pleases, come to Edinburgh, and pass through his academical career, just as creditably as is required or expected. I am assured, that the great majority of the students here, have seldom more than £30 or £40 per annum, and that very many most respectable students contrive to do with little more than half so much money.

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Whatever may be thought of the results of this plan, there is no possibility that any man of good feeling should refuse his warmest admiration to the zeal both of the children and the rents by whose exertions it is carried into effect. The author of the Scotch novels has several times alluded, in a very moving way, to the hardships to which a poor man's family in Scotland will submit, for the sake of affording to one of its members even those scanty means which a Scottish University education demands. You must remember the touches of pathos which he has thrown over the otherwise ludicrous enough exertions made in this way by the parents of the redoubtable Dominie Sampson; and those of Reuben Butler, in the last Tales of My Landlord, are represented in much the same kind. I have seen a little book of Memoirs, lately written, and very well written, by a soldier of the 71st regi

ment, in which there occurs a still more affecting, because a real picture, of circumstances exactly similar. I question whether there can be imagined a finer display of the quiet heroism of affection and principle, than is afforded in the long and resolute struggle which the poor parents maintain-the pinching penury and selfdenial to which they voluntarily submit, in order that their child may be enabled to procure advantages of which themselves are destitute, and which, when obtained, cannot fail to give him thoughts and ideas such as must, in spite of nature, draw some line of separation between him and them. There cannot be a nobler instance of the neglect of self-a more striking exemplification of the sublimity of the affections. Nor can the conduct of the son himself be regarded as much less admirable. The solitary and secluded life to which he devotes so many youthful years the hard battle which he, too, must maintain against poverty, without any near voice of love to whisper courage into his bosom-the grief which he must feel when compelled to ask that which he well knows will be freely, but which, he too much fears, will be painfully given;-all these sorrows of poverty,

united with those many sorrows and depressions which the merely intellectual part of a young student's existence must always be sufficient to create the doubts and fears which must at times overcloud and darken the brightest intellect that ever expanded before the influence of exertion-the watching and tossing of over-excitement the self-reproach of languor-the tightening of the heart strings-and the blank wanderings of the brain-these things are enough to complete the gloomy fore-ground of a picture which would indeed require radiance in the distance to give it any measure of captivation. And yet these things are not more, unless books and men alike deceive us, than are actually operating at this moment in the persons of a very great proportion of the young men whom I have seen at work in the class-rooms of Brown and Playfair. Truly, I think there was too much of lightness in the remarks I made to you, a few days ago, concerning the first impressions of their external appearance and demea

nour.

The worst view of the subject, however, still remains to be given. To what end does all this exertion-this noble and heroic exertion, lead? That is a question which nothing can hinder

from crossing us every now and then, in the midst of all our most enthusiastic admiration. It is one which it is perhaps a wrong thing to attempt answering in any way; and I much fear it is one which will not admit of being answered in a satisfactory manner, either by you or by me. There are few splendid rewards of worldly honour held up before the eyes of the Scottish student. The same circumstances which enable him to aspire, enable hundreds and thousands to do as much as he does; and the hope of obtaining any of the few prizes which do exist, is divided among so many, that no man would venture to count his own individual chance as worthy of much consideration. The style of education and exertion to which he submits are admirably fitted for sharpening and quickening the keenness of his understanding, but do not much tend to fill his mind with a store of thoughts, feelings, and images, on which it might repose itself, and in which he might possess for ever the means of a quiet and contemplative happiness. He is made a keen doubter, and a keen disputer; and in both of these qualities there is no doubt he will at first have pleasure. But in neither is he furnished with the elements of such pleasure as may endure with him, and increase with him

throughout a laborious, and, above all, it may be, a solitary life. He is not provided with such an armoury of recollections as that which the scholar (properly so called) presents against the pressure of corporeal and mental evils.

Without much prospect, then, of any great increase of worldly goods, and without procuring to himself any very valuable stronghold of peaceful meditation, the Scottish student submits to a life of such penury and difficulty, as would almost be sufficient to counterbalance the possession even of the advantages which he has not. At the end of his academical career, he probably finds himself either a burden upon his relations, or providing for himself by the discharge of some duties, which might have been as well discharged without so expensive a preparation. Is it worth while to bear so much, in order to have a chance of gaining so little? As Mr Macleod says in Miss Edgeworth's novel," It may be doubted;" and yet perhaps it cannot be doubted without somewhat of a sin against the higher parts of our nature. But such sins we all commit often enough, both consciously and unconsciously.

P. M.