CHAPTER II.

EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW.

THE day I left the village was one of those quiet, sober, but bright days, which seem, not to speak it profanely, shuffled out of October into the darker month. The scene of my walk was a wilderness of mosses and moors, through which a clear white road passed, like an innocent life through the confusions, sins, and miseries of a wicked world. But on this day the solitary place itself seemed quietly glad in the last smile of the season. The heather had lost its purple bloom, but the grass was green; the stones shone in the sunshine; the dun hill-sides were illuminated; and the streams bickered cheerfully by. I had only to turn my head, too, to see the giant peaks of the hill-country I had left behind, lifting themselves up through the clear sky, some of them already tinged with the slightest touch of the great snowbrush of winter. I had much in the past and in the future which might well have made me melancholy; but what can depress the bubbling blood of fourteen? I walked on accordingly with lively steps, occasionally glancing at a little copy of Horace I had with me, sometimes fixing my eyes on the landscape, so wildly beautiful as it perforce appeared in that serene and belated autumn light, and sometimes venting my feelings aloud, secure here of no audience except the sheep, which went baa-ing to and fro along the sides of the braes. At a particular point, where the road curves round a corner, and brings you to a little nook, a fine clear stream, after glimmering through a grassy margin, sinks below a small bridge, to find its way to a larger watercourse in the hollow of the glen; there I sat down and ate my mid-day meal,

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which consisted of bread and cheese, and a draught of the cold water rushing by. This was a spot where I had often so rested when I passed through this desolate tract in summer days, when the water, not quite so cold, was far more grateful, as I dipped my bread in it; and when, as I sat luxuriously on the ledge of the little bridge, or on the greensward beside it, I had the summer bee humming around me, the summer wind swooning on my temples, and the butterfly skimming past through the air. Now all was silent save the trickling of the little stream, and the whole life of the wilderness seemed slumbering in a sleepy yet cold sun. Yet I spent there one happy hour; and although I slept not as I had done in the same place in the summer at other times, I did not omit to dream; and my dream, whatever it was, refreshed me for prosecuting my farther walk. I reached Dee-side that evening, after a walk of forty miles, and slept at Banchory.

The next day I pursued my way across the wilder, but far more interesting mountain tract stretching from the Dee to the Esk. It is a district to the last degree uneven, like the tossings of an ocean arrested and stiffened-steep hills hanging over narrow hollows, and rivers winding through difficult passes to gain the lower country, and often seeming to jar with the rocks and stern convolutions which oppose their progress to the eastern main. This day I lingered rather more than the last, and dined at a farm-house situated at the foot of the gigantic Cloch-na-ben-a hill noted for a vast stone which stands like a wart on its brow, and which sends down a stream into a wooded glen, dividing two very steep heights from each other. This glen, in summer, is a winding fringe of exquisite beauty, amidst the steep, frowning mountains. The stream passes by a shooting-lodge, and then runs under a solitary and picturesque farm-house, called Bridge of Dye, which crowns the northern of the two heights. The scene, even in winter, had a stern and sullen beauty, and was gilded by a bright day. About sunset, I found myself on the top of the Cairn-a-Mount-the summit of

a celebrated pass leading down from the Highlands to the Lowlands of Kincardineshire, or the Mearns. The road, after toiling up an excessively steep hill, appears to pause on the top; and the traveller, pausing with it, observes on his right. hand a cairn, piled by the ten thousand hands of centuries. Arrived at this confluence of tributary stones, I found a most varied and superb prospect waiting for me. Dim in the shadows of the evening stretched away the Howe of the Mearns, from Stonehaven on the east to Forfar on the west, with the Garvock Hills bounding the plain southward, and the lights of Montrose shining on the verge of ocean, through the gathering gloom. Around and behind were moorlands, surmounted by Cloch-na-Ben, with the last kiss of the sun just melting away from his summit; and piled up in the remotest distance, against the glowing north-west, were. the black masses of Loch-na-Gar, at the sight of which—it was the first sight-all the enthusiasm of my nature boiled up, and I could no longer be silent, but expressed my feelings in cries of rapture; nor could I tear myself from the spot till the last trace of day had died from the heavens. Then, with a sigh, like a poet coming down from some lofty ideal subject to every-day life, I plunged hastily down the steep and rugged hill, into the waste darkness of the night. Ere bed-time, after passing on the way much beautiful scenery, with which afterwards I became familiar-such as Fettercairn, the Burn, and the Gannachy-bridge-I reached the sweet little village of Edzell, lying near the river North Esk, and slept in the

inn there.

Nothing else of any moment occurred till I entered Glasgow on the northern coach, and of all the nights of the year, on the 5th of November, while the bells were ringing a merry peal, and the boys on the street were uttering the old rhyme

"The Gunpowder Plot shall never be forgot,

While Edinburgh or Glasgow

Can fire a single shot."

I found myself in a kind friend's house; the first one in which I had ever yet seen, incredible as it may seem now, a complete copy of Shakspere, in large octavo, Rowe's edition. This was quite a treasure to me. On Saturday mornings, the only mornings the students were not compelled to rise at seven and repair to their classes, I was wont, awakening at the usual hour, to dart out of a sofa-bed where I lay, and seizing on Shakspere, keep it pressed to my bosom till the first peep of day, while I lay in luxurious enjoyment, nestling among the warm blankets, and reading the immortal page.

And now began my College career in the famous University of Glasgow. As was the custom of students then generally, I took only two classes for the session,-the Latin and the Greek. The Professor of Latin was old Josiah Walker, the author of a poem entitled "The Defence of Order," which had been cut up by Lord Brougham in the Edinburgh Review, Walker was once a tutor in the Duke of Atholl's family, where he had met Burns. He had visited the poet at Dumfries, and subsequently had written his Life. He was a man rather of accomplishments than genius; full, however, of kind affections, and much beloved by many of his students. He had been, after leaving the Duke's family, a Custom-officer in Perth, and, it was said, owed his advancement to the Latin chair as much to political influence as to merit. He made, however, a very respectable teacher, and his occasional lectures on Roman Literature displayed very considerable acuteness and taste. He was a thin, tall man, with a large brow, but rather common-place countenance. The waggish and wicked among his class called him generally "the Gauger," and showed him little respect. Sometimes the "Defence of Order," and sometimes Brougham's review of it, was brought by a student to the class-room, and laid on the bench instead of the usual text-book; and when the Professor angrily inquired what book it was, the answer produced a general laugh. I, however, found Walker very kind, and ere the session closed loved him tenderly, although I was quite unable to read his poem

through. I had in this class a great disadvantage, from having been brought up at a country school, where no attention had been paid to prosody, or to the minutiae of Grammar, and made, consequently, only a moderate figure, although I could read Latin easily, and had read much of it. In Greek I had all to learn, and derived a great deal of benefit from Sandford's instructions.

This brilliant man deserves a notice of some little length. Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford was the son of Bishop Sandford of Edinburgh. After studying at Oxford, where he was contemporary with the Earl of Derby, and occasionally carried away from him the palm of scholarship, he was appointed, at the age of twenty-one, Professor of Greek in Glasgow College, and threw himself into the duties of the chair with all the ardour of his ambitious and energetic nature. He had succeeded Professor Young,-a man distinguished, according to the testimony of his students, and some of them became more eminent than himself, for the energy of his enthusiasm, and the splendour of his eloquence. Lockhart, in his "Peter's Letters," describes him as in one moment discussing, with all the coolness of an acute and wary philologist, some point or particle of the Grecian tongue, such as apa, and, in the next, hurried away by the recollection of a passage of poetry in which that particle occurred, into fine excursions of criticism, illustration, fancy, and eloquence. Young was a genuine enthusiast; he admired to passion all excellence, and used to weep like a child, now under Kean's acting, and now under Chalmers' oratory. As a teacher, however, he was partial; indeed, he was only professor to a small and superior section of his class, leaving the rest to gaze in blank astonishment, souring often into disgust with the entire study. He has left nothing behind him, except a criticism on Gray's "Elegy," in the manner of Johnson, which I never read.

Sandford, although young, brilliant, and flattered, possessed at first a considerable portion of common sense, and showed it by having the resolution to form, and the firmness to con