Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/171

Rh request of the students was unreasonable and mutinous; and turning upon the doctor himself, they represented him as one given up to new-fangled ideas of Christian liberty, and hostile to the interests of the Established Church. A still more vexatious subject of discussion arose from the appropriation of the college funds, the surplus of which, instead of being laid out to repair the dilapidated buildings, as had been intended, was annually divided among the professors after the current expenses of the classes had been defrayed. Dr. Chalmers thought this proceeding not only an illegal stretch of authority on the part of the professors, but also a perilous temptation; and on finding that they would not share in his scruples, he was obliged to adopt the only conscientious step that remained—he refused his share of the spoil during the five years of his continuance at St. Andrews. Thus the case continued until 1827, when the royal commission that had been appointed for the examination of the Scottish universities arrived at St. Andrews, and commenced their searching inquest. Dr. Chalmers, who hoped on this occasion that the evils of which he complained would be redressed, underwent in his turn a long course of examination, in which he fearlessly laid open the whole subject, and proposed the obvious remedy. But in this complaint he stood alone; the commissioners listened to his suggestions, and left the case as they found it. Another department of college reform, which had for some time been the object of his anxious solicitude, was passed over in the same manner. It concerned the necessary training of the pupils previous to their commencement of a college education. At our Scottish universities the students were admitted at a mere school-boy age, when they knew scarcely any Latin, and not a word of Greek; and thus the classical education of our colleges was such as would have been fitter for a mere whipping-school, in which these languages had to be commenced ab initio, than seats of learning in which such attainments were to be matured and perfected. To rectify this gross defect, the proposal of Dr. Chalmers suggested the erection of gymnasia attached to the colleges, where these youths should undergo a previous complete training in the mere mechanical parts of classical learning, and thus be fitted, on their entrance into college, for the highest departments of Greek and Roman scholarship. But here, also, his appeals were ineffectual; and at the present day, and in the country of Buchanan and Melville, the university classes of Latin and Greek admit such pupils, and exhibit such defects, as would excite the contempt of an Eton or Westminster school-boy.

It was well for Dr. Chalmers that amidst all this hostility and disappointment he had formed for himself a satisfactory source of consolation. At his arrival in St. Andrews, and even amidst the toil of preparation for the duties of his new office, he had longed for the relief that would be afforded by the communication of religious instruction; for in becoming a professor of science, he had not ceased to be a minister of the gospel. As soon, therefore, as the bustle of the first session was ended, he threw himself with alacrity into the lowly office of a Sabbath-school teacher. He went to work also in his own methodical fashion, by selecting a district of the town to which his labours were to be confined, visiting its families one by one, and inviting the children to join the class which he was about to form for meeting at his own house on the Sabbath evenings. And there, in the midst of these poor children, sat one of the most profound and eloquent of men; one at whose feet the great, the wise, and the accomplished had been proud to sit; while the striking picture is heightened