Yet another compensation for the defects of the social system will be found in the professorial method of teaching, when it is conducted with spirit. The common idea of a professor is, that of a man wearing a gown, and reading dull lectures every day for an hour to students, some of whom are taking notes, while the rest are dozing. Professor Blackie, Professor Aytoun, Professor Ferrier, and the late Sir William Hamilton would give to any one entering their class-rooms a very different idea of what a professor ought to be. Sir William Hamilton’s class was perhaps the most marvellously conducted class in any university. About 150 students were ranged on seats before the professor, who lectured three days in the week, and on two days held a sort of open conference with his pupils, which was conducted in this wise:—Sir William dipped his hand into an urn and took out a letter of the alphabet—say M. Any student whose name began with M was then at liberty to stand up and comment on the professor’s lectures—attack them—illustrate them—report them—say almost anything, however far-fetched, which had any relation to them. A couple of Macs get up at once. The first merely raises a laugh by topping one of his William’s philosophical anecdotes with another which he fancies to be still better. The second gets up, and has a regular tussle with his master about the action of the mind in sleep, and in a state of semi-consciousness. It is all over in five minutes, the student at length sitting down in a state of profuse perspiration, highly complimented by Sir William for his ingenuity, and feeling that he has done a plucky thing which thoroughly deserves the cheers of 149 fellow-students. These exhibitions are quite voluntary, and it appears that among the M’s there is no more heart to get up and speak. The letter C is therefore next taken out of the urn, but the C’s give no response to the call. The next letter that turns up is R, and hereupon Mr. Rowan, who has been fidgeting from the commencement of the hour, rises up to give a quotation from Bishop Berkeley, illustrating a passage in one of Sir William’s lectures. The sly fellow fancies that he has detected the professor in a plagiarism, but quotes the passage ostensibly as confirming the lecture. When he has sat down, Sir W. Hamilton, who sees distinctly through the youngster’s game, directs his attention to a dozen passages in a dozen different authors, where he will find statements to the same effect, which he might equally have quoted. So the hour passes, each letter of the alphabet being presented in turn, and all the students who desire it, having a chance of speaking. Sometimes the exercise was varied by essays being read, or by Sir William Hamilton suddenly propounding a difficult question as to the use of a term—say the term dialectic, among the Platonists,—or as to some definition of Aristotle’s in the Posterior Analytics. Anybody might answer that knew. No written account was taken of these answers and other displays, but gradually a public opinion was formed as to the best man in the class, and at the end of the sessions the honours went by vote, the professor voting in perfect equality with his students, and almost always finding that the general voice coincided with his own opinions as to the order in which the ten best men should stand. The system perfectly succeeded. Never was there a class in which so much enthusiasm manifested itself. An immense interest was excited in the lectures, but the chief thing to be observed here is, that by turning his class two days a week into a sort of authoritative debating club, he established a public life, which, if it is not society, is at least the scaffolding of society. So it is more or less in all the classes that are conducted with spirit. It was not so much felt in the class-room of Professor Wilson, who kept all the talk to himself; and surely it was quite enough to hear such a man discourse on human life in his own way. What Christopher North knew of human nature he told to his pupils in the most glowing terms; but literally the students sat down before him day after day without knowing each other’s names, and without having an idea as to the amount of work performed by each in prospect of a place in the class list. He was a splendid lecturer—but he was only a lecturer; and lecturing is little more than half the work of a professorship. To succeed in that work requires peculiar tact and knowledge of men who are in what Mr. Disraeli has described as the “curly” period of life. Very soon “the curled darlings of our nation” find out the weak places of the professor. He may implore silence, but the more noise prevails. If he threatens, revenge follows the next day, for suddenly and unaccountably half the students in the class turn lame, and hobble into the lecture-room leaning on bludgeons, with which, knocked against the seats, they interrupt the speaker until his voice is drowned in the uproar. One poor old professor (who, by the way, lived in continual terror of a very painful disease) had so completely lost the control of his students, that he had to sit before them in mute despair, and had the pleasure of hearing one of them invite him by his Christian name, “Sandy,” to lay himself upon the table, in order that he—the curled darling—might attempt a little lithotomy. Generally, however, these uproars are got up good-humouredly to bring out the professor, who perfectly understands what the students want. They are tired of the hypothenuse, the sine and the cosine, and they want a little fun. There never was a better hand at this sort of work than the late Dr. Thomas Gillespie, a brother-in-law of Lord Campbell. He was not only professor of Latin, but a devotee of the fishing-rod, a poet of much pathos, a minister of much eloquence, and a talker boiling over with jest and anecdote. He would lay down his Horace, which he knew by heart, and joke with the students till the tears rolled down their cheeks. Regularly every year he told the same pet anecdotes, and they knew what was coming; but his manner was always irresistible. One of his anecdotes was about a dial. He had a dial in his garden which required mending. He got a mason to do the job, and the bill of charge ran as follows: “For mending the deil—1s.” The old fellow enjoyed it more and more every time he told the story, and after five minutes of this kind of play he would return to his Latin sapphics, and stand over the stream of poetry with all the patient gravity of an angler.
How long the present system will last, nobody knows. The Scotch are not satisfied with their universities, but scarcely know what it is that is in fault. In the view of some, their chief fault is, that they are not faulty enough; and in this view it is supposed that if there were less of study and more of scandal in them, they would be greatly improved. That is an ugly way of stating the case, which we desire to avoid, though probably it means nothing more than this—that scandal is one of the necessary evils of society, and that it would be well if there were more of society in the Scottish universities, even at the expense of occasional excesses. It is boasted that the Scottish students are very good—almost irreproachable in their lives. This may be only seeming, and if they led a more public life perhaps their good conduct would be more frequently called in question. But granting that such praise is thoroughly deserved, is it not possible that it may signify the stagnation of life even more than a victory over Apollyon? Heaven forbid that we in Cornhill should glorify wild-oats! they are an unprofitable kind of grain, which are not admitted into our granary. Strange to say, however, people don’t dislike to see a little innocent crop of wild-oats sown by young men, as showing that the social life is fully enjoyed; and it is worth considering whether the Scottish students might not do well if in this sense they found a new reading in the motto suggested by Sydney Smith,—“Tenui musam meditamur avenâ.” With Lord Brougham and Mr. Gladstone at the head of the University of Edinburgh, it is hoped that a good deal may be compassed in the way of University Reform. It ought to be remembered, however, that the arts of reading and lecturing, cramming and examining, are not the only things to be comprised in a University Reform: but that the art of living requires just as much regulation as the art of learning.
FOOTNOTES
[27] There are about 1,500 students at the Edinburgh University; of these only about eleven take the Bachelor’s degree every year, about nine take the Master’s degree, and about sixty are capped as medical doctors. It is expected, however, that the new regulations will increase the number of graduates.
Roundabout Papers.—No. II.
ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK.
Montaigne and Howel’s Letters are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don’t weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don’t heed them. It was the custom of their time, as it is of Highlanders and Hottentots, to dispense with a part of dress which we all wear in cities. But people can’t afford to be shocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time they meet an individual who wears his national airy raiment. I never knew the Arabian Nights was an improper book until I happened once to read it in a “family edition.” Well, qui s’excuse.... Who, pray, has accused me as yet? Here am I smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy’s objections, before she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarce ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles’s Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I stamp on a friend’s corn, his outcry is genuine,—he confounds my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself, and expressing his emotion of grief or pain in a manner perfectly authentic and veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by somebody, as far back as the year 1838: whenever I think of it, and have had a couple glasses of wine, I cannot help telling it. The toe is stamped upon: the pain is just as keen as ever: I cry out, and perhaps utter imprecatory language. I told the story only last Wednesday at dinner:—
“Mr. Roundabout,” says a lady sitting by me, “how comes it that in your books there is a certain class (it may be of men, or it may be of women, but that is not the question in point)—how comes it, dear sir, there is a certain class of persons whom you always attack in your writings, and savagely rush at, goad, poke, toss up in the air, kick, and trample on?”
I couldn’t help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. I told her the whole story, between the entrées and the roast. The wound began to bleed again. The horrid pang was there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I live half as long as Tithonus, that crack across my heart can never be cured. There are wrongs and griefs that can’t be mended. It is all very well of you, my dear Mrs. G., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and that we ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget at will? How forgive? I can forgive the occasional waiter, who broke my beautiful old decanter at that very dinner. I am not going to do him any injury. But all the powers on earth can’t make that claretjug whole.