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tobacco, may be said to pervade the atmosphere. Glasgow, indeed, lies in a whiskey climate; and if the citizens are as saturated with the Darwin theory as they are with the odour of whiskey, we might almost expect that, in the course of time, they would be transmuted into whiskey-bottles.

Oh this whiskey, this whiskey! it thus takes hold of our noses, and stares us in the face at the commencement of our journey, and it will encounter us at every turn. The glass 'o' whiskey' is decidedly 'the glass of fashion' in Scotland. When Dr. Johnson visited Scotland, he abstained from whiskey until he had reached as far as Inverary, where he treated himself to a gill, his excuse for this unusual indulgence being, that he might know what it was that made a Scotchman happy.' Afterwards, when he designed to do honour to the modes of other times,' he put water into his quaich: like as I have known a hospitable host who disliked wine, and at his frequent dinner-parties kept close to his elbow a hock-bottle filled with clear toast and water, from which he frequently took wine;' also taking care that no one should interfere with his own private bottle. When the first Lord Breadalbane succeeded to his estates in Caithness, and desired to subjugate the people, he caused a ship laden with whiskey to be stranded on the coast. The bait was taken; and by the time that he knew the people would be helplessly drunk, and unable to offer any resistance, he landed, and speedily made those vessels of inebriety his vassals. This was certainly a method for preventing useless slaughter, that might find favour with rival combatants even at the present day.

CHAPTER VII.

A SCOTCH UNIVERSITY AND ITS PRECINCTS.

Glasgow University-Exterior and Interior-'Cyril Thorn-
ton-Character of the Students-Advantages as a Place for
Instruction A Day of Episcopal Glasgow-Foundation of
the University-Bell o' the Brae-Bearing up the Bishop's
Tail-Wallace-The Malefactors-Rotten Row-Various Deri-
vations and Conjectures-The Drygate-Darnley and Mary
Queen of Scots.

HAL

ALFWAY up this thronged and dirty High Street, we find ourselves in front of a venerable-looking building of deep brown stone, 330 feet in length and three stories high-the third story, with its dormer windows, being in the roof-with all the window-tops richly decorated with carved scroll-and-panel-work; an arched entrance-doorway in the centre lying in the shadow of heavy stone balconies, and surmounted by a mass of conventional Jacobæan ornaments, enclosing the royal arms, with the initials C. R. ii.' A tall tower, with a cupola (the lightning-conductor to which was fixed there by no ordinary workman-Benjamin Franklin to wit), appears over the steep roof; and, through the entrance-gateway, we see the first of the three courts of the building. After a while, we recognise this building to be the Glasgow Universitybut with some little hesitation, as the engravings that we had just seen in the print-shop windows represent it as standing in a spacious street. To our English

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THE UNIVERSITY.

69

eyes, it looks much more like an 'university' — or rather, a college of an university-than does its modern spick-and-span compatriot at Edinburgh. But however harmonious the locality may have been two centuries since for this venerable seat of learning, yet, at this present date, its buildings look sadly out of place. But in vain have enterprising railway companies endeavoured to buy it up, and transport it to a purer atmosphere and more refined neighbourhood: the Lord Rector and his four Nations will not hear of such a profane scattering of venerated relics; and so the Glasgow fountain of knowledge still springs hard by the slums and whiskey-shops.

Perhaps the best description of it, its students, and its curriculum of study, is to be found in the pleasant pages of Cyril Thornton.' The appearance of the building, and the impression made by it upon the young student, are thus described:

'At length, the appearance of an ancient and venerable building informed me that I stood in presence of the University. There is certainly something fine and imposing in its proud and massive front. It seems to stand forth in aged dignity, the last and only bulwark of science and literature, among a population by whom science is regarded but as a source of profit, and literature despised.

'On passing the outer gate, I entered a small quadrangle, which, though undistinguished by any remarkable architectural beauty, yet harmonised well, in its air of Gothic antiquity, with the general character of the place. This led to another of larger dimensions, of features not dissimilar; and having crossed this, a turn to the left brought me to a third, of more modern construction, which was entirely appropriated to the

residence of the professors. There was something fine and impressive in the sudden transition from the din and bustle of the streets which surrounded it, to the stillness and the calm which reign within the timehallowed precincts of the University. I seemed at once to breathe another and purer atmosphere, and I thought, in my youthful enthusiasm, that here I could cast off the coil of the world and its contemptible realities, and yield up my spirit to the lore of past ages, where I saw nothing round me to intrude the idea of the present.'

I will make no apology for introducing two other quotations from the same work, as it is impossible for a stranger to describe with any approximate accuracy the interior life of an university with whose buildings alone he has made a passing acquaintance.

The character of the students is thus touched upon by the author of Cyril Thornton :'

'A few weeks passed away, and the courts of the college, formerly deserted and silent, were instinct with life and bustle. The session had now commenced, and nearly two thousand students crowded its halls. They were principally the sons of merchants and tradesmen of the city, and natives of the north of Ireland, of the very lowest order of the people, who came, generally in a state of miserable destitution, to qualify themselves in the speediest and cheapest manner for the functions of the ministry. The leavening of English in this promiscuous assemblage was comparatively small, and chiefly furnished by the Dissenters, who were compelled to seek, in the more liberal establishments of Scotland, that access to knowledge and instruction from which they were legally excluded by the great seminaries of their native land. There were also a few Englishmen of a higher class, who were placed, like myself, under

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CYRIL THORNTON.'

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the more immediate guidance and tuition of some particular professor, and in whose family they were received as inmates.'

And, finally, the author of Cyril Thornton' thus sums up the advantages of the Glasgow University as a place for instruction :

It is, perhaps, an advantage to Glasgow, as a seminary of education, that it affords none of the appliances of elegant dissipation. Nowhere else does vice meet the eye so perfectly denuded of those external decorations with which refinement too often succeeds in hiding her deformity. She there appears, not as a young and captivating female, rich in guilty and seductive blandishments, but as a haggard and disgusting beldam. To be dissipated in Glasgow, one must cease to be a gentleman. He must at once throw off all the delicacy with which nature or education has invested him, and become familiar with the squalid haunts of low and loathsome debauchery. Youth cannot do this. At that age, even the visions of sensual enjoyment are mingled and connected with high intellectual excitement. In the very strength and ardour of his passion there is safety. He contemplates the glowing pictures of love and beauty, which teem in his imagination; and he is guarded as with a sevenfold shield from the assaults of gross and vulgar pollution.'

Professor Cosmo Innes has been enabled, by industrious research, to describe the scene presented in Glasgow on the day of the foundation of the University; and as to abridge it would be to spoil it, I present it in his own words :

'Take one day of Episcopal Glasgow, the day of the foundation of the University. Fill that old High Street with its historical associations; remove the smoke and

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