Though his friends were all aware of this magnanimous intention, they could not but open their eyes at every new repetition of it.
“If you have set your heart on being a parson,” one of his companions said, “go into the Church, at least. Hang it! Campbell, don’t go and bind yourself to a conventicle,” said his anxious acquaintance; “a man has always a chance of doing something in the Church.”
“That is precisely my idea,” said Colin, “though you fellows seem to think it the last possibility. And, besides, it is the only thing I can do. I can’t be a statesman, as you have the chance of being, and I have not an estate to manage. What else would you have me do?”
“My dear fellow,” said another of his friends, “you are as sure of your Fellowship as any man ever was. Go in for literature, and send your old Kirk to Jericho—a fellow like you has nothing to do in such a place. One knows the sort of thing precisely; any blockhead that can thump his pulpit, and drone out long prayers—”
“Many thanks for your advice,” said Colin; “but I prefer my own profession, literature is all very well when a man is born to it, but life is better than literature at its best; and my own trade should be good for something, if any profession ever was.”
“Well, now, taking it at the very best, how much do you think you are likely to have a-year?—a hundred and fifty perhaps? No, I don’t mean to say that’s final;—but, of course, a thoughtful fellow like you takes it into consideration,” said Colin’s adviser; “everything is badly paid now-a-days—but, at all events, there are chances. If a man is made of iron and brass, and has the resolution of an elephant, he may get to be something at the Bar, you know, and make a mint of money. And, even in the Church, to be sure, if he’s harmless and civil, something worth having may come in his way; but you are neither civil nor harmless, Campbell. And, by Jove! it’s not the Church you are thinking of, but the Kirk, which is totally different. I’ve been in Scotland,” continued the Mentor, with animation; “it’s not even one Kirk, which would be something. But there’s one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom, and I defy any man to tell which is which. Come, Campbell, don’t be a Quixote—give it up!”
“You might as well have told my namesake to give up the Queen’s service after he had lost a battle,” said Colin. “Though I don’t suppose Sir Colin ever did lose a battle, by the way. I tell you I am not the sort of stuff for a Don—the atmosphere is too much rarified up here—I can’t breathe in it. Men who come of my race must work or die.”
“I can’t say that I feel the force of the alternative,” said Colin’s friend. “A man must think; it is the first condition of existence; but as for the other two— What have you in common with the unreasoning multitude?” asked the young philosopher. There were plenty of voices to take the other side of the question, but Colin’s mind was not political to speak of, and he had no inclination to take the democratic side.
“A few things,” Colin said, with a smile, “that don’t exist among the Illuminati. For instance, ignorance and want and some other human attributes; and we can help each other on down below, while you are thinking it all out above. The worst is that we will probably find time to live and die before you come to any conclusion. Let us talk it over ten years hence,” said this young prince of the future, with royal confidence. And this was how a great many such conversations came to an end.
Ten years was like to be an eventful period to the young men who were standing on the verge of life; but they all made very light of it, as was natural. As for Colin, he did not attempt to make out to himself any clear plan of what he attempted to do and to be in ten years. Certainly, he calculated upon having by that time reached the highest culmination of which life was capable. He meant to be a prince in his own country without, at the same time, following anything for his own glory or advantage; for in reality, the highest projects that could move the spirit of a man were in Colin’s mind. He had no thought of becoming a popular preacher, or the oracle of a coterie. What he truly intended indeed was not quite known to himself, in the vague but magnificent stirrings of his ambition. He meant to take possession of some certain corner of his native country, and make of it an ideal Scotland, manful in works and steadfast in belief; and he meant from that corner to influence and move all the land in some mystical method known only to the imagination. Such are the splendid colours in which fancy, when sufficiently lively, can dress up even such a sober reality as the life of a Scotch minister. While he planned this he seemed to himself so entirely a man of experience, ready to smile at the notions of undisciplined youth, that he succeeded in altogether checking and deceiving his own inevitable good sense—that watchful monitor which warns even an imaginative mind of its extravagance. This was the great dream which, interrupted now and then by lighter fancies, had accompanied Colin more or less clearly through all his life. And now the hour of trial was about to come, and the young man’s ambition was ready to accomplish itself as best it might.