Friend Mac Donald Part 20

These universities differ essentially from the two great English ones, first because men go there to work, secondly because they are open to the people. A peasant's son, like Thomas Carlyle for instance, can go there without fearing that his fellow-students will avoid him because he comes of a poor family.

When a new student arrives at Oxford or Cambridge, the others do not enquire whether he is a clever fellow or a dunce; what they want to know is what his father is, and who was his grandfather. It is only after obtaining a satisfactory answer to these questions that they a.s.sociate with the new comer.

In Scotland, as in France, every man who is well educated and has the manners of good society is a gentleman. The son of a peasant possessing these is received everywhere.

Each Scotch university offers from fifty to eighty scholarships, varying in value from 8 to 70. These sums, paid annually to the winners of the scholarships, help them to live while they are devoting their time to study.

The most admirable thing about high education in Scotland is that it is put within the reach of all, and is not, as it is in England, a sugarplum held so high as to be often unattainable.

The result is that every intelligent young Scotchman may aim at entering a profession. There may be in this a little danger to the commerce and agriculture of the country. However, these young men do not enc.u.mber Scotland; their studies fit them for a lucrative career, which they often go and seek in the Colonies. An Australian friend told me recently that more than half the doctors in Victoria were Scotchmen.

I have spoken, in a previous chapter, of the privations that Scotch undergraduates will often impose upon themselves. Nothing is more remarkable than the sustained application and indefatigable will which they bring to bear on their studies. Nothing distracts them from their aim; they never lose sight of the diploma that will be their bread-winner. I have seen them at work, these Scotch students. I visited the School of Medicine at Aberdeen University, in the company of Dr.

John Struthers, the learned Professor of Anatomy. I was struck, in pa.s.sing through the dissecting room, to see about fifty students, without any professor, so absorbed in their work that not one of them lifted his head as we pa.s.sed.

In France it would have been very different: every eye would have been turned to the stranger, and all through the room there would have been a whisper of _Qui ca_? And then remarks and jokes would have run rife.

The English are very prejudiced against the Scotch universities.

How many times have I been told in England that young fellows, who fail to obtain their medical diploma in England, could get them easily enough in Scotland. Nothing is more absurd; if ever it was so, it was a long while ago. In these days, the examinations of the four Scotch faculties are quite as severe and quite as difficult as the English ones.

Whenever there is a vacant mastership in an English public school advertised in the newspapers, it is always stated that the candidates for the post must be graduates of one of the universities of the United Kingdom. This does not alter the fact that candidates, who are not Oxford or Cambridge men, have no chance of being elected. I have known Scotch masters in the public schools. They had studied at Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Aberdeen, but had gone to Oxford or Cambridge to reside, in order to obtain an English degree.

Why is this?

Simply because these two great English universities give their old scholars an importance, not necessarily literary or scientific, but social; they stamp them gentlemen.

Whatever the English may say, the universities of old Scotland are the nurseries of learned and useful citizens. Of this they would soon be convinced if they would visit those great centres of intellectual activity. But this is just what they avoid doing. When the English go to Scotland, it is to fish or to shoot in the Highlands, and whatever they may get in the way of game or fish, they do not pick up much serious information on the subject of Scotland.

CHAPTER XX.

Scotch Literature. -- Robert Burns. -- Walter Scott. -- Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. -- Burns Worship. -- Scotch Ballads and Poetry.

Scotland possesses a national literature of which the greatest nations might justly be proud.

To take only the great names, it may safely be said that more touching and sublime poetry than that of Burns was never written, that Walter Scott was the greatest novelist of the century, that Thomas Carlyle has never been surpa.s.sed as a historian and essayist, and that Adam Smith's _The Wealth of Nations_ can be considered as the basis of modern political economy.

I pa.s.s over the Humes, Smolletts, and other ill.u.s.trious representatives of Scotch literature, on whom I certainly do not intend to write an essay.

But how can one speak of Scotland without devoting a few words to Robert Burns? In their worship of their great poet I see a trait characteristic of the Scotch people.

Scotland is above all things full of practical common sense, but it is steeped to the brim in poetry. There is poetry at the core of every Scot. Visit the castle of the rich, or the cottage of the poor, or step into your hotel bedroom, and you will see the portrait of the graceful bard.

I happened to be in Edinburgh on the 25th of January, the anniversary of Burns' birth. The theatres were empty. Everyone was celebrating the anniversary. Dinners, meetings, lectures were consecrated to Burns; and that which was pa.s.sing in Edinburgh was also pa.s.sing, on a small scale, in every little Scotch village.

It was a national communion.

Burns wrote in Scotch, and in celebrating the anniversary of his birth, they celebrated a national fete. His poetry reminds them that they belong to a nation perfectly distinct from England, a nation having a literature of her own. This is why his memory is revered by high and low alike. The Scotch could no more part with their Burns than England with Shakespeare, or Italy with Dante. The Gaelic tongue is rapidly dying out, Scotch customs become more and more English every day, but each year only adds to the glory of Robert Burns. His poems have run rapidly through many editions--they have reached more than a hundred up to now--the sad story of his life is retold every year, and his portrait is still in great demand. The popularity Burns still enjoys in Scotland may be judged from the fact than in one single shop in Edinburgh there are twenty thousand portraits of the poet sold annually.

Whilst the English allow the house which Carlyle inhabited for so many years at Chelsea to go to ruins, the Scotch take a pride in showing the stranger the little clay cottage where Burns first saw the light on the 25th of January, 1759.

It is with real regret that I turn from the subject of the "Ayrshire Ploughman," his life and his works. Few poets have united as he has, delicate pathos and comic force, pure _reverie_ and the sense of the grotesque. But after all, I should but do what has been done over and over again by his numerous biographers, the chief of whom are Carlyle, Chambers, and Professor Shairp.

Longfellow has said that what Jasmin, the author of the _The Blind Girl of Castel Cuille_, was to the south of France, Burns was to the south of Scotland: the representative of the heart of the people.

Nothing can be more suave, piquant, and picturesque than the wild and primitive melodies of the songs of Scotland. The Scotch ballad is the spontaneous production of the touching and simple genius of the nation.

The words are full of pathos and rustic humour. The music is light, often plaintive, always graceful. The whole has a delicious perfume of the mountain. I know of no other kind of song to compare with it, unless it were perhaps the songs of the Tyrol and a few _Breton_ ballads.

The verses of Burns and other Scotch poets have inspired some of the greatest musicians. Mendelssohn was a great admirer of them.

Madame Patti delights to charm her audiences with "Comin' thro' the rye," or "Within a mile o' Edinbro' town," and these vocal gems suit the supple voice of the inimitable songstress; they even suit her very person, as she sings them in her arch manner, and finishes up with a saucy little curtsey.

The songs of Scotland, old as they are most of them, have lost nothing of their freshness. They are still the delight of the nation.[E]

[E] The finest edition of the Songs of Scotland is that recently published by Messrs. Muir Wood, of Glasgow.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Dance in Scotland. -- Reels and Highland Schottische. -- Is Dancing a Sin? -- Dances of Antiquity. -- There is no Dancing now.

People do not dance now--in drawing-rooms at least--they walk, says M.

Ratisbonne.

In Scotland, however, people still dance.

The Scotch have preserved the primitive, innocent, pastoral character of this exercise.

Nothing is more graceful than the reel and schottische of the Highlands.

The reel demands great agility. Two swords are placed crosswise on the ground and, to the sound of bagpipes, Donald executes double and triple pirouettes in and out, carefully avoiding the weapons.

Ask me how Society dances in Scotland and I will answer: just as it does elsewhere, but with a gravity that would do honour to our senators.

The Scotch are not all agreed as to whether dancing is sinful or not.