Page:The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/407

 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.