not
stop with these cheering notices, for he finds time, in the
course of a very busy life, to write many a note of encourage-
ment and advice to obscure men in whom he recognizes a
spirit superior to their condition, — and that the compositions
of writers of this meritorious class, when submitted to him
editorially, rarely fail, if really suitable for his journal, to find
a place in it, or to be remunerated on a scale that invariably
bears reference to the value of the communications, — not to
the circumstances of their authors.
I can scarce speak of my contributions to the periodicals at
this time as forming any part of my education. I acquired, in
their composition, a somewhat readier command of the pen than
before; but they, of course, tendered rather to the dissipation of
previous stories than to the accumulation of new ones : nor did
they give exercise to those higher faculties of mind which 1
deemed it most my interest to cultivate. My real education at
the time was that in wliich I was gradually bocomiiii,' initiated
hehind the bank-cuimtiT, as my experience of the liusiiiess of
the district extended ; and that in which 1 contrived to pickup
•n my leisure evenings along the shores. A rich ichthyolitio
ieposit of the Old Ued !Saiid.stone lies, us 1 have already said,
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 505
within less than half a mile of tlie town of Cromarty : and
when fatigued with my calculations in the bank, I used to
find it delightful relaxation to lay open its fish by scores, and to
study their peculiarities as exhibited in their various states of
keeping, until I at length becamcable to determine their several
genera and species from even the minutest fragments. The
number of ichthyolites which that deposit of itself furnished, —
a patch little more than forty yards square, — seemed altogether
astonishing: itsuppliedmewith specimens atalmostevery visit,
for ten years together ; nor, though, after I left Cromarty for
Edinburgh, it was often explored by geologic tourists, and by a
few cultivators of science in the place, was it wholly exhausted
for ten years more. The ganoids of the second age of vertebrate
existeilce must have congregated as thickly upon that spot in
the times of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, as herrings ever
do now, in their season, on the best fishing-banks of Caithness
or the Moray Frith. I was for some time greatly puzzled in
my attempts to restore these ancient fishes, by the peculiari-
ties of their organization. It was in vain I examined every
species of fish caught by the fishermen of the place, from the
dog-fish and the skate, to the herring and the mackerel. I
could find in our recent fishes no such scales of enamelled bone
as those which had covered the Dipterians and the Celacanths ;
and no such plate-encased animals as the various species of
Coccosteus or Pterichthys. On the other hand, with the ex-
ception of a double line of vertebral processes in the Coccos-
teus, I could find in the ancient fishes no internal skeleton :
they had apparently worn all their bones outside, where the
ciustaceans wear their sjiiells, and were furnished inside with
but frameworks of perishable cartilage. It seemed somewhat
strange, too, that the geologists who occasionally came my way,
— some of them men of eminence, — seemed to know even less
about my Old Red fishes and their peculiarities of structure,
than ] did myself I had represented the various species of
the deposit simply by numerals, which not a few of the speci-
mens of my collection still retain on their faded labels ; and
waited on until some one should come the way learned enough
504 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOODMASTERS ;
to substitute for my provisional figures, words by which to
designate them ; but the necessary learning seemed wanting,
and I at length came to find that I had got into a terra incog-
nita in the geological field, the greater portion of whose or-
ganisms were still unconnected with human language. They
had no representative among the vocables.
I formed my first imperfect acquaintance with the recent
»anoidal fishes in 1836, from a perusal of the late Dr. Hih-
Dert's paper on the deposit of Burdiehouse, which I owed to
the kindness of Mr. George Anderson. Dr. Hibbert, in illus-
trating the fishes of the Coal Measures, figured and briefly
described the Lepidosteus of the American rivers as a still
surviving fish of the early type ; but his description of the
animal, though supplemented shortly after by that ctf Dr.
Buckland in the Bridgewater Treatise, carried me but a little
way. I saw that two of the Old Red genera, — Osteolepsis and
Diplopterus, — resembled the American fish externally. It will
be seen that the first-mentioned of these ancient ichthyolites
bears a name compounded, though, in the reverse order, of ex
actly the same words. But while I found the skeleton of the
Lepidosteus described as remarkably hard and solid, I could
detect in the Osteopolisand its kindred genus no trace of internal
skeleton at all. The Cephalaspean genera, too, — Coccosteus and
Pterichthys, — greatly puzzled me : 1 could find no living ana
logues lor them ; and so, in my often-repeated attem})ts at res
toration, i had to build them up plate by plate, as a child seta
up its dissected map or picture bit by bit, — every new speci-
men that turned up furnishing a key for some part previously
unknown, — until at length, after many an abortive effort, the
creatures rose up before me hi their strange, unwonted pro-
portions, as they had lived, untold ages beiore, in the prim-
leval seas. The extraordinary form of Ptcrichthys filled me
with astonishment; and, with its arched car[»ace and fiat phi*,
iron restored before lue, I leaptMl to the coiiehision, ihat asthe
recent Lepidosteus, witii its ancient represeiitrttives of the Old
Ked Sai)(lst<;ne, were sauroid fishes, — strange connecting links
oetween fishes and alligators, — so i\ui Pterichthys was a Chel(»-
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION 505
nian fish, — a connecting link between the fish and the tortoise.
A gurnard, — insinuated so far through the shell of a small tor-
toise as to suifer its head to protrude from the anterior open-
ing, furnished with oar-like paddles instc'ad of pectoral fins
and with its caudal fin clipped to a point, — would, I found,
form no inadequate representative of this strangest of fishes.
And when, some years after, I had the pleasure of introducing
't to the notice of Agassiz, I found that, with all his world-
wide experience of its class, it was as much an object of won-
der to him as it had been to myself. " It is impossible," we
find him saying, in his great work, " to see aught more bi-
zarre in all creation than the PtericlUhyan genus : the same
astonishment that Cuvier felt in examining the Plesiosaurus,
I myself experienced, when Mr. H. Miller, the first discoverer
of these fossils, showed me the specimens which he had de
tected in the Old Red Sandstone of Cromarty." And there
were peculiarities about the Coccosteus that scarce less excited
my wonder than the general from of the Fterichthys, and
which, when I first ventured to describe them, were regarded
by the higher authorities in Palaeontology as mere blunders on
the pa-rt of the observer. I have, however, since succeeded
in demonstrating that, if blunders at all, — which I greatly
doubt, for Nature makes very few, — it was Nature herself that
was in error, not the observer. In this strange Coccostean genus,
Nature did place a group of opposing teeth in each ranms
of the lower jaw, just in the line of the symphysis, — an ar-
rangement unique, so far as it is yet known, in the vertebrate
division of creation, and which must have rendered the mouth of
these creatures an extraordinary combination of the horizontal
mouth proper to the vertebrata, and of the vertical mouth
proper to the crustaceans. It was favorable to the integrity of
my work of restoration, that the press was not waiting for me,
and that when portions of the creatures on which ^ wrought
were wanting, or plates turned up whose places I was unable
to determine, 1 could la) aside my self-imposed task for the
time, and only resume it when some new-found specimen sup
plied me with the materials requisite for carrying it on. And
506 MY SCHOOLS AKD SCHOOLMASTERS;
SO the restorations which I completed in 1840, and published
in 1841, were found, by our highest authorities in 1848, after
they had been set aside for nearly six years, to be essentially
the true ones after all. I see, however, that one of the most
fanciful and monstrous of all the interim restorations of Pter-
ichthys given to the world, — that made by Mr. Joseph DinkeJ
bi 1844 for the late Dr. Mantell, and published in the " Medala
of Creation," has been reproduced in the recent ilhistrated edi-
tion of the " Vestiges of Creation." But the ingenious authoT
of that work would scarce act prudently were he to stake the
soundness of his hypothesis on the integrity of the restora-
tion. For my own part, I consent, if it can be shown that
the Pterichthys which once lived and moved on this ancient
globe of ours ever either rose or sank into the Pterichthys of
Mr. Dinkel, freely and fully to confess, not onlj^ the possi-
bility, but also the actuality of the transmutation of both
species and genera. I am first, however, prepared to demon-
strate, before any competent jury of Paleeontologists in the
world, that not a single plate or scale of Mr. Dinkel's restora-
tion represents those of the fish which he profi-ssed to restore ;
that the same judgment aj^plics equally to his restoration of
Coccosteus ; and that, instead of reproducing in his figures the
true forms of ancient Ccphalaspcans, he has merely given, in-
stead, the likeness of things that never were "in the heaven
above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the
earth."
The place in the geologic scale, as certainly as the forms and
characters, of these ancient fishes had to be determined. Mr.
George Anderson had informed me, as early as 1 834, that some
of tliem were identical with the ichthyolites of the Ganirie de-
posit; but then the place of the Ganirie deposit was still to
fix. It had been recently referred to the same geological hori-
zon as the Carboniferous Limestone, and was regarded as lying
unconformable to the OM Kcd Sandstone of the district in
which it occurs ; but, wholly dissatisticd with the evidence ad-
duced, I continued my search, and, though the process was
a slow cue, saw the position of the Cromar y beds gradually
OR. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 507
appioximating towards determination. It was not, however
until the autumn of 1837 that I got them fliirly fixed down
to tlie Old Red Sandstone, and not until the winter of 1839
that 1 was able conclusively to demonstrate their place in the
base of the system, little more than a hundred feet, and in
one part not more than eighty feet, above the upper strata of
the Great Conglomerate. I had often wished, during my ex-
plorations, to be able to extend my field of observation into
the neighboring counties, in order to determine whether
could not possess myself, at a distance, of the evidence which,
for a time at least, I failed to find at home ; but my daily
engagements in the bank fixed me down to Cromarty and
its neighborhood ; and I found myself somewhat in the cir-
cumstances of a tolerably lively beetle stuck on a pin, that,
though able, with a little exertion, to spin round its centre,
is yet wholly unable to quit it. I acquired, however, at the
close of 1837, in the late Dr. John Makolmson of Madras, a
noble auxiliary, who could expatiate freely over the regions
virtually barred against me. He had been led to visit Cro-
marty by a brief description of its geology, rather picturesque
than scientific, which had appeared in my legendary volume ;
and after I had introduced him to its ichthyolitic beds on
both sides of the Hill and at Eathie, and acquainted him with
their character and organisms, he set himself to trace out the
resembling deposits of the neighboring shires of Banff, Moray,
and Nairn. And in little more than a fortnight he had detect-
ed the ichthyolites in numerous localities all over an Old Red
Sandstone tract, which extends from the pr^nary districts of
Banff to near the field of Culloden. The Old Red Sandstone of
the north, hitherto deemed so poor in fossils, he foinid, — with
the Cromarty deposits as his key, — teeming with organic re-
mains. In the spring of 1838, Dr. Malcolmson visited Eng-
land and the Continent, and introduced some of my Cepha-
laspean fossils to the notice of Agassiz, and some of the evi-
dence which I had laid before him regarding their place in
the scale, to Mr. (now Sir Roderick) Murchison. And I had
•,he honor, in consequence, of corresponding with both these
508 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
distinguished men ; and the satisfaction of knowing, that bj
both, the fruit of my labor's was deemed important. I ob
serve that Humboldt, in his " Cosmos," specially refers to the
judgment of Agassiz on the extraordinary character of the
new zoological link with which I had ftirnished him ; and I
find Murchison, in his great work on the Silurian System, pub-
lished in 1839, laying no little emphases on the stratigraphi'
csal fact. After referring to the previously formed opinion thai
the Gamrie deposit, with its ichthyolites, was not an Old Red
one, he goes on to say, — " On the other hand, I have recently
been informed by Dr. Malcolmson,thatMr. Miller of Cromarty
(who has made some highly interesting discoveries near that
place) pointed out to him nodules, resembling those of Gam-
rie, and containing similar fishes, in highly-inclined strata,
which are interpolated in, and completely subordinate to, the
great mass of old Red Sandstone of Ross and Cromarty. This
important observation will, I trust, be soon communicated to
the Geological Society, for it strengthens the inference of M.
Agassiz respecting the epoch during which the Cheb-acanthus
and Cheirolepis lived." All this will, I am afraid, api)ear
tolerably weak to the reader, and somewhat more than toler-
ably tedious. Let him remember, however, that the only
merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of patient re-
search, — a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass
me; and that this huml^ic faculty of patience, when rightly
directed, nuiy lead to more extiaordiiiary developments of
idea than even genius itself What 1 had been slowly de-
ciphering were the ideds of God as developed in the mechan-
ism and framework of his creatures, during the second age of
vertebrate existence ; and one portion of my in<|uiries deter-
mined the date of these ideas, and another their character.
Many of the best sections of the Sutors and the adjacent
hills, with their associated deposits, cannot be examined with-
out boat; and so I purchased for a few pounds a light little
yawl, fiirnishtid with mast and sail, and that rowed four oars,
to enable me to carry out my exi)lorations. It made me free
of the Cromartv and Moray Friths for some six or eight miJei
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 509
from the town, and afforded me many a pleasant evening's
excuT^ion to the deep-sea caves and skerries, and the pic-
turescjue surf-wasted stacks of the granitic wall of rock whioh
runs in the Ben Nevis line of elevation, from Shadwick on
the east to the Scarfs Crag on the west. 1 know not a riclici-
tract for the geologist. Independently of the interest that at-
taches to its sorely-contorted granitic gneiss, — which seems, aa
Murchison shrewdly remarks, to have been protruded through
the sedimentary deposits in a solid state, as a fractured hone
is sometimes protruded though the integuments, — there occurs
along the range three several deposits of the Old Eed Ichthyo-
lites, and three several deposits of the Lias, besides the sub-
aqueous ones, with two insulated skerries, wliich I am inclined
to regard as outliers of the Oolite. These last occur in the
form of half tide rocKs, very dangerous to the mariner, which
lie a full half mile from the shore, and can be visited with safety
only at low-water during dead calms, when no ground-swell
comes rolling in from the sea. I have set out as early as two
o'clock in a fine summer morning for these skerries, and, after
spending several hours upon them, have been seated at the
bank desk before ten ; but these were mornings of very hard
work. It was the long Saturday afternoons that were my fa-
vorite seasons of exploration ; and when the weather was fine,
my wife would often accompany me in these excursions; and we
not un frequently anchored our skift' in some rocky bay, or over
some fishing bank, and, provided with rods and lines, caught,
ere our return, a basket of rock-cod or coal-fish for supper, that
always seemed to eat better than the fish supplied us in the mar
ket. These were happy holidays. Shelley predicates of a day
of exquisite beauty, that it would continue to " live like joy in
memory." I do retain recollections of these evenings spent in
my little skifl" — recollections mingled with a well remembered
imagery of blue seas and purple hills, and a sun lit towu in
the distance, and tall wood-crested precipices nearer at hand,
which flung lengthening shadows across shore and sea, — that
not merely represent enjoyments which have been, but that,
IE certain moods of the L.ind, take the form of enjoyment still.
510 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ,
They are favored spots in the chequered prospect of the past,
on which the sunshine of memory falls more brightly than on
most of the others.
When thus employed, there broke out very unexpectedly, a
second war with the Liberal Moderates of the town, in which,
unwillingly rather than otherwise, I had ultimately to engage.
The Sacrament of the Supper is celebrated in most of the
parish churches of the north of Scotland only once a year ; and,
as many of the congregations worship at that time in the open
air, the summer and autumn seasons are usually selected foi
the *' occasion," as best fitted for open-air meetings. As, how-
ever, the celebration is preceded and followed by week-day
preachings, and as on one of these week-days — the Thursday
preceding the Sacramental Sabbath — no work is done, Kirk-
Sessions usually avoid fixing their sacrament in a busy time,
such as the time of harvest in the rural districts, or of the her-
ring-fishing in the seaport towns ; and as the parish of Cromarty
has both its rural population and its fishing one, the Kirk-Ses-
sion of the place have to avoid both periods. And so the early
part of July, ere the herring-fishing or the harvest comes on, is
the time usually fixed upon for the Cromarty Sacrament. In
this year, however (1838), it so chanced that the day appointed
for the Queen's coronation proved coincident with the Sacra-
mental Thursday, and the Liberal Moderate party urged upon
the Session that the preparations for the Sacrament should give
way to the rejoicings for the Coronation. We had not been much
accustomed to rejoicings of the kind in the north since the good
old times when respectable Tory gentlemen used to show them
selves drunk in i)ublic on the King's birth-day, in order to de-
monstrate their loyalty : the coronation days of both George IV.
and W illiam IV. had passed off as quietly as Sabbaths ; and the
Session, holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray
for their yo\ing Ciueen at church, and then quietly drink her
health when they got home, as to gruw glorious in her behalf
m taverns and tap-rooms, refused to alter their day. Believing
».hat, though essentially in the right, they were yet politically in
'he wrong, a'^d that a plausible case might be made out againsi
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 5H
ilieni by the newspaper press, I waited on my minister, and
urged him to give way to the liberals, and have his preparatiim-
day changed fi cm Thursday to Friday. He seemed quite will-
ing enough to act on the suggestion ; nay, he had made a simi-
lar one, he told me, to his Session ; but the devout eldership,
strong in the precedents of centuries, had declined to subordinate
the religious services of the Kirk to the wassail and merriment
sanctioned by the State. And so they determined on keeping
their day of sacramental preparation on the Thursday, as theij
fothers had done. Meanwhile, the Liberals held what was very
properly termed a public meeting, seeing that, though the pub-
lic had failed to attend it, the public had been quite at liberty
to do so, nay, had even been specially invited ; and there appear-
ed in the provincial newspapers a long report of its proceedings,
including five speeches, — all written by a legal gentleman, —
in which it was designated a meeting of the inhabitants of the
town and parish of Cromarty. The resolutions were, of course,
of the most enthusiastically loyal character. There was not a
member of the meeting who was not prepared to spend upon
himself the last drop of his bottle of port in her majesty's behalf.
Thursday came, — the Thursday of the Sacrament and of the
coronation ; and, with ninety-nine hundredths of the church-
going population of my townsfolk, I went to church as usual. The
parochial resolutioners, amounting in all to ten, were, I can
honestly avouch, scarce at all missed in a congregation of near
ly as many hundreds. About mid-day, however, we could
hear the muffled report of their carronades ; and, shortly after
the service was over, and we had returned to our homes,
there passed through the streets a forlorn little group of indi
viduals, that looked exceedingly like a press-gang, but was in
reality intended for a procession. Though joined by a pro-
prietor from a neighboring parish, a lawyer from a neigh
boring burgh, a small coast-guard party, with its command
ing officer, and two half-pay Episcopalian officers beside, the
number who walked, includuig boys, did not exceed twenty
five persons ; and of these, as I have said, only ten were
parishioners The processionists had a noble dinner in th
512 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
head inn of the place, — merrier than even dinners of celel r*
tion usually are, as it was, of course, loyalty and public spirit
to ignore the special claim upon the day asserted by the
Church ; and the darkening evening saw a splendid bonfire
blazing from the brae-head. And the Liberal newspapers
south and north taking part with the processionists, in many
a paragraph and short leader, representing their frolic, — for such
it was, and a very foolish one, — as a splendid triumph of the
people of Cromarty over Presby terial bigotry and clerical domi-
nati Dn. Nay, so bad did the case of my minister and his Ses-
sion appear, thus placed in opposition to at once the people and
the Queen, that the papers on the other side foiled to take it
up. A well-written letter on the subject by my wife, which
fairly stated the facts, was refused admission into even the
ecclesiastico-Conservative journal, specially patronized, at the
time, by the Scottish Chui'ch ; and my minister's friends and
brethren in the south could do little else than marvel at what
they deemed his wondrous imprudence.
I had anticipated, from the fii'st, that his position was to
be a bad one ; but I ill liked to see him with his back to
the wall. And though I had determined, on the rejection
of my counsel, to take no part in the quarrel, I now resolved
to try whether I could not render it evident that he was really
not at issue with his people, but with merely a very incon-
siderable clique among them, who had never liked him ; and
that it was much a joke to describe him as disaffected to his
sovereign, simply because he had held his preparation ser-
vices on the day of her coronation. In order to make good
my first point, I took the unpardonabk^ liberty of giving the
names in full, in a letter which appeared in our northern news-
papers, of every individual who walked in the procession, and
represented themselves as the people; and challenged the ad-
dition of even a single name to a list ludicrously brief. And in
making good the second, I fiiirly succeeded, as tlicre were not
a few conical circuuislances iu the transaction, in getting the
laughers on my side. The cli(iuo was amazingly angry, and
wrote not very bright letters, which apjieared as advertise.
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 513
ments in the n ^wspapers, and paid duty to make evident the fact.
There was a shallow and very ignorant young shoemaker in the
place, named Chaucer, a native of the south of Scotland, who
representedhimselfasthe grandson of theold poet ofthe days of
Edward III,, and wrote particularly wretched doggrel to make
good his claim. And, having a quarrel with the Kirk-Session,
in a certain delicate department, he had joined the pioces-
eionists, and celebrated their achie\ements in a ballad entirely
worthy of them. And it was peihaps the severest cut of all,
that the recognized leader of the band pronounced Chau-
cer the younger a greatly better poet than me. There were
representations, too, made to my superiors in the banking
department at Edinburgh, which procured me a reprimand,
though a gentle one ; but my superior in Cromarty, — Mr.
Ross, — as wise and good a man as any in the direction, and
thoroughly acquainted with the merits of the case, was wholly
on my side. I am afraid the reader may deem all this very
foolish, and hold that I would have been better employed
among the rocks, in determining the true relations of their
various beds, and the character of their organisms, than in
bickering in a petty village quarrel, and making myself ene-
mies. And yet, man being what he is, I fear an ability of
efficient squabbling is a greatly more marketable one than any
ability whatever of extending the boundaries of natural science.
At least so it was, that while my geological researches did
nothing for me at this time, my letter in the procession con-
troversy procured for me the offer of a newspaper editorship.
But though, in a pecuniary point of view, I would have con-
siderably bettered my circumstances by closing with it, I found
I could not do so without assuming the character of the special
pleader, and giving myself to the advocacy of views and prin-
ciples which 1 really did not hold ; and so I at once declined
the office, as one for which I did not deem myself suited, and
could not in conscience undertake.
I found about this time more congenial employment, though,
of course, it occupied only my leisure hours, in writing the
memoir of atownsman, — the late Mr. Williaii Forsyth of Cro
514 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
mart)' , — at the request of his relation and son-in-law, my friend
Mr. Isaac Fcrsyth of Elgin. William Forsyth had been a grown
man ere the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions ; and, from
the massiveness and excellence of his character, and his high
standing as a merchant, in a part of the country in which mer-
chants at the time were few, he had succeeded, within the pre-
cincts of the town, to not a little of the power of the hereditary
Sheriff of the district ; and after acting for more than half a
century as a laborious Justice of the Peace, and succeeding in
making up more quarrels than most country lawyers have an
opportunity of fomenting, — for the age was a rude and cfom
bative one, and the merchant ever a peace-maker, — he lived
long enough to see Liberty-and-Equality Clubs and Processions,
and died about the close of the first war of the first French Rev-
olution. It was an important half-century in Scotland —
though it exhibits but a narrow, inconspicuous front in the his-
tory of the country — that intervened between the times of the
hereditary jurisdictions and the Liberty-and-Equality Clubs.
It was specially the period during which popular opinion be-
gan to assume its potency, and in which the Scotland of the
past merged, in consequence, into the very dissimilar Scotland
of the present. And I derived much })leasure in tracing some
of the more striking features of this transition age in the bi-
ograjjhy of Mr. Forsyth. My little work was printed, but not
published, and distributed by Mr. Forsyth of Elgin among the
friends of the family, as |)cilia})s a better and more adequate
meiuorial of a worthy and able man than could be placed over
his grave. It was on the occasion of the death of his last-
surviving child, — the late Mrs. M'Kenzie of Cromarty, a lady
from whom I had received much kindness, and under whose
hospitaljle roof 1 had the opj)ortunIly alforded me of meeting
not a few superior men, — tliat my memoir was undertaken ;
and I regarded it as a fitting tribute to a worthy family just
passed away, at once deserving of being remembered for its
own sake, and to which I owed a debt of gratitude.
In the spring of 18.']1), a sad bereavenieut darkened my
houseliold, and for a time loft mo little heart to pursue my
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 515
wonted amusements, literary or scientific. We had been visit
ed, ten months after our marriage, by a little girl, whose pres-
ence had added not a little to our happiness : home became
more emphatically such from the presence of the child, that
in a few months had learned so well to know its mother, and
in a few more to take its stand in the nurse's arms, at an upper
window that commanded the street, and to recognize and make
signs to its father as he approached the house. Its few little
wrords, too, had a ^nscinating interest to our ears ; — our own
names, lisped in a language of its own, every time we approach-
ed ; and the simple Scotch vocable " awa, awa," which it knew
how to employ in such plaintive tones as we retired, and that
used to come back upon us in recollection, like an echo from the
grave, when, its b^ief visit over, it had left us forever, and its
fair face and silken hair lay in darkness amid the clods of the
church-yard. In how short a time had it laid hold of our
affectiens ! Two brief years before, and we knew it not ; and
now it seemed as if the void which it left in our hearts the
whole world could not fill. We buried it beside the old
chapel of St. Reeums. with the deep ricn woods all around, save
where an opening in front commands the distant land and the
blue sea ; and where the daisies, which had learned to love,
mottle, star-like, the mossy mounds ; and where birds, whoso
songs its ear had becom*^ skilful enough to distinguish, pour
their notes over its little grave. The following simple but
truthful stanzas, which I found among its mother's papers,
seem to have been written in this place, — sweetest of burying-
grounds, — a few weeks after its burial, when a chill and back-
ward spring, that had scowled upon its lingering illness, broke
out at once into genial summer : —
Thou'rt "awa, awa," from tliy mother's side,
And " awa, awa," from thy father's knee ;
Thou'rt " awa" from our blessing, our care, our caresslDg,
But ''awa" from our hearts thou'lt never be.
All things, dear cliilii, that were wont to pleaM .heo
Are round thee lure in beauty bright, —
There's music rare in llie cloudless air,
And the earth is teeming with living delight.
23
516 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
Thou'rt " awa, awa," from the bursting spring tlmt,
Tho' o'er thy head its green boughs wave •
The lambs are leaving their little footprints
Upon the turf of thy uew-made grave.
And art thou " awa," and " awa" forever
That little face, — that tender frame, —
That voice which first, in sweetest accent^
Call'd me the mother's thrilling name.
That head of nature's finest moulding, —
Those eyes, the deep night ether's biut
Where sensibility its shadows
Of ever-changing meaning threw 1
Thy sweetness, patience under suflferinft,
All promis'd us an opening day
Most fair, and told that to subdue thee
Would need but love's most gentle sway.
Ah me ! 'twas here I thought to lead thee^
And tell thee what are life and death,
*nd -aise thy serious thou:rh''s first waldiur
lo iiim who holds our every Drea.ib.
And does my selfish heart then grudge tbM^
That angels are thy teachers now, —
That glory from thy Saviour's i)resence
Kindles the crown upon thy brow ?
O, no ! to me earth must be lonelier,
Wanting thy voice, thy hand, thy Io»» •
7et dost thou dawn a star of promtak,
Ulld beacon to the wurid aboTA
OB. THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 517
CHAPTER XXV.
" All for the Church, aud a little less for the Statt "
Bblhatem
I HAD taken no very deep interest m the Voluntary contro
rersy. There was, I thought, a good deal of overstatement
and exaggeration on both sides. On the one hand the Volun
taries failed to convince me that a State endowment for eccle-
siastical purposes is in itself in any degree a bad thing. I had
direct experience to the contrary. I had evidence the most
unequivocal that in various parts of the country it was a
very excellent thing indeed. It had been a very excellent
thing, for instance, in the parish of Cromarty, ever since the
Revolution, down to the death of Mr. Smith, — in reality, a
valuable patrimony of the people there ; for it had supplied the
parish, free of cost, with a series of popular and excellent min-
isters, whom otherwise the parishioners would have had to
pay for themselves. And it had now given us my friend Mr.
Stewart, one of the ablest and honestest ministers in Scotland
or elsewhere, whether Established or Dissenting. And these
?acts, which were but specimens of a numerous class, had a tan-
gibility and solidity about them which influenced me more
than all the theoretic reasonings pressed on my attention about
the mischief done to the Church by the over-kindness of Con-
stantine, or the corrupting effects of State favor. But then I
onild as little agrer with some of my friends on the endowment
5iO MY SCHOOLS AJSTD SCHOOLMASTERS;
side, that the Establishment, even in Scotland, was everywhere
of value, as with some of the Voluntaries that it was nowhere
of any. I had resided for months together in various parts
of the country, Avhere it would have mattered not a farthing to
any one save the minister and his fomily, though the Estab-
lishment had been struck down at a blow. Religion and
morals would have no more suffered by the annihilation of the
minister's stipend, than by the suppression of the pension ol
some retired supervisor or superannuated officer of customs.
Nor could I forget, that the only religion, or appearance of re-
ligion, that existed in parties of workmen among which I had
been employed (as in the south of Scotland, for instance), was
to be found among their Dissenters, — most of them, at the
time, asserters of the Voluntary principle. If the other work-
men were reckoned, statistically at least, adherents of the Es-
tablishment, it was not because they either benefited by it oi
cared for it, but only somewhat in the way that, according to
the popular English belief, persons born at sea are held to be
long to the parish of Stepney. Further, I did not in the least
like the sort of company into which the Voluntary controversy
had introduced the good men on both sides : it gave a common
cause to the Voluntary and the hifide!,and drew them cordially
together ; and, on the other hand, placed side by side, on terms
portentously friendly, the pious asserter of endowments and the
irreligious old Tory. There was religion on both sides of the
controversy, but a religious controversy it was not.
The position of my grandmother's fiimily, including, of
course. Uncles James and Sandy, was a sort of midway one
between the Secession and the Establishment. My grand-
mother had quitted the family of Donald IJoy long ore he had
been compelled, verj unwillingly, to leave the Church; and
as no forced settlements had taken place in the parish into
which she; had removed, and as its ministers had been all men
of the right stamp, she had done what Donald himself had
been so desirous to do, — remained an attached member of
the Establishment. One; of her sisters had, however, mar-
"ied in Nigg; and she and her husband, fi>llowing Donald
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 519
Into the ranks of the Secession, had reared one of their boys
to the ministry, who became, in course of time, the respected
minister of the congregation which his great-grandfather had
founded. And, as the contemporary and first cousin of my
uncles, the minister used to call upon them every time he
came to town ; and my Uncle James, in turn (Uncle Sandy
veryj-arely went to the country), never missed, when in Nigg
or its neighborhood, to repay his visits. There was thus a
good deal of intercourse kept up between the families, no
without effect. Most of the books of modern theology which
my uncles read were Secession books, recommended by their
cousin ; and the religious magazines for which they subscribed
was a Secession magazine. The latter bore, I remember, the
name of the "Christian Magazine, or Evangelical Eepository."
It was not one of the brightest of periodicals, but a sound
and solid one, with, as my uncles held, a good deal of the old
unction about it ; and there was, in especial, one of the con-
tributors whose papers they used to pick out as of peculiar ex-
cellence, and not unfrequently read a second time. They bore
the somewhat Greek-looking signature of Leu7nas, as if the
writer had been a brother or cousin-german of some of the old
Christians to whom Paul used to notify kind regards and good
wishes at the end of his epistles ; but it was soon discovered
that Leumas was merely the proper name Samuel reversed,
though who the special Samuel was who turned his signature
to the right about, placing the wrong end foremost, and wrote
with all the concise weight and gravity of the old divines, my
uncles never knew. They had both passed away ere, in perus-
ing the " Second Galleiy of Literary Portraits," I found my-
self introduced to worthy old Leumas, also a denizen of the
unseen world at the time, as the father of the writer of that
brilliant work, — the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee. This
kind of writing had, of course, its proper effect on my uncles,
sind, through them, on the family : it kept up our respect for
the Secession. The Established Church, too, was in those
days a tolerably faulty institution. My uncles took an interest
ijQ missions ; and the Church had none : nay, its deliberate de-
520 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES ;
cision against them, — that of 1796, — remained still unreversed.
It had had, b'oides, its forced settlements in our immediate
neighborhood ; and Moderatism, wise and politic in its gen
eration, had perpetrated them by the hands of some of the
better ministers of the d. strict, who had learned to do what
they themselves believed to be very wicked things when theii"
Church bade them, — a sort of professional license which my
uncles could not in the least understand. In short, the Seces-
sion better pleased them, in the main, than the Establishment,
though to the Establishment they continued to adhere, and
failed to see on what Seceder j^rinciple their old friends were
becoming Voluntaries. On the breaking out of the controversy,
I remembered all this ; and, when told by good men of the
Established Church that well nigh all the vital religion of
the country was on our side, and that it had left the Vol-
untary Seceders, though the good men themselves honestly
believed what they said, I could not. Further, the heads
of a conversation which I had overheard in my cousin the
Seceder minister's house, when I was a very young boy, — and
to which it could have been little suspected that I was listen-
ing, for I was playing at the time on the floor, — had taken a
strong hold of my memory, and often returned upon me at
this period. My cousin and some of his elders were mourn-
ing — very sincerely, I cannot doubt — over the decay of religion
among them : they were felling far short, they said, of the at-
tainments of their fathers; there were no Donald Roys among
them now ; and yet they felt it to be a satisfaction, though a
sad one, that the little religion which there was in the district
seemed to be all among tliemselves. And now, here was there
exactly the same sort of conviction, equally strong, on the other
side. But with all tliat liberally-expressed charity which
forms one of the distinctive features of the present time, and
is in reality one of its best things, there is still a vast amount
of appreciation of this partial kind. Friends are seen in the
Christian aspect; opponents in the polemic one : and it is too
often forgottei. that the friends have a polemic aspect to iheii
opponents, and the opponents a Christian aspect to tlicir friends
OR, TH2 STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 621
And not only in the present, but at all former periods, the
case seems to have been the same. I am sometimes half dis-
posed to think, that either the Prophet Elijah, or the seven
thousand honest men who had not bowed the knee to Baal,
must have been dissenters. Had the Prophet been entirely
at one in his views with the seven thousand, it is not easy to
conceive how he could have been wholly ignorant of their ex-
istence.
With all these latitudinarian convictions, however, I was
thoroughly an Establishment man. The revenues of the Scot-
tish Church 1 regarded, as I have said, as the patrimony of the
Scottish people ; and 1 looked forward to a time when that un-
warrantable appropriation of them, through which the aristoc-
racy had sought to extend its influence, but which had served
only greatly to reduce its power in the country, would come to an
end. What I specially wanted, in short, was, not the confiscation
of the people's patrimony, but simply its restoration from the
Moderates and the lairds. And in the enactment of the Veto
law I saw the process of restoration fairly begun. I would
have much preferred seeing a good broad anti-patronage agita-
tion raised on the part of the Church. As shrewdly shown at
the time by the late Dr. M'Crie, such a course would have been
at once wiser and safer. But for such an agitation even the
Church's better ministers were not in the least prepared. From
1712 to 1784, — a period of seventy -two years, — the General
Assembly had yearly raised its voice against the enactment
of the patronage law of Queen Anne, as an unconstitutional
encroachment on those privileges of the Church and those
rights of the Scottish people which the Treaty of Union
had been framed to secure. But the half century which had
passed, since, through the act of a Moderate majority, the
protest had been dropped, had produced the natural eil'ect.
By much the greater part of even the better ministers of the
Church had been admitted into their offices through the law
of patronage ; and, naturally grateful to the patrons who had
befriended them, they hesitated to make open war on tne
powers that had beei exerted in their own behalf. Accord*
522 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS ;
"mg to Solomon, the "gift" had to a certain extent " de-
stroye i the heart ;" and so they were preparea to take up
merely a half-way position, which their predecessors, the old
popular divines, would have liked exceedingly ill. I could
not avoid seeing that, fixed in a sort of overtopped hollow,
if I may so speak, between the claims of patronage on the
one hand and the rights of the people on the other, it was
a most perilous position, singularly open to misconception
and misrepresentation on both sides ; and as it virtually strip
ped the patrons of half their power, and extended to the
people only half their rights, I was not a little afraid that
tht» patrons might be greatly more indignant than the people
grateful, and that the Church might, in consequence, find her-
self exposed to the wrath of very potent enemies, and backed
by the support of only lukewarm friends. But, however per-
ilous and difficult as a post of occupation, it was, I could not
avoid believing, a position conscientiously taken up ; nor
could I doubt that its grounds were strictly constitutional.
The Church, in a case of disputed settlement, might, I be-
lieved, have to forfeit the temporalities, if her decision differed
from that of the law courts, but only the temporalities con-
nected with the case at issue ; and these I deemed worth risk-
ing in the popular behalf, seeing that they might be regarded
as already lost to the country in every case in which a parish
was assigned to a minister whom the parishioners rt-fusod to
hear. It rejoiced me, too, to see the revival of the old spirit
in the Church ; and so I looked with an interest on the earlier
stages of her struggle with the law courts, greatly more in-
tense than that with which any mere political contest had
ever inspired me. I saw with great anxiety decision after de-
cision go against her ; first that of tlie Court of Session in
March 1838, and next that of the House of Lords in May
1839 ; and then with the original Auchterarder case of collision
I saw that of Lethendy and Marnoch mixed up ; and, as one
entanglement succeeded anotlier, confusion becoming worse
confounded. It was only when the ( "hurcli's hour of peril came
that 1 le'irii''d to know how much I really valued her, and how
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 523
strong and iiamerous the associations were that bound her to
my affections. I had experienced at least the average amount
of interest in political measures whose tendency and principles
I deemed good in the main, — such as the Reform Bill, the Cath-
olic Emancipation Act, and the Emancipation of the Negroes ;
but they had never cost me an hour's sleep. Now, however,
1 felt more deeply ; and for at least one night, after reading
the speech of Lord Brougham, and the decision of the House
of Lords in the Auchterarder case, I slept none.
In truth, the position of the Church at this time seemed
critical in the extreme. Offended by the usage which she
had received at the hands of the Whigs, in her claims for
endowments to her new. chapels, and startled by their general
treatment of the Irish Establishment, and the suppression of
the ten bishopricks, she had thrown her influence into the
Tory scale, and had done much to produce that re-action
against the Liberal party in Scotland which took place during
the Ministry of Lord Melbourne. In the representation of at
least one county in which she was all-potent, — Ross-shire, — she
had succeeded in substituting a Tory for a Whig ; and there
were few districts in the kingdom in which she had not very
considerably increased the votes on the Tory, or, as it was term
ed. Conservative side. The people, however, though they might,
and did, become quite indifferent enough to the Whigs, could
not follow her into the Tory ranks. They stood aloof, — very
suspicious, not without reason, of her new political friends, —
no admirers of the newspapers which she patronized, and not
in the least able to perceive the nature of the interest which
she had begun to take in supernumerary bishops and the Irish
Establishment. And now, when once more in a position
worthy of her old character, and when her Tory friends, — con-
verted at once into the bitterest and most ungenerous of ene-
mies, — were turning upon her to rend her, she had at once to
encounter the hostility of the Whigs and the inditferency of
the people. Further, with but one, or at most two exceptions,
all the newspapers which she had patronized declared against
her, and were throughout the struggle the bitterest and most
524 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS
abusive of her opponents. The Voluntaries, too, joined with
redoubled vehemence in the cry raised to drown her voice and
misinterpret and misrepresent her claims. The general cur-
rent of opinion ran strongly against her. My minister, warmly
interested in the success of the Non-Intrusion principle, has
told me, that for many months I wa« the only man in his
parish that seemed thoroughly to sympathize with him ; and
I have no doubt that the late Dr. George C!ook was perfectly
correct and truthful when he about this time remarked, in one
of his public addresses, that he could scarce enter an inn or a
stage-coach, without finding respectable men inveighing against
the utter folly of the Non-Intrusionists, and the worse than
madness of the Church Courts.
Could I do nothing for my Church in her hour of peril 1
There was, I believed, no other institution in the country half
so valuable, or in which the people had so large a stake. The
Church was of right theirs, — a patrimony won for them by
the blood of their fathers, during the struggles and suffer-
ings of more than a hundred years ; and now that her better
ministers were trying, at least partially, to rescue that patri-
mony for them from the hands of an aristocracy who, as a
body at least, had no spiritual interest in the Church, — belong-
ing, as most of its members did, to a different communion, —
they were in danger of being put down, unbacked by the popu-
lar support which in such a Civuse they deserved. Could I not
do something to bring up the people to their assistance 1 I
tossed wakefully throughout a long night, in which I formed
my plan of taking up the purely popular side of the question ;
and in the morning I sat down to state my views to the people,
in tile form of a letter addressed to Lord Brougham. I devoted
to my new employment every moment not imperatively de-
manded by my duties in tlic bank office, and, in about a week al^
ter, was able to despatch the manuscrij)t of my pamphlet to the
respected managerof tlioCominercial Bank, — Mr. I\obertPaul,
— a gentleman from whom 1 had received much kindness when
Ir Kdinliiirgh, and who, in the great ecclesiastical struggle,
ttxjk decided j.art with the Churcli. Mr. Paul brought it to
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION 525
hisministvr, the Rev. Mr. Candlish of St. George's (nv n Dr.
Candlisli), who, recognizing its popular character, urged its im-
mediate publication ; and the manuscript was accordingly ])ut
intc the hand of Mr. Johnstone, the well-known Church bo( A-
seller. Dr. Candlish had been one of a party of ministers and
elders of the Evangelical majority who had met in Edinburgh
shortly before, to take measures for the establishment of a
newspaper. All the Edinburgh press, with the exception of
one newspaper, had declared against the ecclesiastical party ;
and even that one rather received articles and paragraphs in
their behalf through the friendship of the proprietor, than wag
itself on their side. There had been a larger infusion of
Whiggism among the Edinburgh Churchmen than in any
other part of the kingdom. They had seen very much, in
consequence, that the line taken by the Conservative portion
of their friends, in addressing the people through the press,
had not been an efficient one; — their friends had set themselves
to make the people both good Conservatives and good Church-
men, and of course had never got over the first point, and
never would ; and what they now purposed was, to establish
a paper that, without supporting any of the old parties in the
, State, would be as Liberal in its polities as in its Churchman-
ship. But there was a preliminary point which they also
could not get over. All the ready-made editors of the king-
dom, if I may so speak, had declared against them ; and for
want of an editor, their meeting had succeeded in originating,
not the intended newspaper, but merely a formal recognition,
in a few resolutions, of its desirableness and importance. On
reading my pamphlet in manuscript, however. Dr. Candlish
at once concluded that the desired want was to be supplied
Dy its writer. Here, he said, is the editor we have been look-
mg for. Meanwhile, my little work issued from the press, and
•was successful. It ran rapidly through four editions of a thou-
sand copies each, — the number, as I subsequently ascertained,
of a popular non-intrusion pamphlet that would fairly sel\
— aud was read pretty extensively by men who were not Non*
Iiitrusionists. Among these there were several members of
526 MY 9JH0< LS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
the Ministry of the time, including the late Lord Melbourne,
who at first regarded it, as I have been informed, as the com-
position, under the popular form and a nomine de guerre^ of some
of the Non-Intrusion leaders in Edinburgh ; and by the late
Mr O'Connell, who had no such suspicions, and who, though
he lacked sympathy, as he said, with the ecclesiastical views
which it advocated, enjoyed what he termed its •' racy Eng-
lish," and the position in which it placed the Noble Lord to
whom it was addressed. It was fiivorably noticed, too, by
Mr. Gladstone, in his elaborate work on Church Principles ;
and was, in short, both in the extent of its circulation, and
the circles into which it found its way, a very successful
pamphlet.
So filled w^as my mind with our ecclesiastical controversy,
that while yet unacquainted with the fate of my first brochure,
I was busily engaged with a second. A remarkable cause of
intrusion had occurred in the district rather more than twenty
years before ; and after closing my week's labors in the bank,
I set out for the house of a friend in a neighboring parish on
a Saturday evening, that I might attend the deserted church
on the following Sabbath, and glean from actual observation
the materials of a truthful description, which would, I trusted,
tell in the controversy. And as the case was one of those in
which truth proves stranger than fiction, what I had to de-
scribe was really very curious ; and my description received
an extensive circulation. I insert the passage entire, as prop-
erly a part of my story.
"There were associations of a peculiarly high characler connected witli llils
norlliern parish. For more llian a thonsaiid years it had funned part of the
patrimony of a truly nolde family, celfbraled by I'liiiip Doddridge for its great
moral worth, and by Sir Waller Scott for its high military genius ; and through
whoso liilluunce tlic lii<ht of the Kcrormallon had been introduced into this re-
mote corner, at a perio<l when llie nei(;liborln|; districts were enveloped in the
original darkness. In a later ai;e it had been honored by the Uncs and proscnp*
Uons of Charles II. ; and its niinislcr,— one of Ibo'e men of God whoso nnmet
■till live in the memory of the coimtry, and whose biography occupies no small
•pace In the recorded liislory of her ' worlhles,' — had rendered him-'elf so ob-
noxious to the tyranny and irrcliK'on of the time, that he was ejected fTom bit
ibwv? ino-« than a year before any of the other non-conforming clergymen of Uia
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. f)2'<
Church.* I approached the parish from the east. 'I'he day was vann and
pleasant ; the scenery throii<;h wliich 1 passed some of the finest in ScotJana.
The mountains rose on the right, in huge Titanic masses, tliat seemed to soften
their purple and blue in the clear sunshine, to the delicate tone of the deep
sky beyond; and I could see the yet unwasted snows of winter glittering, in
little detached masses, along their summits. The bills of the middle region
were feathered with wood ; a forest of mingled oaks and larches, which still
blended the tender softness of spring with tlie full foliage of summer, swept
down to the path ; the wide undulating plain below was laid out into fields,
mottled with cottages, and waving with the yet uushot corn ; and a noble
arm of the sea winded along the lower edge for nearly twenty miles, losing
Itself to the west, among blue hills and jutting headlands, and opening 1b
the east to the main ocean, through a magnificent gateway of rock. But th«
little groups which I encountered at every turning of the path, as they jour
neyed with all the sober, well-marked decency of a Scottish Sabbath morn
Ing, towards the church of a neighboring parish, interested nie more than
even the scenery. The clan which inhabited this part of the country had
oorne a well-marked character in Scottish story. Buchanan had described it
as one of the most fearless and warlike In the north. It served under tho
Bruce of Bannockburn. It was the first to rise in arms to protect Queen
Mary, on her visit to Inverness, from the intended violence of lluntly. It
fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany, under Gustavus Adolphua.
It covered the retreat of the English at Fontenoy ; and pj esented an un
unbroken front to the enemy, after all the other allied troops had quitted the
field. And it was the descendants of those very men who were now passr-
ing me on the road. The nigged, robust form, half bone, half mnscle,—
the springy firmness of the tread, — the grave, manly countenance, — all gave
Indication that the original characteristics survived in their full strength ; and
it was a strength that inspired confidence, not fe.ir. There were gray-haired,
patriarchal-looking men among the groupes, whose very air seemed impressed
by a sense of the duties of the day; nor was there aught that did not
agree with the object of the journey, in the appearance of even the youngest
and least thoughtful.
" As I proceeded, I came up with a few people who were travelling in a
jontrary direction. A Secession meeting-house has lately sprung up in the
parish, and those formed part of the congregation. A path, nearly obscured
by grass and weeds, leads from the main road to the parish church. It was
with dilflculty I could trace it, and there were none to direct me, for I waa
now walking alone. The parish burying-ground, thickly sprinkled with gr.\veg
and tombstones, surrounds the church. It is a quiet, solitary spot, of great
beauty, lying beside the sea-shore; and as service had not yet commenced, I
*hiled away half an hour in sauntering among the stones, and deciphering
the inscriptions. I could trace in the rude monuments of this retired little spot, a
'Thomas Hog of Kiltearn. See ''Scots Worthies;" or the cheap- publicKtU'*
rolumes of the Free Church for 1846.
528 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
brief but interesting history of the district. The older tablets, gray and shaggy wltli
the mosses and lichens of three centuries, bear, in their uncouth semblances
of the unwieldy battle-axe and double-handed sword of ancient warfare, th«
meet and appropriate symbols of the earlier time. But the more modern tustify
to the introduction of a luunaiiizlng influence. They speak of a life after death,
in the "holy texts"' described by the poet; or certify in a quiet humility of
Btyle which almost vouches for their truth, that the sleepers below were''honMl
men of blameless character, and who feared God." There is one tombstone,
however, more remarkable Ihan all the others. It lies beside the church-door
nd testiliea, in an antique descrii)tion, that it covers the remains of the "grkat
an.of.God.and.faithful.mimsteh.of.Jesus.Christ.," who had endured persecu
ton for the truth in the dark days of Charles and his brother. He had out
lived the tyranny of the .Stuarts; and though worn by years and sufferings,
had returned to his parish on the Revolution, to end his course as it hac'
begun. He saw, ere his death, the law of patronage abolished, and the popula-
right virtually secured ; and fearing lest his people might be led to abuse th«
important privilege conferred upon them, and calculating aright on the abiding
influence of his own character among them, he gave charge on his death-bed
to dig his grave in the threshold of the church, that they might regard him ar
a sentinel placed at the door, and that his tombstone might speak to them w
they pa.ssed out and in. The inscription, which, after the lapse of nearly r
century and a half, is slill perfectly legible, concludes with the following n;
markable WOrd^ : — " THIS.STONE.SHALL.BKAR.WITNKSS.AOAINST.THE.PARISniONKPn
OF.KlLTEARN.IF.THKY.BRINO.ANK.tlNQOni.Y.MINlSTER.IN.nKRK." Could the imagine
tion of a poet have originated a more striking conception in connection witu
a church deserted by all its better people, and whose minister fatt.;n8 on hh
hire, useless and contented 1
"I entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. Tl.ere worn
from eight to ten persons scattered over the pews below, and se- eii in V\o
galleries above; and these, as there were no more ^ Peter CVarA-*' rr ^JUichiul
Tods'" in the parish, composed the entire congregation. I wrapp-/. mystif np
In my plaid, and sat down ; and the service went on in the usu.i. conr^e ; but
it s<)iin<le<l in my curs like a miserable mockery. The procent ir sung almost
alone ; and ere the clergyman had reached the middle of his rtisroinse. which
he read in an uniinpas-sioned, motuitonous tone, nearly one half hij skeleton
congregation h.-id fallen asleep; and the drowsy, listless oxpies.slon of the others
showed that, for every good purpose, they miiiht have been aiil jrp too. And
F<ubballi after Sabbath has this unfortniuite miui gone the same t'fjson'e round,
and with exactly the same effect for the last twenty-three yn'r;— at no tlm«
regarded by llie bolter clergymen of the district as really t'l';!' bn)lhi'r,— (m
no ocgusioii renignized by the parish as virtiiiilly its minislt'r ;— with a dreary
vacancy and a few indifferent hearts inside his church, and I'.i'j stone of Ihe
• Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the oidy individual." who. In a popii
Intion of three thousand souls, attached their siKnutures to ,li<i cull of the ol>
iioxiiMH I resenlee, Mr. Young, in the fKmous Auchterurder ■ ijm.
OK, 1HE STORY OE MY EDUCATION. 529
Covenanter at the door. Against whom does the inscription testify ? for the
people have escaped. Against the patron, the intruder, and the law of Roling
broke,— th3 Dr. Robertsons of the hist au;e, and tlie Dr. Cooks of the present,
(t is well to learn from this hapless parish the exact sense in which, in a
litferent state of matters, the Rev. Mr. Young would have been constituted
minister of Auchterarder. It is well, too, to Icani, that there may be vacan-
:les in the Church where no blank appears in the Almanac."
On my return home from this journey, early on the follow-
big Monday, I found a letter from Edinburgh awaiting me,
requesting me to meet there with the leading Non-Intru-
sionists. And so, after describing, in the given extract, the
scene which I had just witnessed, and completing my second
pamphlet, I set out for Edinburgh, and saw for the first time
men with whose names I had been familiar during the course
of the Voluntary and Non-Intrusion controversies. And enter-
ing into their plans, though with no little shrinking of heart,
lest I should be found unequal to the demands of a twice-a-
week paper, that would have to stand, in Ishmael's position,
against almost the whole newspaper press of the kingdom, I
agreed to undertake the editorship of their projected newspaper,
the Witness, Save for the intense interest with which I regard-
ed the struggle, and the stake possessed in it, as I believed, by
the Scottish people, no consideration whatever would have in-
duced me to take a step so fraught, as I thought at the time,
with peril and discomfort. For full twenty years I had never
been engaged in a quarrel on my own account: all my quarrels,
either directly or indirectly, were ecclesiastical ones ; — I had
fought for my minister, or for my brother parishioners : and fain
now would I have lived at peace with all men : but the editor-
ship of a Non-Intrusion newspaper involved, as a portion of its
duties, war with all the world. I held, besides, — not aware
howvery much the spur of necessity quickens production, — that
its twice-a-week demands would fully occupy all my time, and
that I would have to resign, in consequence, my favorite pur-
suit, — geology. I had once hoped, too, — though of late years
the hope had been becoming faint, — to leave some little mark
behind me in the literature of my country ; but the last re
mains of the pxp'^ctation had now to be resigned. The news
630 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
paper editor writes in sand when the flood is coming in. If he
but succeed in influencing opinion for the present, he must be
content to be forgotten in the future. But believing the cause
to be a good one, I prepared for a life of strife, toil, and com-
parative obscurity, hi counting the cost, I very considerably
exaggerated it ; but I trust I may say that, in all honesty, and
with no sinister aim, or prospect of worldly advantage, I did
count it, and fairly undertook to make the full sacrilice whicl
the cause demanded.
It was arranged that our new paper should start with the
new twelvemonth (1840) ; and I meanwhile returned to Cro-
marty, to fulfil my engagements with the bank till the close
of its financial year, which in the Commercial Bank oflices
takes place at the end of autumn. Shortly after my return
Dr. Chalmers visited the place on the last of his Church Ex-
tension journeys ; and I heard, for the first time, the most
impressive of modern orators address a public meeting, and
had a curious illustration of the power which his "o?eep
mouth'''' could communicate to passages little suited, one
might suppose, to call forth the vehemency of his eloquence.
In illustrating one of his points, he quoted from my " Me-
moir of William Forsyth" a brief anecdote, set in descrip-
tion of a kind which most men would have read quietly
enough, but which, coming from him, seemed instinct with
the Homeric vigor and force. The extraordinary impress-
iveness which he communicated to the passage served to
show me, better than aught else, how imperfectly great
orators may be represented by their written speeches. Ad-
mirable as the published sermons and addresses of Dr.
Chalmers are, they impart no adequate idea of that wonder-
fill power and impressiveness in which he excelled all other
British preachers.*
I had been introduced to the Doctor in Edmburgh a few
* The rollowing Is the passage which was honored on this occustlon by
Chulniera, uiid wliich told, in hi« hands, witli all (lie efTuct or the most power-
ful acliiiK :— "Siiiindors Macivoi the mate or the ' Elizal>eth,' was a grav«
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 531
weeks before ; but on this occasion I saw rather more of him.
He examined with curious interest my collection of geological
specimens, which already contained not a few valuable fossils
that could be seen nowhere else ; and I had the pleasure of
spending the greater part of a day in visiting in his company,
by boat, some of the more striking scenes of the Cromarty
Sutors. I had long looked up to Chalmers as, on the whole,
the man of largest mind which the Church of Scotland had
ever produced ; not more intense or practical than Knox, but
broader of faculty ; nor yet fitted by nature or accomplish
and somewhat hard-favored man, powerful in bone and muscle, even after be
had considerably turned his sixtieth year, and much respected for his inflexi-
ble integrity and the depth of his religious feelings. Both the mate and his de-
vout wife were especial favorites with Mr. Porteous of Kilmuir,— a minister of
the same class as the Pedens, Keji wicks, and Cargils of a former age; and on
one occasion when the sacrament was dispensed in his parish, and Saunders was
absent on one of his Continental voyages, Mrs. Macivor was an inmate of the
manse. A tremendous storm burst out in the night-time, and the poor woman
lay awake, listening in utter termr to the fearful roarings of the wind, as it
howled in the chitnaey.-;, and shook the casements and the doors. At length,
when she could lie still no longer, she arose, and crept along the passage to
the door of the minister's chamber. 'O, Mr. Porteous,' she said, 'Mr. Porleoua,
do ye no hear that? — and poor Saunders on his way back frae Flolland ! O, rise,
rise, and ask the strong help o' your Master!' The minister accordingly rose
and entered his closet. The ' Elizabeth' at this critical moment was drivmg
onwards through spray and darkness, along the northern shores of the Moray
Frith. The fearful skerries of Shandwick, where so many gallant vessels have
perished, were close at hand ; and the increasing roll of the sea showed the
gradual shallowing of the water. Macivor and his old townsman Robert Hos-
Back stood together at the binnacle. .Vn immense wave came rolling behind,
and they hiid but barely time to clutch to the nearest hold, when it broke
over them half-mast high, sweeping spars, bulwarks, cordage, all before it, in
Its course. It passed, but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in
B sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the heaa. There was &
frightful pause. First, however, the bowsprit and the butts of the windlass,
began tc emerge, — next the forecastle, — the vessel seemed as if shaking her.
self from the load ; and then the whole deck appeared, as she went tilting
over the ne.xl wave. 'There are still more mercies in store for us,' saii Mac-
ivor, addressing his companion; 'she floats still.' 'O, Saunde.-s, Saunders !' ex-
claimed Robert, 'there was surely some God's soul at work for us, sr she
would never have cowed you.' "
532 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLilASTERS ;
ment to make himself a mo^e enduring name in literature
than Robertson, but greatl} nobler in sentiment, and of a
larger grasp of general intellect. With any of our othei
Scottish ministers it might be invidious to compare him ;
seeing that some of the ablest of them are, like Henderson,
little more than mere historic portraits drawn by their con-
temporaries, but whose true intellectual measure cannot,
fi om the lack of the necessary materials on which to form
a judgment, be now taken anew ; and that many of the
others employed fine faculties in work, literary and minis-
terial, which, though important in its consequences, was
scarce less ephemeral in its character than even the labors
of the newspaper editor. The mind of Chalmers was emphati-
cally a many-sided one. Few men ever came into friendly
contact with him, who did not find in it, if they had really
anything good in them, moral or intellectual, a side that suited
themselves ; and I had been long struck by that union which his
intellect exhibited of a comprehensive philosophy with a true
poetic faculty, very exquisite in quality, though dissociated
from what Wordsworth terms the " accomplishment of verse."
1 had not a little pleasure m contemplating him on this occa-
sion as the poet Chalmers. The day was calm and clear ; but
there was a considerable swell rolling in from the German
Ocean, on which our little vessel rose and fell, and which sent
the surf high against the rocks. The sunshine played amid
the broken crags atop, and amid the foliage of an overhanging
wood ; or caught, half-way down, some projecting tufl of ivy ;
but the faces of the steeper precipices were brown in the shade ;
and where the waves roared in deep caves beneath, all was
dark and chill. There were several members of the party
who attempted engaging the Doctor in conversation ; but he
was in no conversational mood. It would seem as if the words
addressed to his car failed at first to catch his attention, and
that, with a painful courtesy, he had to gather up their mean-
ing from the remaining echoes, and to reply to them doubt-
fully and monosyllabically, at the least possible expense of
mind. His fare wore, meanwhile, an air of dreamy enjoy
OE, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION, 533
ment He was busy, evidently, among the crags and boskj
hollows, and would have enjoyed himself more had he beec
alone. In the middle of one noble precipice, that reared its
tall pine-crested brow more than a hundred yards overhead,
there was a bush-covered shelf of considerable size, but wholly
inaccessible ; for the rock dropped sheer into it from above,
and then sank perpendicularly from its outer edge to the beach
, below ; and the insulated shelf, in its green unapproachable sol-
itude, had evidently caught his eye. It was the scene, I said,
— taking the direction of his eye as the antecedent for the it^ —
it was the scene, says tradition, of a sad tragedy during the
times of the persecution of Charles. A renegade chaplain,
rather weak than wicked, threw himself, in a state of wild de-
spair, over the precipice above ; and his body, intercepted in its
fall by that shelf, lay unburied among thebushes for years after,
until it had bleached into a dry and whitened skeleton. Even
as late as the last age, the shelf continued to retain the name
of the " Chaplain's Lair." I found that my communication,
chiming in with his train of cogitation at the time, caught both
his ear and mind ; and his reply, though brief was expressive
of the gratification wh,^! its snatch of incident had conveyed.
As our skiff sped on a few oar-lengths more, we disturbed a
flock of sea-gulls, that had been sporting in the sunshine over
a shoal of sillochs ; and a few of them winged their way to a
jutting crag that rose iiiimediately beside the shelf I saw
•Chalmers' eye gleam as it followed them. " Would you not
like. Sir," he said, addi'essing himself to my minister, who sat
beside him, — " Would you not like to be a sea-gull ? I
think I would. Sea-gulls are free of the three elements, —
earth, air, and water. These birds were sailing but half a
minute since without boat, at once angling and dining, and
now they are already rusticating in the Chaplain's Lair. I
think I could enjoy being a sea-gull." I saw the Doctor once
afterwards in a similar mood. When on a visit to him in
Burntisland, in the following year, I marked, on approaching
the shire by boat, a solitary figure stationed on the sward-
crested trap-rock which juts into the sea immediately below the
534 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
town ; and after the time spent in landing and walking round to
the spot, there was the solitary figure still, standing motionless
as when first seen. It was Chalmers, — the same expression of
dreamy enjoyment impressed on his features as I had wit-
nessed in the little skiff, and with his eyes turned on the sea
and the opposite laud. It was a lovely morning. A faint
breeze had just begun to wrinkle in detached belts and patches
the mirror-like blackness of the previous calm, in which the
broad Frith had lain sleeping since day -break ; and the sun
light danced on the new-raised wavelets ; while a thin long
wreath of blue mist, which seemed coiling its tail like a snake
round the distant Inchkeith, was slowly raising the folds of its
dragon-like neck and head from off the Scottish capital, dim
in the distance, and unveiling fortalice, and tower, and spire,
and the noble curtain of blue hills behind. And there was
Chalmers, evidently enjoying the exquisiteness of the scene, as
only by the true poet scenery can be enjoyed. Those striking
metaphors which so abound in his writings, and which so
often, without apparent effort, lay the material world before
the reader, show how thoroughly he must have drunk in the
beauties of nature ; the images retained in his mind became,
like words to the ordinary man, the signs by which he thought,
and, as such, formed an important element in the power of
his thinking. I have seen his Astronomical Discourses dis-
paragingly dealt with by a slim and meagre critic, as if they
had been but the chapters of a mere treatise on astronomy,
— a thing which, of course, any ordinary man could write. —
mayhap even the critic himself The Astronomical Discour-
scs, on the other hand, no one could have written saveChalmers.
Nominally a series of sermons, they in reality represent, and
in the present century form perhaps the only worthy repre-
sentatives of, that school of philosophic poetry to which, in an-
cient literature, the work of Lucretius belonged, and of wliich,
in the literature of our own country, the " Seasons" of Thomson,
and Akeiiside's " Pleasures of the Imagination," furnish ade-
quate examples. He would, I suspect, bo no discriminating
critic who would deal willi 'he "Seasons" as if they formed
OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 68b
merely the journal of a naturalist, or by the poem of Aken-
side as if it were simply a metaphysical treatise.
Tlie autumn of this year brought nie an unexpected but
very welcome visitor, in my old Marcus' Cave friend Finlay ;
and when I visited all my former haunts, to take leave of them
ere I quitted the place for the scene of my future labors, I
had him to accompany me. Though for many years a planter
*n Jamaica, his affections were still warm, and liis literary
tastes unchanged. He was a writer, as of old, of sweet simple
verses, and as sedulous a reader as ever; and, had time permit-
ted, we found we could have kindled fires together in the caves,
as we had done more than twenty years before, and have ranged
the shores for shell-fish and crabs. He had had, however, in
passing through life, his full share of its cares and sorrows.
A young lady to whom he had been engaged in early youth
had perished at sea, and he had remained single for her sake.
He had to struggle, too, in his business relations, with the em-
barrassments incident to a sinking colony ; and though a West
Indian climate was beginning to tell on his constitution, his
circumstances, though tolerably easy, were not such as to per-
mit his permanent residence in Scotland. He retured in the
following year to Jamaica ; and I saw, some time after, in a
Kingston paper, an intimation of his election to the Colonial
House of Representatives, and the outline of a well-toned
sensible address to his constituents, in which he urged that the
sole hope of the colony lay in the education and mental ele-
vation of its negro population to the standard of the people at
home. I have been informed that the latter part of his life
was, like that of many of the Jamaica planters in their altered
circumstances, pretty much a struggle ; and his health at length
breaking down, in a climate little favorable to Europeans,
he died about three years ago, with the exception of my friend
)f the Doocot Cave, now Free Church minister of Nigg, the
last of my Marcus' Cave companions. Their remains lie scat-
tered over half the globe.
I closed my connection with the bank at the termination of
its finanrial year ; ga^e a few weeks very sedulously to ge
636 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;
ology, during which I was fortunate enough to find specimens
on wliich Agassiz has founded two of his fossil species ; got,
at parting, an elegant breakfast-service of plate from a kind
and numerous circle of friends, of all shades of politics and
both sides of the Church ; and was entertained at a public din-
ner, at which I attempted a speech, that got on but indifferently,
though it looked quite well enough inmy fi-iend Mr. Carruthers'
report, and which was, I suppose, in some sort apologized for
by the fiddlers, who struck up at its close, " A man's a man
for a' that." It was, I felt, not the least gratifying part of the
entertainment, that old Uncle Sandy was present, and that his
health was cordially drunk by the company, in the recognized
character of my best and earliest friend. And then, taking
leave of my mother and uncle, of my respected minister,
and my honored superior in the bank, Mr. Ross, I set out
for Edinburgh, and in a few days after was seated at the edi-
torial desk, — a point at v/hich, for the present, the story of
my education must terminate. I wrote for my paper during
the first twelvemonth, a series of geological chapters, which
were fortunate enough to attract the notice of the geologists of
the British Association, assembled that year at Glasgow, and
which, in the collected form, compose my little work on thf
Old Red Sandstone. The paper itself rose rapidly in circula-
tion, till it ultimately attained to its place among what are
known as our first-class Scottish newspapers ; and of its sub-
scribers, perhaps a more considerable proportion of the whole
are men who have received a university education, than can be
reckoned by any other Scotch journal of the same number of
readers. And during the course of the first three years, my
employers doubled my salary. I am sensible, however, that
these are but small achievements. In looking back upon my
youth, I see, mctliinks,a wild fruittrce, rich in leaf and blossom ;
and it is mortifying enough to mark how very few of the bios-
soms have set, and how diminutive and imperfectly formed the
fruil is into which even the productive few have been developed.
A right use of the opportiniitios of instruction afforded me in
■\ax\y youtli would have made me a scholar ere my twenty
OR, THE STOKY OF MY EDUCATION. 537-551
fifth year,and have saved to me at least ten of the best years of
life, — years which were spent in obscure and humble occupa-
tions. But while my story must serve to show the evils which
result from truant carelessness in boyhood, and that what was
sport to the young lad may assume the form of serious mis-
fortune to the man, it may also serve to show, that much may
be done by after diligence, to retrieve an early error of this
kind, — that life itself is a school, and Nature always a fresh
study, — and that the man who keeps his eyes and his mind
open will always find fitting, though, it may be, hard scbool-
masters, to speed him on in his life-long education.
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