STUDENT LIFE IN SCOTLAND.
Exemption from the authority of the ordinary legal or correctional tribunals was one of the remarkable features of the ancient universities, and the relics of it which have come down almost to the present day in Scotland are very curious. The university was a state in itself, where the administrators of the ordinary authority of the realm had no more power than in a neighbouring independent republic. So jealously was this authority watched and fenced, that usually when the dispute lay between the liegemen of the university and those of the State—between gown and town—the university haughtily arrogated the authority over both. To be sure, it was very much the practice of the age to adjust rights and privileges by balancing one against another—by letting them fight out, as it were, every question in a general contest, and produce a sort of rude justice by the antagonism and balance of forces, just as in some Oriental states at this day the strangers of each nation have the privilege of living under their native laws; a method which, by pitting privilege against privilege, and letting the stronger bear down the weaker, saves the central government much disagreeable and difficult work in the adjustment of rights and duties.
So, in the middle ages, we had the ecclesiastical competing with the baronial interests, and the burghal or corporate with both. Nay, in these last there was a subdivision of interests, various corporations of craftsmen being subject to the authority of their own syndics, deans, or mayors, and entitled to free themselves from any interference in many of their affairs by the burghal or even the royal courts. Ecclesiastical law fought with civil law, and chancery carried on a ceaseless undermining contest with common law; while over Europe there were inexhaustible varieties of palatinates, margravates, regalities, and the like, enjoying their own separate privileges and systems of jurisprudence. But over this Babel of authorities, so complexly established in France that Voltaire complained of changing laws as often as he changed horses, what is conspicuous is the homage paid by all the other exclusive privileges to those of the universities, and the separation of these grand institutions by an impassable line of venerated privileges from the rest of the vulgar world. Thus, the State conceded freely to literature those high privileges for which the Church in vain contended, from the slaughter of Becket to the fall of Wolsey. In a very few only of the States nearest to the centre of spiritual dominion, could an exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction extending to matters both spiritual and temporal be asserted; and France, which acknowledged the isolated authority of the universities, bade a stern defiance to the claims of the priesthood.
It can hardly be said that, invested with these high powers, the universities bore their honours meekly. Respected as they were, they were felt to be invariably a serious element of turbulence, and a source of instability to their respective governments. In the affairs of the League, the Fronde, and the various other contests which, in former days, as in the present, have kept up a perpetual succession of conflicts in turbulent Paris, the position to be taken by the students was extremely momentous, but was not easily to be calculated upon; for these gentry imbibed a great amount both of restlessness and capriciousness along with their cherished prerogatives. During the centuries in which a common spirit pervaded the whole academic body, the fame of a particular university, or of some celebrated teacher in it, had a concentrating action over the whole civilised world, which drew a certain proportion of the youth of all Europe towards the common vortex. Hence, when we know that there were frequently assembled from one to ten thousand young men, adventurous and high-spirited, contemptuous of the condition of the ordinary citizen, and bound together by common objects and high exclusive privileges—well armed, and in possession of edifices fortified according to the method of the day—we hardly require to read history to believe how formidable such bodies must have proved.
An incident in the history of a wandering Scotsman, though but a petty affair in itself, illustrates the sort of feudal power possessed by the authorities of a university. Thomas Dempster, the author ofEtruria Regalis, and of a work better known than esteemed in Scottish Biography, in the course of his Continental wanderings found himself in possession of power—as sub-principal, it has been said, of the college of Beauvais, in the university of Paris. Taking umbrage at one of the students for fighting a duel—one of the enjoyments of life which Dempster desired to monopolise to himself—he caused the young gentleman’s points to be untrussed, and proceeded to exercise discipline in the primitive dorsal fashion. The aggrieved youth had powerful relations, and an armed attack was made on the college to avenge his insults. But Dempster armed his students and fortified the college walls so effectively that he was enabled, not only to hold his post, but to capture some of his assailants, and commit them as prisoners to the belfry. It appears, however, that like many other bold actions this was more immediately successful than strictly legal, and certain ugly demonstrations in the court of the Chatelain suggested to Dempster the necessity of retreating to some other establishment in the vast literary republic of which he was a distinguished ornament—welcome wherever he appeared. He had come of a race not much accustomed to fear consequences or stand in awe of the opinion of society. His elder brother had, among other ethical eccentricities—or, as they would now be justly deemed, enormities—taken unto himself for wife his father’s cast-off mistress; and when the venerable parent, old Dempster of Muiresk, intimated his disapproval of the connection, he was fiercely attacked by a band of the Gordon Highlanders, headed by his hopeful son. Defeated and put to flight with some casualties, the heir hoisted the standard of an independent adventurer in Orkney, where, setting fire to the bishop’s palace, he rendered the surrounding atmosphere too hot for him. He made his final exit in the Netherlands; and his conduct there must have been, to say the least of it, questionable, since his affectionate brother, whose conduct in Paris is the more immediate object of our notice, records that his doom was to be torn to pieces by wild horses. In such a family, flagellation would have little chance of being condemned as a degrading punishment, inconsistent with the natural dignity of man. Indeed, to admit the plain honest truth, the records of the Scottish universities prove to us that this pristine discipline was inflicted on its junior members; and it is especially assigned in Glasgow as the appropriate punishment for carrying arms. Local peculiarities of costume gave facilities for it in some instances, which were not so readily afforded by the padded trunk-hose and countless ribbon-points of the Parisian “swells” of Louis XIII.’s day. The Parisian aristocracy took serious umbrage at the conduct of Dempster; and he had to take his vast learning and his impracticable temper elsewhere.
This is a digression; but Thomas Dempster is a good type of those Scotsmen who brought over to us, from their own energetic practice, the observance of the Continental notions of the independence and power of the universities. His experience was ample and varied. He imbibed a tinge of the Anglican system at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Besides serving and commanding in different colleges at Paris, he held office at Louvain, Rome, Douay, Tournay, Navarre, Toulouse, Montpelier, Pisa, and Bologna. A man who has performed important functions in all these places may well be called a citizen of the world. At the same time, his connections with them were generally of a kind not likely to pass from the memory of those who came in contact with him. He was a sort of roving Bentley, who, not contented with sitting down surrounded by the hostility of nearly all the members of one university, went about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he might attack and insult, and left behind him wherever he went the open wounds of his sword, or of his scarcely less direful pen, scattered thickly around him. He was one of those who, as Anthony Arnaud said of himself, are to expect tranquillity only in a removal from that sublunary world in which, like pieces of clockwork wound up, they are doomed to a ceaseless motion during their vitality. Thomas Dempster has many sins to answer for, and at this day the most conspicuous of them is the cool impudence wherewith, in hisHistoria Literaria Gentis Scotorum, he makes every man whose birthplace is not notorious, and whose name gives any excuse for dubiety, a Scotsman—as, for instance, Macrobius, who is claimed in virtue of hisMac, and in forgetfulness that his is a Greek name, signifying long-lifed. Yet peace to our countryman’s long dispersed ashes. He was a fine type of the fervent, energetic, brave, enduring national character; and the ungoverned waywardness of his career was an earnest of what his countrymen might achieve when a better day should dawn upon their poor distracted land.
But to return to the exclusive judicial authority of the universities, and the relics of the system found in Scotland,—we do remember that on the occasion of one of those great snowballemeutes, which at intervals of years make the Edinburgh students frantic, the police had entered the quadrangle of the College and captured some of their sacred persons. The occurrence was improved on by the students of Aberdeen—then in possession of an organ of no despicable ability, called theAberdeen Magazine—who maintained that their own academical edifices were sacred from civic intrusion, and pointed the finger of scorn at their southern brethren, who submitted without rebellion to invasion by a body of glazed-hatted constables, under the leadership of a superintendent of police. It was said, in retaliation, that the reason why the universities of Aberdeen were exempt from the visitations of the police was because there was no force of police constables in the northern capital; and it was maintained that whenever they should make their appearance there, they would pay no more respect to the precincts of the university than to those of the old privileged religious houses—whose boundaries, sacred some centuries ago from civic intrusion, are still set forth in the title-deeds of burghal estates. We know not how the matter may really stand, but we suspect that the broad-bonneted and broad-shouldered gentry who now make so curiously conspicuous a police in the streets of Aberdeen, are not sufficiently acquainted with the privileges of Marischal College to pay them the due deference.
Still we do find curious practical relics of the privileges of the universities. On the 19th of June 1509, a general convocation—congregatio generalis—of the University of Glasgow was held in the chapter-house of the cathedral—the now venerable University edifices had not then been built. In that assembly solemn discussion was held upon certain momentous matters, the first and most important of which was a representation by the Chancellor and temporary Rector of the University that the exclusive jurisdiction and adjudication of causes—jurisdictio,causarumque cognitio—were falling into desuetude, to the great prejudice of the University, and the no small diminution of its valuable privileges. The next notice that one finds in theRecordsis a few years later—28th March 1522—but it is rather a conflict between the privileges of two of the universities than between the academic and the judicial authorities. In the general convocation of the University, Peter Alderstoun is accused of having served a citation from the Conservator of the Privileges (Conservator Priviligiorum) of the University of St Andrews on a certain Mr Andrew Smyth—the aristocratic spelling is older than we thought it had been in Scotland. The breach of privilege was aggravated by its occurring in the habitation of the Reverend David Kinghorn, Pensioner of Cross Raguel. The bailiff, or whatever else he might be, pleaded ignorance of the nature of the writ; but he was obliged, barehead, to seek pardon from the injured party. We find nothing more bearing on the question of the special university privileges, until, in the year 1670, a sudden and singularly bold attempt appears to be made for their revival, a court of justiciary being held by the University, and a student put on trial on a charge of murder. The weighty matter is thus introduced:—
“Anent the indytment given in by John Cumming, wryter in Glasgow, elected to be Procurator-Fiscal of the said University; and Andrew Wright, cordoner in Glasgow, neirest of kin to umquhile Janet Wright, servetrix to Patrick Wilson, younger, gairdner there, killed by the shot of ane gun, or murdered within the said Patrick his dwelling-house, upon the first day of August instant, against Robert Bartoun, son lawful of John Bartoun, gairdner in the said burgh, and student in the said University, for being guilty of the said horrible crime upon the said umquhile Janet.”[135]
A jury was impannelled to try the question. The whole affair bears a suspicious aspect of being preconcerted to enable the accused to plead the benefit of acquittal; for no objection is taken on his part to the competency of the singular tribunal before which he is to be tried for his life; on the contrary, he highly approves of them as his judges, and in the end is pronounced not guilty. The respectable burgesses who acted as jurymen had, however, as it appears, their own grave doubts about this assumption of the highest judicial functions; and we find them in this curious little document, which we offer in full, expressing themselves with that cautious and sagacious scepticism which is as much a part of the national character as its ardour and enthusiasm.
“Patrick Bryce, chancellor, and remanent persons who passed upon the said inquest, before they gave in their verdict to the said court, desired that they might be secured for the future, lest they might be quarrelled at any time hereafter for going on, and proceeding to pass on an inquest of the like nature, upon ane warning by the officer of the said University; and that in regard they declared the case to be singular, never having occurred in the age of before to their knowledge, and the rights and privileges of the University not being produced to them to clear their privilege for holding of criminal courts, and to sit and cognosce upon crimes of the like nature; whereunto it was answered by the Rector and his assessors that they opponed their being content to pass upon the said inquestin initio, and their making faith without contraverting their privilege; but notwithstanding thereof, for their satisfaction andex abundanti gratia, they declared themselves and their successors in office enacted, bound, and obliged for their warrandice of all cost, skaith, danger, and expenses they or ane or other of them should sustain or incur through the passing upon the said inquest, or whilk could follow thereupon, through the said University their wanting of their original rights or writs for clearing to them the privilege and jurisdiction in the like cases. Whereupon the said Patrick Bryce, as Chancellor, for himself, and in name and in behalf of the haill remanent members of the said inquest, asked acts of court.”[136]
Though we are not aware of any instance in Scotland where the academic tribunals have arrogated, since the Reformation, so high a power, it is not difficult to find other instances where exemption has been claimed, even at a later period, from the ordinary powers that be. Thus theGlasgow Recordsof the year 1721 bear that—
“The faculty, being informed that some of the magistrates of Glasgow, and particularly Bailie Robert Alexander, has examined two of the members of the University—viz., William Clark and James Macaulay, students in the Greek class—for certain crimes laid to their charge some time upon the month of February last, and proceeded to sentence against these students, contrary to and in prejudice of the University and haill members, do therefore appoint Mr Gershom Carmichael, &c., to repair to the said magistrates of Glasgow, and particularly Bailie Alexander, and demand the cancelling of the said sentence, and protest against the said practice of the said bailie or any of the magistrates for their said practice, and for remeid of law as accords.”[137]
It was the principle, not the persons—the protection of their privileges, not the impunity of their students—that instigated the faculty on this occasion, since in their next minute they are found visiting William Clark and James Macaulay with punishment for heavy youthful offences. We offer no apology for quoting, on such an occasion, these scraps from technical documents. It appears to us that when they are not oppressively long, or too professional for ordinary comprehension, there is no other way of affording so distinct a notion of any very remarkable social peculiarity, such as we account the exclusive liability of the members of universities to their own separate tribunals to have been.
Although the Scottish universities never boasted of the vast concourse of young men of all peoples, nations, and languages, which sometimes flocked to the Continental schools, and thus with their great privileges created a formidableimperium in imperio—yet naturally there has existed more or less of a standing feud between the citizen class and the student class. The records before us show repeated contests by the authorities of universities, against an inveterate propensity in the students to wear arms, and to use them. The weapons prohibited by the laws of King’s College, Aberdeen, are so varied and peculiar that we cannot venture to do their Latin names into English, and can only derive, from the terms in which they are denounced, a general notion how formidable a person a student putting the law at defiance must have been. But for the difference in the Latinity, one might suppose himself reading Strada’s celebrated account of the weapons in the Spanish Armada.[138]
From some incidental causes, a slight tinge of the desperado habits, indicated by such restrictions, lingered around the Scottish universities, and perhaps was most loth to depart from that northernmost institution to which the prohibitions specially applied. The main cause of their continuance may be attributed to the exigencies of the anatomical classes which gradually attached themselves to the schools of medicine. In obtaining subjects there was a perpetual contest with unmitigable prejudices; and as in the smaller university towns there were few or no people who followed systematically the trade of the resurrectionist, the students had to help themselves. It needed but the very fact of their having an occasional “subject” in the dissecting-room to expose them to an odious reputation, which no argument about the blessed results of the healing art, and the necessity of studying it in the structure of the human frame, could in the slightest degree mitigate. The feud thus caused was of a kind which widened as the progress of scientific acquirement enlarged the study of anatomy; and it seemed as if a permanent and deadly hostility against the progress of an essential science were daily deepening and widening, until public wrath, concentrated and accumulated, might be expected at last to burst on the devoted pursuit, and annihilate it. Though the students of anatomy were generally among those who had passed through the ordinary curriculum of studies, and no longer wore the distinguishing scarlet robe, yet their younger brethren were, not entirely without cause, mixed up in their misdeeds. Horrible stories of their waylaying children, and of their clapping plasters on the mouths of grown men met in lonely byways, which stopped the breath, and instantaneously extinguished life, were greedily believed, and founded tales capable of supersedingBluebeardandThe One-handed Monkat the winter chimney-corner. Young lads in their early blushing scarlet were sometimes savagely assaulted, as if the poor innocents were ghouls in search of the horrible prey peculiar to their order. The public frenzy reached its climax on the revelation of the crimes of Burke and Hare. It almost as suddenly collapsed after the passing of the Anatomy Act, which removed from dissection that odium which previous legislation had factitiously imparted to it as part of the punishment of murder, and accompanied the change with special facilities for the obtainment of subjects. Hence more than twenty years have passed since the habits of our students were tainted by this incidental peculiarity, and its social effect must now be matter of tradition.
It can easily, however, be believed that the revolting preliminary which the votary of science had to undergo must have had an influence on his habits very far from propitious. The nocturnal expedition was occasionally joined by those who had not the excuse of scientific ardour, and thus the influence of the practice spread beyond the limits of the medical profession. The mysterious horrors surrounding the reputation of such a pursuit were not without a certain fascination to the young gownsmen, and some of them were supposed placidly to cultivate rather than suppress charges which would have seriously alarmed their more knowing and practical seniors. Though there was thus a good deal of exaggeration and boasting both from without and from within, yet the practice did exist among the senior students, while at the same time an occasional junior, approved for his boldness and discretion, might be admitted to act a subordinate part in a “resurrectionising affair.” Possibly he, if not the others, might find it necessary to employ some stimulant to brace his nerves for the formidable work in hand. Thus the adventure which provided the theatre of anatomy with the means of keeping a few students at hard work in one of the most important departments of human knowledge, had probably occasioned more than one night of fierce dissipation, and produced scenes which would have considerably astonished the good old aunts, deprecating the exhausting labours of their virtuous nephews in the nasty hospitals and that horrid dissecting-room.
The excesses which concentrated themselves around this solemn and cheerless pursuit, ramified themselves into others of a more fantastic and cheerful character. Probably it is all changed now; but they are not very old men who remember how the smaller university towns were subject to fantastic superficial revolutions. Trees, gates, railings, street lamps, summer-houses, shop signs, and other “accessories of the realty,” as lawyers call them, disappearing or changing places like the shifting of the side-slips in a theatre. Perhaps there may even be alive some who have witnessed or participated in such divertisements. Is there any one who will admit participation in that transmutation which scandalised the bailie, by exhibiting his suburban mansion under the auspices of the national achievement, as “licensed to sell spirits, porter, and ale,” just at the moment when the licentiate of the Red Lion was lamenting the disappearance of his insignia? Are none of those virtuous youths alive, who called next day to express their horror of the deed, and hold confidential communion with the bailie, thus obtaining access to his arsenal, and receiving the comfortable secret information—valuable for future conduct—that the blunderbuss, the musket, and the brace of pistols, were loaded with powder only, “but he wad warrant the scounrels wad get a fleg”? Who was it, we wonder, that, on the myrmidons of justice coming to his chambers, under the well-warranted suspicion that he possessed an extensive and varied collection of shop signs, had recourse to his incipient Scripture knowledge by an apt quotation in reference to those who seek what they do not succeed in obtaining? Is it probable that in any private neuks in old dwelling-houses there may exist relics of those prized museums not acquired without toil and risk—and exhibited with much caution only to trusted friends—which consisted mainly of watchmen’s rattles and battered lanterns? Lives there yet one of that laborious group, who wished to illuminate the mansion of Professor Blanc in proper style, and to that effect carried out a cluster of street lamps, and planted them all alight in his garden, so encountering labour and risk with no better reward than a reflection on the professor’s puzzled countenance when he should awaken and behold the phenomenon?N.B.Street lamps in those days were fed with oil, and were supported on wooden posts, which it was not difficult for a couple of strong youths to uproot.
But we are shocking the virtue and civilisation of the age by such queries. They hint at practices which we believe to be entirely eschewed by the superior class of young gentlemen who now frequent our universities. If we have created a throb of terror in an amiable parent’s breast, we humbly beg his pardon. He may take our word for it that his hopeful son is incapable of such pranks. This is mainly an antiquarian article, and the matter contained in it belongs more or less to the past, and is founded on document or tradition.
The semi-monastic foundations by which the students live under the discipline of colleges or halls, and assemble together at a common table, are indissolubly connected in English notions with the idea of a university. Yet the system arose as an adjunct to the original universities, and, as late inquirers have shown, the parasites have so overrun the parent stem that its original character is scarcely perceptible beneath their more luxuriant growth. The origin of these institutions is simple enough. When the great teachers brought crowds of young men together from all parts of Europe, the primary question was how they were to obtain food and shelter? and a second arose when these needs were supplied—how could any portion of the discipline of the parental home be administered to them among strangers? Certain privileges were given to the houses inhabited by the students, and streets and quarters sprung up for their accommodation, as we now see the rows of red-tiled cottages sprout forth like lichens around the tall chimney of a new manufactory. To prevent fluctuation, and preserve the academic character wherever it had once established itself, it was a frequent regulation that the houses once inhabited by students could be let to no other person so long as the rents were duly paid. We find traces of this expedient in the records of Glasgow, where there seems to have been great difficulty in accommodating the students of the infant university, on account of the extreme smallness of the town. Since the house once occupied by the student was thenceforth dedicated to his order, speculators were induced to build entirely with a view to the accommodation of a certain number of young men living in celibacy, and they naturally imitated the example set them in the construction of monasteries. The edifice and its use thus suggested something like the monastic discipline—and, indeed, an establishment filled with young men, having their separate dormitories and common table, yet without any head or system of discipline among them, would have been a social anomaly of the most formidable character. The university required to give its sanction to the well ordering of the separate institutions thus rising around it. At the same time munificent patrons of learning left behind them endowments for founding such institutions, indicating at the same time the method in which the founders desired that they should be governed, and appointing a portion of the funds to form stipendiary allowances to office-bearers. So arose those great colleges and halls which in England have buried the original constitution of the university beneath them.
In the great Continental universities which contained separate colleges, these were more strictly under the central control. In Scotland, the wealth at the disposal of the academic institutions, and the numbers attending them, were never sufficiently great to encourage the rise of separate bodies, either independent or subordinate. The system of monastic residence and a common table was adopted under the authority of the university, but it is remarkable that while so many of the fundamental features of the original institution have been preserved, this subsidiary arrangement has totally disappeared. The indications of its existence, however, as they are preserved in the records, have naturally considerable interest as vestiges of a social condition which has passed from the earth.
In theGlasgow Recordswe have, of date 1606, a contract with Andrew Henderson touching the Boarding of the Masters and Bursars, commencing thus: “At Glasgow, the twenty-twa day of October, the year of God JmVJcand aucht yeares: it is appoyntit and aggreit betwix the pairties following, viz., Mr Patrick Schairp, Principal of the College of Glasgow, and Regentes thairof, with consent of the ordinar auditouris of the said College compts, undersubscrivand on the ane part, and Andro Hendersoun, Burges of the said burgh on the uther part, in manner following.” Having afforded this initial specimen of the document, we shall take the liberty of somewhat modifying the spelling of such parts of the “manner following,” in quoting such portions of it as seem by their curious character to demand notice; and herein we may observe that we follow the example of a judicious Quaker we had once the pleasure of being made known to, who, after a solicitous desire to know the Christian name of his new acquaintance, with a few preliminary thee’s and thou’s—as much as to say, you see the set I belong to—afterwards ran into the usual current of conversation very much like a man of this world. Well, the document, with much precision, continues to say:—
“The manner of the board shall be this: At nine hours upon the flesh days—viz., Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—the said Andrew shall prepare to the said masters, and others that pay as they pay, ane soup of fine white bread, or ane portion of cold meat, as best may be had, with some dry bread and drink. At twelve hours the said Andrew shall cover ane table in the hall of the said College, and shall serve them in brose, skink, sodden beef, and mutton, the best in the market, rosted mutton or veel, as the commodity of the season of the year shall serve, with a fowl, or the equivalent thereof, with good wheat bread, the best in the market, without scarcity, and ‘gud staill aill, aucht or ten dayis auld, that sall be bettir nor the haill aill in the town,’ and at supper suchlike. And on fish days the said Andrew shall furnish every ane in the morning ‘ane callour fresch eg, with sum cauld meit or milk and breid, and sum dry breid and drink; at noone, kaill and eggis, herring, and thrie course of fische, give thai may be had, or the equivalent thairof in breid and milk, fryouris with dry breid as of befoir,’ and at supper suchlike. The mess of the bursars, which immediately follows, must be given literatim: ‘On the fleshe dayis, in the morning, everie ane of thame, ane soup of ait breid and ane drink; at noone, broois with ane tailye of fresche beif, with sufficient breid and aill to drink; at evening, on the said manner, ane tailye of fresche beif to everie meiss. On fische dayis, breid and drink as in the flesche dayis; at disjoone, ane eg; at noone, eggis, herring, and ane uther course; at evening sicklyke.’”[139]
Probably such a bill of fare may dispel some notions about the sordid living of our ancestors, and the privations especially of those who dedicated themselves to a scholastic life. The existence of meagre days—or fish days, as they are called—in the year 1608, suggests explanations which we have not to offer. It would almost appear, however, that, at least in the dietary of the superior class, a fish day was one in which fish was added to a comfortable allotment of meat, instead of being substituted for it. Another contract occurs in the year 1649, varying little from “the said Andrew’s,” except in the addition of a few luxuries. The mess to be laid in the hall for dinner is to be “broth, skink, sodden beef, and mutton, the best in the market, with roasted mutton, lamb, veal, or hudderin, as the season of the year shall serve, with wheat bread and good stale ale; and at supper suchlike, with a capon or hen, or the equivalent.” The fish days continue to be distinguished less by the diminution of flesh—since there is to be two roasts in the day—than by the addition of fish. At supper there are to be sweetmeats and “stoved plumdamas,” which may be interpreted stewed prunes. Another article there introduced is called “stamped kaile.” The application of the participle is new to us, though, as every one ought to know, kail means broth, or what the French callpotage; and a critic in such matters suggests that the word stamped may refer to the mashing of the materials. In the earlier of the contracts which we have referred to, the board-money was—for the master’s table, £30 per quarter, (Scots money, of course); and for the bursars’, £16. 13s. 4d. The value of money had so far risen that in the next period the sums were respectively £46 and £24. The master’s table was frequented by the young aristocracy of Scotland, apparently in as ample a proportion as those of England are now to be found at Oxford and Cambridge. Thus, in an inventory of occupied rooms, apparently in one floor, the aristocratic element has a decided preponderance in the nomenclature: “Lord James’s chamber, Francis Montgomerie’s chamber, Kilmarnock’s chamber, Richard Elphinstone’s chamber, George Smyth’s chamber, James Fleming’s chamber, Joseph Gill’s chamber, James Simson’s chamber.”[140]
It is not perhaps generally known that the practice of a common table was continued in St Andrews down to about the year 1820. In evidence before the University Commission in 1827, Dr Hunter stated that “there were two public tables; one of them, the higher table, was attended only by boarders, and by the bursars on the Ramsay mortification; the board was high, and the entertainment altogether was better: the other was the bursars’ table. The college was induced to contract with an economist or provisor to supply both tables; and if the boards fell short, or if the expense increased from the articles of subsistence being dearer than ordinary in any year, or exceeded the amount allowed by the contract, the College often compensated to him that loss.” Having thus offered some notices of the collegiate system in its full vitality, and traced it to its last lurking-place, we cannot help giving a place to the significant reflections which have occurred to the editor of theGlasgow Recordson the extinction of the system.
“In all the universities in Scotland, the old collegiate life, so favourable for scholastic discipline, has been abandoned. Perhaps the increasing numbers rendered living in college under the masters’ eye inconvenient; though some modification of the systems of living in the universities and the great schools of England might meet the difficulty. The present academic life in Scotland brings the master and the student too little in contact, and does not enable the teacher to educate in that which is more important than scholastic learning, nor to study and train the temper, habits, and character. If the alternative which has been chosen inferred that the student enjoyed the benefit of parental or domestic care when out of the lecture-room, the change might be less objectionable; but when we observe the crowds of young men brought from distant homes to our universities, living at large and altogether uncontrolled, except in the classroom, we may look back with some regret to the time when the good regent of a university, living among his pupils, came in the parent’s place as well as the master’s.
“But it was not only the discipline of the university that was benefited by the collegiate life. The spirit of fellowship that existed among young men set apart for the common object of high education, was on the whole favourable, though liable to exaggeration, and often running into prejudice. Nearly all that common feeling of the youth of a great university is gone. The shreds of it that are preserved by the dress, scarcely honoured in the crowded streets of a great city, and the rare occurrence of a general meeting of students, serve only to suggest to what account it might be turned for exciting the enthusiasm and raising the standard of conduct among the youth of Scotland. If such collections as the present, in revealing the old machinery of the scholar life, tend in any degree to the renewal of the bond of common feeling among the younger students, and of sympathy with their teachers, they will not be useless.”
We were led towards the vestiges of the collegiate system by the observation, that while in England it had overshadowed and concealed the original outline of the universities, it had in Scotland disappeared, leaving the primitive institutions in their original loneliness. When we contemplate, with this recollection, the decayed remains of the older universities, it will be seen that they were not so inferior in wealth and magnificence to those of our neighbours, as the mass of collegiate institutions which these have gathered around the primitive university might lead one to suppose. Undoubtedly Christ Church and King’s Chapel are fine buildings; but the remains of the chapels of St Salvator at St Andrews, and of King’s College in Aberdeen, are not to be despised. Of the former, alas! there are little more than the truncated walls and buttresses, with here and there a decoration to show what the edifice was when it stood forth in all its symmetry. Near the end of last century a suspicion was entertained that the roof was decayed and would fall. So groundless was the supposition, that after the workmen who were removing it had gone too far to recede, they found that they could not take it to pieces, but must first weaken its connection with the wall plates, and let it fall plump down. Of course it smashed to atoms nearly every interior ornament, and it just left enough of the marble tomb of its founder, Bishop Kennedy, to let us see what a marvellous group of richly-cut Gothic work it must have originally been. Within it there were found, among other ornaments, a heavy silver mace of Parisian workmanship, wonderful as the tomb itself for the quaint intricacy of its workmanship.
The chapel of King’s College has fared better. Like a modest northern wild-flower, its beauties are hidden from the common gaze of the peering tourist, but to the adepts who examine them they are of no ordinary character. From the difficulty of working the indigenous granite, and the cost of importing freestone, the Gothic builders of this district seem to have been frugal in their stone decorations, so that the glory of King’s College consists in its interior wood-work of carved oak, worked in architectural forms, like fairy masonry. We question if there is anywhere a collection of specimens of Gothic fretwork more varied and delicate.
It is difficult to conceive anything more depictive of high and daring educational aspirations than the planting of this beautiful edifice in so distant a spot, as the place of worship of those students who were to flock to it from the wild hills and dreary moors of the north. Its founder was Bishop Elphinston, an ardent scholar, a traveller, and a frequenter of the Continental universities, who might rather have been expected, had he followed the dictates of his refined tastes instead of his conscientious convictions, and his zeal for the spread of learning, to have spent his days among the Continental scholars, than to have carried their learning across the Grampians. The character of the foundation may be derived from the following abstract of the Bull of erection of 1495, prefixed to the Spalding edition of theFasti Aberdonienses.
“Bull of Pope Alexander VI., issued on the petition of James IV., King of Scots, which sets forth that the north parts of his kingdom were inhabited by a rude, illiterate, and savage people, and therefore erecting in the City of Old Aberdeen a ‘Studium Generale’ and University, as well for theology, canon and civil law, medicine, and the liberal arts, as for any other lawful faculty, to be there studied and taught by ecclesiastical and lay Masters and Doctors, in the same manner as in the ‘Studia Generalia’ of Paris and Bologna, and for conferring on deserving persons the degrees of Bachelor, Licentiate, Doctor, Master, and all other degrees and honourable distinctions; conferring on William, Bishop of Aberdeen, and his successors, the office of Chancellor, empowering them, or, during the vacancy of the See, the Vicar deputed by the Chapter, to confer these degrees in all the faculties on such well-behaved scholars as shall, after due examination, be deemed fit by the Rector, Regents, Masters, or Doctors of the faculty in which the degree is sought; granting to such graduates full power of teaching in this or any otherstudium, without any other examination; giving power to the Chancellor or his Vicar, the Rector for the time, and the resident Doctors, with the assistance of a competent number of Licentiates in each faculty, and of circumspect scholars of the saidstudium, and of two of the King’s Councillors at the least, to make statutes for the good government thereof; and conferring on the students and graduates thereof all the privileges and immunities of any other University. 10 February, 1494–5.”
The character of the institution, and the extent to which it embodied the matured practices of the foreign universities, will be more amply understood by a document, dated a few years later, in the shape of a collegiate endowment by the Bishop, applicable, along with the foundation of a certain Duncan Scherar, to thirty-six members.
“Of the foresaid thirty-six persons, five to be Masters of Arts and Students of Theology, exercising the functions of the priesthood, and daily acting as readers and Regents in Arts, each having a stipend of ten pounds, four of them being paid out of the lands and feu-duties assigned by the Bishop, and the fifth out of the foundation of the foresaid Duncan Scherar; thirteen to be scholars or poor clerks, fit for instruction in speculative knowledge, and whose parents cannot support them at scholastic exercises, twelve of them having each a stipend of twelve merks from the revenues of the said churches, with chambers and other college conveniences, and the thirteenth a stipend of five pounds from the foundation of the said Duncan Scherar; the five Students of Theology to be supported for seven years until they are licensed, and one of these, of sweet temper, to be selected by the Principal and Sub-principal to read and teach poetry and rhetoric to the other Students; and the Students in Arts to be supported for three years and a half until made Masters; at the end of which periods, these Students of Theology and Arts, whether graduated or not, to be removed, and others instituted in their stead; the Principal, Canonist, Civilist, Mediciner, Sub-principal, and Grammarian, to be nominated by the Bishop and his successors, Chancellors of the University; the Students of Theology to be admitted by the Chancellor, and nominated by the Rector, Dean of Faculty of the Arts, Principal and Sub-principal; and the thirteen Scholars to be admitted in like manner, and nominated by the above parties and the Regent of Arts; of the thirteen Students in Arts, the two first to be of the name of Elphinstoun, who, after being graduated in Arts, shall be admitted among the Students of Theology, and three to be from the parishes of Aberlethnot, Glenmyk, Abirgerny, and Slanis: all the members to have their residence within the College, except the Canonist, Mediciner, Grammarian, and Regent, who are to have manses without the College; the Principal and the Students of Theology, after being made Bachelors, to read Theology every reading-day, and to preach six times a year to the people; and the Students, before being made Bachelors, to preach by turns in Latin in the Chapter of the College on every Lord’s day and holiday throughout the year before all the students; the Regents in Arts to give instruction in the liberal sciences, like the Regents of the University of Paris; and the Canonist, Civilist, and Mediciner to read in proper attire every reading-day, after the manner observed in the Universities of Paris and Orleans; the Rector or (if he be a member of the College) the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and the Official of Aberdeen, to visit the College once a year, and to mark defects in the persons and property of the College, an account of which shall be written by four persons, deputed for that effect, and presented to the Chancellor, who, with their advice, shall administer correction; a Procurator to be selected from the College by the Principal, Canonist, Civilist, Sub-principal, Cantor, and Sacrist, and to have for his pains, in addition to his stipend, five merks; eight Prebendaries and four youths, accomplished in singing, to be in the College, and to celebrate matins, vespers, and mass, in surplices and black copes, in the presence of the members of the college; the first of these Prebendaries to be called the Cantor, and the second the Sacrist, each with a stipend of twenty merks; the other prebendaries (from among whom the Chancellor must appoint one who is a proficient on the organ) having sixteen merks, and each of the youths five merks. 17 September 1505.”
It is curious to mark how distinctly the traces of its French origin have remained in the northern University. In addition to some instances in the preceding article, it is worthy of notice that the Students, and even the common people, are still familiar with such words as Bejant and Magistrand.
Can our chubby friend there, who blushes as brightly as the fresh scarlet gown in which he has gone forth to attract the gaze, more spiteful than admiring, of the untogaed schoolfellows whom he has left behind him, tell why he is called a Bejant?
Ducange tells us thatBeanusmeans a new student who has just come to the academy, and cites the statutes of the University of Vienna, prohibiting all persons from cheating or overcharging the new-comers, who are called Beani, or assailing them with other injuries or contumelies. Lambecius, in theEpistolæ Obscurorum, finds Beanus in a monogram—“Beanus est animal nesciens vitam studiosorum.” We come nearer the mark, however, in France, theBejaunifrequently occurring in Bulleus’s massive History of the University of Paris. Thus, in the year 1314, a statute of the University is passed on the supplication of a number of the inexperienced youths,qui vulgo Bejauni appellebantur. Their complaint is an old and oft-repeated tale, common to freshmen, greenhorns, griffins, or by whatever name the inexperienced, when alighting among old stagers, are recognised. The statute of the Universitas states that a variety of predatory personages fall on the newly-arrived bejaune, demanding abejaunica, or gratuity, to celebrate ajocundus adventus; that when it is refused, they have recourse to insults and blows; that there is brawling and bloodshed in the matter, and thus the discipline and studies of the University are disturbed by the pestiferous disease. It is thence prohibited to give anybejaunica, except to the bejaun’s companions living in the house with him, whom he may entertain if he pleases; and if any efforts are made by others to impose on him, he is solemnly enjoined to give secret information to the procurators and the deans of the faculties.[141]
The etymology attributed to the word bejaune is rather curious. It is said to mean yellow neb—béc jaune—in allusion to the physical peculiarity of unfledged and inexperienced birds, to whose condition those who have just passed from the function of robbing their nests to the discipline of a university are supposed to have an obvious resemblance. “Ce mot,” says theTrevaux, “a été dit par corruption de béc jaune, per métaphore de oisons et autres oiseaux niais qui ont le béc jaune—ce qu’on a appliqué aux apprentis en tous les arts et sciences.—Rudis Tiro Imperitus.” Yet in the same dictionary there are such explanations about the use of the wordsbegayer, to stutter, andbegayement, stuttering, as might, one would think, have furnished a more obvious origin than the ornithological. “Les enfans,” we are told, “begayent en apprenant à parler. Ceux qui ont la langue grasse begayent toute leur vie. Quand un homme a bû beaucoup il commence abegayer.” But it is used also figuratively: “Des choses qu’on a peine d’expliquer, ou de faire entendre—Ce commentateur n’a fait que begayer en voulant expliquer l’Apocalypse.” Whatever were its remote origin, however, the term was in full use in the University of Paris, whence it passed to Aberdeen. We have now shown our scarlet friend the reason for his being called a Bejant, but why the word should be corrupted into Benjie, and still more why he should be called a “Buttery benjie,” are etymological problems which we no more pretend to solve, than the reason why his fellow freshman at Heidelberg is called a Leathery fox.
We could notice several other relics of ancient university phraseology still clinging round the usages of our humble institutions in Scotland. The Lauration is still preserved as the apt and classical term for the ceremony of admission to a degree; and even Dr Johnson, little as he respected any Scottish form, especially when it competed with the legitimate institutions of England, has given in his dictionary the word Laureation, with this interpretation attached thereto: “It denotes in the Scottish universities the act or state of having degrees conferred, as they have in some of them a flowery crown, in imitation of laurel among the ancients.”
Elsewhere we are honoured in the same work with a more brief but still a distinctive notice. Among the definitions of “Humanity,” after “the nature of man,” “humankind,” and “benevolence,” we have “Philology—grammatical studies; in Scotland,humaniores literæ.” The term is still as fresh at Aberdeen as when Maimbourg spoke of Calvin making his humanities at the College of La Mark. The “Professor of Humanity” has his place in the almanacs and other official lists as if there were nothing antiquated or peculiar in the term, though jocular people have been known to state to unsophisticated Cockneys and other foreign persons, that the object of the chair is to inculcate on the young mind the virtue of exercising humanity towards the lower animals; and we believe more than one stranger has conveyed away, in the title of this professorship, a standing illustration of the elaborate kindness exercised towards the lower animals in the United Kingdom, and in Scotland especially.
A curious incidental matter calls us back to King’s College and its connection with Paris. In his visit to Scotland in 1633, Charles I. observed, or learned from his adviser, Archbishop Laud, who had more prying eyes, that the ancient formalities of the Scottish universities had fallen into disuse. It appears that his hopes of a restoration were chiefly centred in Aberdeen, where he knew that the Presbyterian spirit had its loosest hold, and he resolved to commence the work there. A curious royal letter to Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen, and Chancellor of the University, drops mysterious hints about having “observed some things which we think fit to put in better ordour, which we shall do as we shall find cause.” But in the mean time there is a very strong reprehension of the unacademic practice of sending the students “to the parish churches to service and sermon, and there sit promiscuously with the rest of the audience, which loses much of the honour and dignity of the Universities.”
The cause of University restoration, after such a kingly hint, naturally received much local support; and at a sort of convocation of the University dignitaries at the Bishop’s Palace on the 19th of December 1634, some investigations were made to obtain materials “for re-establishing of this University in her jurisdiction, conservatorie, and privileges, according to her ancient rights granted thereanent.” Among the other methods of inquiry, there is sent “a special letter to our native countryman and special good friend, Dr William Davidson, Doctor of Physic, and resident in Paris in France, requesting him to deal, in name of the said University of Aberdeen, with the rector and University of Paris, for a just and perfect written double of the rights and privileges of that University of Paris, for the better clearing and setting in good order the rights and privileges belonging to this University of Aberdeen.”[142]
A letter from Archbishop Laud is read to the meeting, showing that he was in communication with the restorers. “For the business which you have recommended to me,” he says, “Dr Gordon hath been with me, and delivered me a copy of all those things which he hath to move the king. I have already spoken with his majesty about them, and shall continue to do him all the kindness I can to help on his despatch, and to show all the favour I can to the University.”[143]
It would be interesting to know more than the printed documents show us of the projects then under discussion. Laud was a meddler with many things—in Scotland, unfortunately, with at least one too many. His activity in university matters is sufficiently known to fame in the Laudeian Code of Oxford. But it has been the fate of that system to be charged with a subversion of the fundamental principles of the English universities, while in Aberdeen the movement which its author seems to have directed was towards the restoration of the old Parisian model. The apparent difference, however, has been probably caused by unintended practical results in England,—the object was doubtless the same in both cases.
Among the projects of King Charles with which his adviser of course interfered, was the union of King’s and Marischal Colleges in Aberdeen. In fact, they are not only two colleges, but, in the literal sense of the term, two universities; and thus, according to the statistical distribution of these institutions, Aberdeen used to appear as well supplied with the commodity as all England. Between the two establishments, little more than a mile apart, there is, indeed, unfortunately, a gulf, wider than the mileage between Oxford and Cambridge. The one was founded before, the other after, the Reformation; and there were elements so distinct and repulsive in the spirit of the foundations, that nothing but great coercive force could bring the two into union.
King Charles, who was too apt to suppose that fundamental changes could be made by an Act of Visitation, or an Order in Council, professed to unite them, and called them, in conjunction, the Caroline University. But in reality they never were chemically fused into one. On the contrary, the documents connected with the nominal union, which at this juncture may perhaps be read with some interest, lead one to suppose that the two bodies of office-bearers could hardly have met round the same table without kicking each other’s shins. The senior institution exhibits itself as overbearing and dictatorial—the junior as sensitive to every slight. All latent hatreds seem to have sprung into vivid life on the command to be united in peace. The juveniles appear to have taken the matter up, and each college passes a law requiring that its students shall not insult the professors of the other,—apparently with the same effect, if not intention, as the Irish injunction not to duck the bailiff in the horse-pond. We wonder if the same thing is to be repeated in this day. We have heard it, indeed, maintained from a very grave authority, that nearly all things are possible save the fusion of these institutions; that it may have been easy to unite England and Scotland, or Great Britain and Ireland, but that the eternal laws of the universe show it to be impossible to unite the King’s College and University of Aberdeen with the Marischal College and University thereof.