Various

“ It shows clearly enough how thoughts run, when the name of student life is not given to the solitary turning of pages and wasting of midnight oil—to the mastering of Greek particles and the working of the differential calculus, but to the amusements of young men when they have thrown aside their books, to the alliances which they form, to the conversations they start, to their hunting, to their boating, to their fencing, to their drinking, to their love-making,—in a word, to their social ways. ”

“ There were not many men in the county to whom such an offer could be made without an absurdity. It might be doubted whether the duke himself could purchase the Chase of Chaldicotes with ready money; but that he, Gresham, could do so—he and his wife between them—no man did doubt. And then Mr. Gresham thought of a former day when he had once been at Gatherum Castle. He had been poor enough then, and the duke had not treated him in the most courteous manner in the world. How hard it is for a rich man not to lean upon his riches! harder, indeed, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. ”

“ That trio under the tilt, that merry trio, will never in this world meet again. Lively Sophy is under the sod, and quiet Anne with father and mother, brothers, and husband, is far away over the seas, leading a new life in a new country; and, as for Miss Poppy, in recalling the merry days when she was young, she sees so many shadows amongst the living figures, that if the winter wedding in the wolds could come again, half the dancers on the floor would be only dim and doleful ghosts,—’Tis a dozen years ago! ”

“ The song of the Burschen is in our ears; we move in a world that is made up of but two elements—beer and smoke; duels are fought for our edification; riots are raised for the express purpose of amusing us; the girl at the beerhouse is of more account than Herr Professor; and, on the whole, it seems as if the university were a glorious institution, to teach young men the true art of merrymaking. Nor are the novelists altogether wrong in declaring that these doings are a fair sample of university life. What is it that draws men to the university? ”

“ Sowerby, and the Duke of Omnium, he had said to himself. He had to look to rise in the world, as other men did. But what pleasure had come to him as yet from these intimacies? How much had he hitherto done towards his rising? To speak the truth he was not over well pleased with himself, as he made Mrs. Harold Smith’s tea and ordered Mr. Sowerby’s mutton chops on that Sunday morning. ”

“ An immense interest was excited in the lectures, but the chief thing to be observed here is, that by turning his class two days a week into a sort of authoritative debating club, he established a public life, which, if it is not society, is at least the scaffolding of society. So it is more or less in all the classes that are conducted with spirit. It was not so much felt in the class-room of Professor Wilson, who kept all the talk to himself; and surely it was quite enough to hear such a man discourse on human life in his own way. ”

“ The study of the human mind, as pursued in the Scottish universities, has such an effect, that in after life it is an object of incessant interest to all Scotchmen. The average Scotchman will give a shrewder guess than the average Englishman as to a man’s character, and a better description of it. He has studied the anatomy of character so minutely that he delights in portraiture and excels in biography. The proper study of mankind is man—everybody admits. Whether the best way of prosecuting that study is in reading through the classics, and piling up algebraic formulas, I do not know ”

“ They have an immense number of students, and nowhere is the higher sort of education more valued; but just in proportion as it has been valued and rendered accessible to all classes, no matter how poor, it has lost its finer qualities—it has lost—and especially in the greater universities—the student life. Suppose a young man at Islington, another at St. John’s Wood, a third at Bayswater, a fourth in Pimlico, and a fifth at Brixton, studying at University College: what sort of feeling exists among them? what are the ties that bind them together? what society do they form? ”

“ A worthy elder of the Kirk has got a son, who is the greatest little rascal of his age, the admiration of the parish dogs, the terror of the parish cats, curiously acquainted with the nature of the fruit in all the gardens and orchards around, impudent as a monkey, and idle as a fly, but who, in consequence of sundry floggings, carries himself so demurely in the presence of his fond parent, that he is supposed to be a chosen vessel—not far from the kingdom of heaven—a child of grace. ”

“ Among these may be reckoned the fact that a university education is within reach of all classes, and covers a much larger area of the population in Scotland than it does in England. This is the poor man’s view of the case. Those who are in good circumstances think little of such an advantage. They are more impressed with the disadvantages of making a university education too cheap. They are alarmed, in the first place, by the influx of the humbler classes, which of itself must tend to lower the tone of society, and to disintegrate the student life. ”

“ The old wall has a past, a life, a story; as Wordsworth finely says of the mountain, it is “familiar with forgotten years.” Not only are there obvious traces of age in the crumbling mortar and the battered brick, but there are traces, not obvious, except to the inner eye, left by every ray of light, every raindrop, every gust. Nothing perishes. In the wondrous metamorphosis momently going on everywhere in the universe, there is change, but no loss. ”

“ I suppose that fully one-third of the Scottish students are steeped in poverty. The struggle of some of these men upwards, in the face of terrific odds, is almost sublime. When we look at the struggle in cold blood, we say that it is a mistake, that these men ought never to have dreamt of the university, that theirs is a false ambition, and that it would have been better if they had never left the plough or the smithy, if they had gone into the grocery line, or had taken kindly to confectionery. ”

“ Respecting the advantage, or the contrary, of so great earnestness in drawing a portrait of an uncelebrated person, we raise at present no debate: I only wish the reader to note this quality of earnestness, as entirely separating Holbein from Sir Joshua,—raising him into another sphere of intellect. For here is no question of mere difference in style or in power, none of minuteness or largeness. It is a question of Entireness. Holbein is complete in intellect: what he sees, he sees with his whole soul: what he paints, he paints with his whole might. ”

“ The public mind was now awake, and understood what it was about. When a man gets into his head an idea that the public voice calls for him, it is astonishing how great becomes his trust in the wisdom of the public. Vox [310] populi vox Dei. “Has it not been so always?” he says to himself, as he gets up and as he goes to bed. And then Mr. Supplehouse felt that he was the master mind there at Gatherum Castle, and that those there were all puppets in his hand. It is such a pleasant thing to feel that one’s friends are puppets, and that the strings are in one’s own possession. ”

“ A grave man, knowing what steps of men keep truest time to the chanting of Death. Having grave friends also;—the same singing heard far off, it seems to me, or, perhaps, even low in the room, by that family of Sir Thomas More; or mingling with the hum of bees in the meadows outside the towered wall of Basle; or making the words of the book more tuneable, which meditative Erasmus looks upon. Nay, that same soft Death-music is on the lips even of Holbein’s Madonna. ”

“ The student life is as much as possible repressed, in order that the family life may be sustained. The family is a very noble institution—but it is not everything, and certainly it is not society. The young man longs to leave his home and to be his own master in a little world peopled only with young men like himself. Even the small boy who has but newly attained the honour of breeches-pockets, longs to be free ”

“ It is thought more than scholarship; it is the power of reasoning, more than that of acquiring facts, that the Scottish universities foster; and English candidates, passing before Scotch examiners, would be as certainly floored as Scottish candidates now are before English examiners. This is what the Scotch reply to an attack upon their educational system; but they will confess at once the social deficiencies of their universities. It is a bad system, defensible only by disparaging the importance of the student life and overlooking the advantages of society. ”

“ Street is in this respect a type of the Scottish university system. The students attend lectures every day in a certain venerable building, but they live in their own homes; they live where they choose; it may be several miles away from the college. Nobody knows in what strange out-of-the-way places some of them build their nests. One poor fellow who makes a very decent appearance in the class lives in a garret raised thirteen stories over the Cowgate, while the man who sits next to him comes out clean cut, and beautifully polished every day from a palace in the West End. ”

“ In the portrait of the Hausmann George Gyzen, [22] every accessory is perfect with a fine perfection: the carnations in the glass vase by his side—the ball of gold, chased with blue enamel, suspended on the wall—the books—the steelyard—the papers on the table, the seal-ring, with its quartered bearings,—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. ”

“ No depth of glowing heaven beyond them—but the clear sharp sweetness of the northern air: no splendour of rich colour, striving to adorn them with better brightness than of the day: a gray glory, as of moonlight without mist, dwelling on face and fold of dress;—all faultless-fair. Creatures they are, humble by nature, not by self-condemnation; merciful by habit, not by tearful impulse; lofty without consciousness ”

“ If Scottish students do not get much congenial society, it is possible for almost any man to be a student. Whether a university is intended for the peasantry I do not pretend to say; but, at all events, there is the fact, which may be taken for whatever it is worth, that a Scottish university education is open to the peasant not less than to the [375] peer, and that both peasant and peer take advantage of it. The benefits of a good education thus penetrate to a much lower class in Scotland than in England. ”

“ The chance of a fellowship, and the other prizes of a successful university career, will no doubt attract some men; but we know that independently of prizes and honours, a university education has a very high value in this country. And why? Is it because of the knowledge of books acquired? Is it because a young man cannot coach for his degree in Manchester, or in the Isle of Wight, or in the Isle of Dogs, as well as in Oxford or Cambridge? ”

“ For that matter, indeed, most men are self-educated. What they acquire from a teacher is as nothing to what they acquire from their own researches. What a university or a great public school gives, that cannot be obtained elsewhere, is society—the society of equal minds. ”

“ To succeed in that work requires peculiar tact and knowledge of men who are in what Mr. Disraeli has described as the “curly” period of life. Very soon “the curled darlings of our nation” find out the weak places of the professor. He may implore silence, but the more noise prevails. If he threatens, revenge follows the next day, for suddenly and unaccountably half the students in the class turn lame, and hobble into the lecture-room leaning on bludgeons, with which, knocked against the seats, they interrupt the speaker until his voice is drowned in the uproar. ”

“ Apart from all comparison between English and Scottish university life, the psychology and moral philosophy of the North are at least worthy of the highest praise, as an antidote and recompence for the evil that is felt in the absence of student life.
Yet another compensation for the defects of the social system will be found in the professorial method of teaching, when it is conducted with spirit. The common idea of a professor is, that of a man wearing a gown, and reading dull lectures every day for an hour to students, some of whom are taking notes, while the rest are dozing. ”

“ There is not a small tradesman, or farmer, or gamekeeper in Scotland who, if his son displays any symptoms of “book-learning,” does not think of the university as the proper field for the lad, and does not look forward to the day when he shall call his son “Doctor,” or see him in a pulpit thumping the gospel out of the Bible.
It is another redeeming point of the system, that it does not crush the individuality of the student by too much contact with his fellows ”

“ Ideas are traced to their origin, feelings are carefully scrutinized, words are weighed, character is dissected, and in its theory the whole of human life and of the human heart is laid bare to the student. ”

“ Read any account of student life in England, in Ireland, or in Germany, and tell me whether the studies of the young fellows are not the least part of what is regarded in a university education. It is very sad to hear of a pluck; and a novelist is a cruel-hearted wretch who will introduce that incident, after showing us to our content how debts should be incurred, how foxes are run down, how wine-parties are conducted, how Julia loses her heart, and how the proctor loses his temper ”

“ The Germans and the French speak of Englishmen as reserved, but the Scotch are worse than the English—they are the most reserved people in Europe. And this brings me to the point at which I have been driving. The most reserved people in Europe, the people that of all others require most to cultivate the social habit, are singular in refusing to give their youth the opportunity of learning the arts of society. ”

“ Thus the bond between the student and the university, has been weakened to the utmost. What else are we to expect, when a great university, with all its venerable associations, is planned on the model of a day-school? In Scotland all schools are day-schools, from the very highest to the very lowest. The parental and domestic influence is esteemed so much, that no boy is allowed to escape from it, and the young man is kept under it as long as possible. ”