第3章 ST.ANDREWS(2)

The dissolution of St.Leonard's college was doubtless necessary;but of that necessity there is reason to complain.It is surely not without just reproach,that a nation,of which the commerce is hourly extending,and the wealth encreasing,denies any participation of its prosperity to its literary societies;and while its merchants or its nobles are raising palaces,suffers its universities to moulder into dust.

Of the two colleges yet standing,one is by the institution of its founder appropriated to Divinity.It is said to be capable of containing fifty students;but more than one must occupy a chamber.

The library,which is of late erection,is not very spacious,but elegant and luminous.

The doctor,by whom it was shewn,hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me,that we had no such repository of books in England.

Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education,being situated in a populous,yet a cheap country,and exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city,nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce,places naturally unpropitious to learning;in one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure,and in the other,is in danger of yielding to the love of money.

The students however are represented as at this time not exceeding a hundred.Perhaps it may be some obstruction to their increase that there is no episcopal chapel in the place.I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors;nor can the expence of an academical education be very reasonably objected.Astudent of the highest class may keep his annual session,or as the English call it,his term,which lasts seven months,for about fifteen pounds,and one of lower rank for less than ten;in which board,lodging,and instruction are all included.

The chief magistrate resident in the university,answering to our vice-chancellor,and to the rector magnificus on the continent,had commonly the title of Lord Rector;but being addressed only as Mr.

Rector in an inauguratory speech by the present chancellor,he has fallen from his former dignity of style.Lordship was very liberally annexed by our ancestors to any station or character of dignity:They said,the Lord General,and Lord Ambassador;so we still say,my Lord,to the judge upon the circuit,and yet retain in our Liturgy the Lords of the Council.

In walking among the ruins of religious buildings,we came to two vaults over which had formerly stood the house of the sub-prior.

One of the vaults was inhabited by an old woman,who claimed the right of abode there,as the widow of a man whose ancestors had possessed the same gloomy mansion for no less than four generations.The right,however it began,was considered as established by legal prescription,and the old woman lives undisturbed.She thinks however that she has a claim to something more than sufferance;for as her husband's name was Bruce,she is allied to royalty,and told Mr.Boswell that when there were persons of quality in the place,she was distinguished by some notice;that indeed she is now neglected,but she spins a thread,has the company of her cat,and is troublesome to nobody.

Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our curiosity,we left it with good wishes,having reason to be highly pleased with the attention that was paid us.But whoever surveys the world must see many things that give him pain.The kindness of the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining,a college alienated,and a church profaned and hastening to the ground.

St.Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and more extensive destruction,but recent evils affect with greater force.We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins.

The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or sympathy.Events long past are barely known;they are not considered.We read with as little emotion the violence of Knox and his followers,as the irruptions of Alaric and the Goths.Had the university been destroyed two centuries ago,we should not have regretted it;but to see it pining in decay and struggling for life,fills the mind with mournful images and ineffectual wishes.