To Englishmen these are truisms, but in Scotland they are scarcely recognized even as truths. A great deal of nonsense has been talked on both sides of the Tweed about the defects of the Scottish universities. It has been said that they do not turn out scholars. One might as well blame the University of Oxford for not turning out mathematicians. Prominence is given in every university to certain branches of learning; and in Scotland there has always been a greater admiration of thinkers than either of scholars or mathematicians. We all value most what we ourselves have learnt; but where no line of study is absolutely neglected, probably it does not much matter which one receives the most attention. We are apt to overrate the importance of the thing acquired, and to underrate the most important point of all—the mental discipline. The real defect of the Scottish universities is that they have no student life. 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? what student life can they enjoy? All the better for their studies, the genius of grinding and cramming will say; and it may be so; but the loosening of the social ties among students may also be an irreparable injury to qualities that are even more important than a thirst for knowledge. The college in Gower 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. When the lecture is over all these students disperse, and they have no more cohesion than the congregation of a favourite preacher after the sermon is finished. They go off into back streets, and into queer alleys; they are lost round the corner; they go a little way into the country; they rush to the seaside; they burst into pieces like a shell. Nor is it very long since this unsociable system superseded the old plan of living together and dining at a common table. Perhaps Lord Campbell could give a very pretty picture of college life in his days, when at the university of St. Andrew’s the students dined in common hall. He was a fellow student of Dr. Chalmers, and only a few years ago Tom Chalmers’ room within St. Salvator’s College was shown to visitors, while the janitor, with a peculiar chuckle, described the wild pranks in which the youthful divine employed his leisure moments, to the terror of the townspeople.
This state of things, although so recent, is almost forgotten in Scotland. There is no such thing as opposition between town and gown. In Edinburgh, indeed, there is no gown—no badge of studentship whatever. Worse than this, the student, after he has gone through his academical course, has nothing further to do with the university. Why should he take a degree? It is a bootless honour. It gives him no privileges. A.M. after a man’s name on a title-page may look very pretty, but who is going to write books? “Not I,” says the student; “and why should I run the chance of a pluck, besides going to the expense of the fees, when the certainty of success can bring me no advantage?”[27] 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. The boy who is at school all day returns home in the evening to be kissed by his mamma and to be questioned by his papa. The student who has all the morning been dissecting dead bodies or devouring dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, returns to dine with his sisters and to kneel down at evening prayer with his grey-haired sire. The system has its advantages (filial reverence, for example, being much stronger in Scotland than it is in England, just as in England it is much stronger than in America, where early independence is the ideal of life)—but the advantages are purchased at the cost of the student life, and ultimately at the cost of the university. Alas! for the university which does not make its students feel that they are sons, which does not nurse the corporate feeling, which loses its hold on the students after they have gone into the world! It is mainly through neglect of this kind that the Scottish universities have drooped in public esteem. The education afforded is not poor, and the examinations are not easy, as some imagine, going quite off the scent, in their endeavour to account for such a falling-off. The real reason is, that men leaving the university are cut adrift; they are not associated with it in any way; they forget it; they are in no way called upon to support it. Not so in England. In Pall Mall we have two clubs, which clearly enough illustrate the abiding influence of Oxford and Cambridge upon their graduates, an influence that reacts upon the universities, building up and continually enhancing the reputation of Alma Mater. A Scottish university club in Pall Mall would be almost an impossibility, and the reputation of Alma Mater languishes because she sends forth into the world no bands of men who cherish her memory, and by right of living membership have a vested interest in her good name.
Lord Stanhope tells a story of a Scotchman who, in the good old days of gambling and hard drinking, was heard to say,—“I tell you what, sir, I just think that conversation is the bane of society.” The story is intended as a commentary on the supposed jollity of wine-bibbing. It shows how little the social arts were understood by the honest gentleman who spoke it. Perhaps, even in the present day the arts of society are not much better understood. With all their warmth of heart, Scotchmen have an astonishing reserve, which, if not fatal, is at least injurious to society. They pride themselves on their firmness in friendship; and, it is wonderful to see how they stick to each other. But has not this tenacity its weak side as well as its strong? Is not the adhesion to old alliances accompanied with disinclination or inability to form new ones? And is not this a social defect? 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. 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; he runs up to another boy, as dogs run to nose each other; he sneers at “these girls,” as he calls his sisters; he will quit father, mother, and all for the dear delights of school. In a country where the puritan feeling predominates, it is feared that these social instincts may lead to harm; and for the better preservation of his morals the youth is not allowed that free mingling with his fellows, and with them alone, which he most ardently desires. He is systematically taught to be chary of his companions, whether at school or college. There are men sitting daily on the same benches who would not think of speaking to each other without a formal introduction. And I suppose it is owing to these social distances by which they are separated that they Mister each other as they do. A little urchin of fifteen is called Mr. Milligan; and when Jack wants Sandy to lend him a penknife, he says, “Will you lend me your knife, Mr. Ramsay?” Sandy replying, “There it is, Mr. Frazer; but I have blunted it with cutting a portrait of the Professor on the desk, which the old boy has painted with a solution of sand for the express purpose of blunting knives and discouraging art.” To hear young men who are in the wood-carving stage of existence, some of them mere boys, addressing each other in this formal way, reminds one strangely of Sir Harry and My Lord Duke in the servants’ hall.
Which is cause and which effect? Is it from natural reserve and deficient sociability that the Scotch came to undervalue the student life and to abolish it? or is it the want of the student life and school life, such as it exists in England, that has produced reserve? There is something in both views; but if we are looking for causes, there are others that could be given for the decay of student life. One of these I have already indicated in speaking of the puritanic distrust of society, or, as it is called, “the world.” 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. The pious Mr. Alister Macalister feels that in sending forth his gracious young sinner into a mixed society of boys at a public school, or young men at college—he is sending his precious one into a den of thieves who will rob him of his innocence, is ushering him into the world and the things of the world, is imperilling his immortal interests. And while the puritanic tendencies of the Scotch have gone thus far to undermine the student life by degrading it in public esteem, another influence, even more important, has been at work in the same direction—poverty. Nowhere, I have said, has a good education been so highly prized as in Scotland; but in the attempt to place a good education within reach of every man, however poor, it has been necessary to cheapen it. The cheapness of it has not lowered the character of the education as far as mere learning goes, but has effectually stript it of the social life which ought to accompany it. “Tenui musam meditamur avenâ,” the Scottish student may say with Jeffrey and Sydney Smith. But if it is possible to cultivate letters on a little oatmeal, it is not possible to cultivate society on such attenuated resources. Society, even when it is laid out on the most thrifty principles, costs a good deal more than some men can afford. How would it be possible for the poor fellow who hopes to get through his terms for 30l. a year to dine at the same table with the student who could afford four or five times the sum? The college year generally consists of about five months, and I have known men cover all the expenses of this period with 22l. It is true that this was in St. Andrew’s, where a hundred fresh herrings used to go for sixpence, and a splendid dinner of fish might be purchased for a penny; but if it is remembered that the sum I have mentioned covered the fees for the various classes, amounting to about 10l., and that it was upon the balance of 12l. that the student continued to subsist for these dreary five months, the feat will appear sufficiently marvellous. It is the students who live in this sort of way that are the most interesting characters in the Scottish universities, and it is their necessities that have gone to extinguish the student life. This will be evident if we consider their position a little minutely.
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. But has not every form of ambition its weak side?—and are we to stop sympathizing in a man’s honest endeavours when we discover that he might be doing much better in a different fashion? Are we not to admire the man wrestling with the waves, because he has no business to be in the water? One of the 22-pounders I have mentioned was a very humble individual; but he fought like a hero, and his life was a constant marvel. He was so poor, indeed, that before one came near the question—How on earth does this man keep soul and body together, besides paying his college fees, with so small a sum?—the previous question presented itself as even more difficult—Where did he get his 22l.? He had been a carpenter; he had curtailed his hours in order to devote them to study; he got the cast-off clothes of the parish minister, and somebody else made him the present of an old gown, St. Andrew’s delighting in red gowns. At the commencement of his first session, several small exhibitions, or, as they are called, bursaries, the value of each being only 10l., were to be competed for, and he had the skill to obtain one. It was a little fortune to him—an annuity of 10l. for four years to come. When he saw his name on the list of winners, he made such queer faces to conceal his emotions that all eyes were turned upon him, and it was ever afterwards a joke against him. For the remaining 12l. he managed in this way: He worked four hours a day in a carpenter’s shop, at 3d. an hour, and thus earned from 6l. to 7l. during his residence at the university, to which he was able to add 5l. from previous savings. He got friends to lend him books; and I have an idea that he earned something on Sundays by acting as precentor in one of the city churches. I happened to call upon him one day. It was his dinner hour, and his landlady came in to him with something on an old black rusty tray. “Not just yet, Mrs. Todd,” he said, in great embarrassment, and that lady forthwith departed. “Don’t go away,” he then said to me; “now, don’t; my dinner is never done enough, and, if you stay a little, I’ll get it properly done to-day.” I left him three minutes afterwards, and outside his door there was his dinner getting cold—a herring and three potatoes. He lived in a box of a room, his bed being in one corner of it; and this accommodation he shared with another man, who worked even harder than he. This man earned a few shillings by teaching. He went out to assist boys in learning their lessons for the following day at school; and the price which he and all such teachers charged was half-a-guinea a month for an hour every night. As the pay was at the rate of about 5d. an hour, it would seem that the teacher had an advantage over our friend the carpenter; but it must be remembered that the pay of the latter was obtained by physical labour,—therefore, by a healthy relief from mental toil,—while that of the former was earned by the continued and unhealthy strain of the mind. In Edinburgh there are men who work at bookbinding or printing, who make pills and potions in druggists’ shops, who are copying-clerks in lawyers’ offices, who report for the newspapers, who keep the butterman’s books,—in order to maintain themselves at college.
Men in these narrow circumstances go naturally in pairs—divide the same potato, and share the same bed. They unite without ever having previously known each other, and, for the sake of a small saving, are chained together while the session lasts. In the desperate struggle of existence and pinch of poverty, these necessitated marriages are often embittered with rivalry and hatred. There are cases in which a nail has been driven into the middle of the chimney-piece, a string tied to it, drawn across the room, and attached to the middle of the opposite wall, so as to divide the chamber into two equal parts. “This is my territory—that shall be yours. Nemo me impune lacessit—that’s what I say.” “And I say, Noli me tangere—that’s all.” The fellows sit on opposite aides of their diminutive fire, “glowering” at each other over their books—the one smoking and the other snuffing the strongest tobacco procurable, to keep their hunger down while forcing the brain through the weary night-watches. The professors make a point of inviting them to breakfast or supper as often as they can, and give them a great feed. It is their only chance of a hearty meal during the whole of the session. And yet, in spite of all that they have to contend with, they make a very creditable appearance in the class, even by the side of men who have been well coached the night before by competent tutors. The odds, however, are dead against them, and they suffer for it in the end. They have very seldom been regularly educated, and when they go to college they devote much of that energy which ought to be given to their studies to earning their daily bread by teaching or by manual labour. Overworked and underfed, many of them go home, at the end of the session, shadows of their former selves, and death written in their faces—almost all of them have made acquaintance with disease. The number of men at the Scottish universities who run the course of Henry Kirke White is prodigious. Friends write their biographies; their college essays and school poems are published; their fellow-students are told to beware, and everybody takes an interest in their fate, about which a certain air of romance hangs. Year after year, however, one hears of so many cases that, at last, one becomes callous and feels inclined to ask—Why did not this young Kirke White remain in the butcher’s shop? It would have been better for him to have slaughtered oxen, sold mutton-chops, and ridden the little pony all his life, giving such leisure as he could really afford to books, than die in the vain endeavour to take the position of a gentleman and a clergyman. Most of these men, if they survive their period of study, go into the Church, and the result is that the Scottish clergy are notorious for their ill-health. How can it be otherwise? The fearful struggle which they have to maintain at college has to be kept up for eight long years before a licence to preach the Gospel can be obtained. Eight years of the university is an exorbitant demand, and it would be impossible to satisfy it, save, in the first place, by cheapening the course of study as much as possible, and secondly, by permitting the students to enter at a comparatively early age. The average age of students in Scotland is not less than in England; but if in the one country the ordinary course of study is extended over four years, while in the other it is limited to three, the freshmen must evidently in the former be a year younger than in the latter, in order to be of the same age at the time of graduating. If after graduating, another four years must be devoted to the Divinity Hall before one can have the chance of a living, it is clear that the student destined for the Church must begin his studies even earlier. He must, therefore, at the most critical period of his life, when most he requires physical strength, enter upon his suicidal course, and keep it up without intermission for eight long years. His only relief occurs in the vacation which fortunately for him lasts seven months. Then he recruits a little, while the student who went up to College better prepared both by previous education, and with the means of living, chafes at the delay, and longs for the introduction of a system, which, by the expedient of a summer session, would reduce the compulsory period of study, as in the English universities, to three years.
The effect of these arrangements on the student life may easily be conceived. A society formed on these conditions must evidently be a very mixed society; therefore, a society extremely suspicious of its members; therefore, also a society which has little cohesion and tends to destroy itself. What becomes of student life, where so many men must toil like slaves to keep the wolf from the door—must sit up half the night poring over their books, and plunging their heads every hour into cold water to keep away sleep? These give the tone to the university till it is no longer regarded as the centre of certain social influences, and becomes a mere mill for grinding gerunds and chopping logic. It is because Englishmen have criticized chiefly the art of gerund-grinding and the method of logic-chopping pursued in the Scottish universities, that hitherto their criticisms have fallen flat. It is not so much the educational as the social element of the universities that is at fault. To all the statistics of competitive examinations, and to all the sneers about their having produced no great scholar, the Scotch have a ready answer. 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.
Bad though the system be, it has its compensations. 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. Then it appears that in order to favour these humbler classes, the time given in each year to the university is shortened as much as possible, and the curriculum of study is unnaturally lengthened. From this it follows, that if a house were started in Edinburgh, attached to the university, on the model of one of the English colleges, for the benefit of those students who can afford it, the scheme would be unprofitable. The house would be vacant seven months of the year, and would have to be maintained for the twelve months on the proceeds of the five during which the yearly session lasts. The thing would be impossible unless such an extravagant rate were charged for these five months as would effectually deter the undergraduates from residence. This is the rich man’s view of the case; and admitting it fully, there is still this to be said, that if the Scottish universities are too cheap, the English universities are too dear. 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 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. 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; only, as this advantage is so negative that it might be still better secured by not going to the university at all, it would be absurd to make too much of it. Rather let us dwell on whatever social good is to be found in the system. When 1,500 young men are congregated together with a common object, they will break up into knots and clusters, and form themselves as they can into something that may pass for society, although it more strongly resembles the town life of young men than what is understood by student life. It is less as students than as young men with time upon their hands, with no prospect of chapel in the morning, and with no fear of being shut out at night, that these herd together: and if I were to describe their doings it would be the description of what youths generally are who live in lodgings by themselves—with this only difference, that the talk would be rather argumentative and the anecdotes rather erudite. A certain amount of social intercourse is organized in this way for those who wish it or can afford it; but that species of society which we call public life is scarcely possible save in the debating clubs. These are legion. There are speculative societies, and diagnostic societies, and critical societies, and dialectic societies, and historical societies; and if with these I class innumerable missionary societies and prayer unions, it is because they are all more or less calculated for rhetorical display. It is in these associations, to which a student may belong or not just as he pleases, that the public life and the best student life of the Scottish universities are to be found. The society meets weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, as the case may be. An essay is read by some one appointed to do so, and the members of the society criticize it freely. Or a debate is started, the two men who are to lead in the affirmative and the negative having previously been named; the members take part in it as they please; the speaker who commenced has the right of reply; the chairman sums up, and the question is put to the vote. Any one who consults a certain quarto volume in the British Museum, devoted to the transactions of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, will find it recorded, that on the evening on which Lord Lansdowne, then Lord Henry Petty, attained to the dignity of honorary membership, the youthful debaters decreed, by a majority of eleven over eight, that suicide is not justifiable! This was in 1798, when Brougham, Jeffrey, and Walter Scott, were among the leading members; and one would like to have some statistics of the eight who voted suicide to be justifiable. The Archbishop of Dublin, some years ago, wrote a letter to W. Cooke Taylor, in which he criticized very severely the habits of such societies, condemning them in the most emphatic manner, as fostering an absurd spirit of pride and dogmatism in youthful minds. If his views are sound, and if that vote of the Speculative Society may be taken as a specimen of the rest, then it must be confessed that the Scottish students are in a very bad way, for they work in these societies more perhaps than the students of any other country. Through the want of society they form societies, and sedulously set themselves to cultivate the great social faculties of speaking and writing. Perhaps Dr. Whately overrates the amount of dogmatism and precipitancy which come of these youthful debates, while he most certainly undervalues the mental stimulus and the advantage of early training in the art of expression. His remarks, moreover, had no special reference to Scotland; and even he would probably admit, that considering the unsatisfied craving of the Scottish undergraduate for student life, these debating societies render an important service which may well cover a multitude of faults.
In the educational system itself, however, there will be found compensations for the defects of the social system. Here I refer to the study of the human mind, which is pursued with great ardour in the Scottish universities. It is supposed in England, that Scotch students are fed on metaphysics, and the mistake receives a colour from the fact that there are so many professors of metaphysics. The title is a misnomer. The whole of Scotch philosophy is a protest against metaphysics as an impossible, or at least a useless study. What a professor, in the chair of metaphysics, teaches, is simply psychology—that is to say, the natural history of the human mind, the delineation of human character. All the processes of thought, all the motives to action are examined in turn. 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. Call this philosophy, if you please—just as a discussion on guano is called the philosophy of manure—but what is it in reality? It is generalized biography. It is a means of supplying in theory what the Scottish students have, at their time of life, few opportunities of acquiring in practice—a knowledge of men. Not enjoying the social advantages of English students, they have, as a compensation, educational advantages which are not to be found in the English universities. It is useless to inquire which is better—a knowledge of men obtained in the contact of society, or a knowledge of men obtained in the scientific analysis of the class-room. Neither the one nor the other is complete in itself; but the great advantage of studying character systematically in early life is this—that it is putting a key into a young man’s hand by which afterwards, when he mixes with men, he will more easily understand them, and unlock the secrets of their hearts. Without that key, he will long knock about amongst his fellows, mistaking motives, misinterpreting acts, confounding affections, and failing to form a correct estimate of the persons he meets—until, at last, after much experience and many errors, he learns to hit the mark without knowing how he does it. 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; but, at all events, the Scottish universities have something to say for themselves, not if they neglect the classics and the mathematics, but if they simply elevate above these branches of knowledge a direct acquaintance with the mysteries of human nature, in thought and in feeling, in expression and in act. 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.