removal to Glasgow or Aberdeen, thither he trudged afoot with his little “all” in
a knapsack slung from his sturdy shoulders; and during the “sessions” it was a
hard hand-to-hand fight with poverty which he stoutly fought, while delving
deep into classical and mathematical lore; not forgetting occasional excursions
into that vague metaphysical region which has always had so keen an attraction
for the strong Scotch intellect. Our “present-day” students would too often
shrink, we suspect, from the sacrifices demanded of their forefathers, and give
way under the hardships which they endured, when a few potatoes and a salt
herring served for dinner, and all the expenses of the academical year were
covered by some twelve to sixteen pounds! We are by no means sure that
knowledge was not more valued when it was attainable only at such a cost of
self-denial and rigid effort; and we certainly believe that it was more thorough,
more entirely a man’s own, because it was wrung, so to speak, from the reluctant
goddess by strenuous, steadfast work and sheer mental travail. To the Age of
Gold and the Age of Iron has succeeded the Age of Veneer; and we trouble
ourselves too little now-a-days, in spite of the teaching of Ruskin and Carlyle,
about the solidness and durability of the material, so long as it will take a ready
polish.
But what a strange world was that of the Scotch peasant in those far off days—
far off at least they seem, on account of the immense social revolution that has
taken place, and set between the now and the then a profound chasm. Men often
speak of the hard-headedness and matter-of-fact stolidity of the Scotch nature;
but is it not true that below the surface lies an abundant fountain of wild, quaint,
original fancy? And how, in the olden time, it surrounded itself with signs and
omens and wonders! How it loved to put itself in communion, as it were, with
that other world which lies beyond and yet around us, which perplexes us with
its subtle intelligence, which we cannot discern, though of its presence we are
always sensible! From the cradle to the grave the Scotch peasant went his way
attended by the phantoms of this mysterious world; always recognising its
warnings, always seeing the shadows which it cast of coming events, and so
burdening himself with a weight of grim and eëry superstition, that we marvel he
did not stumble and grow faint, seeing that his dreary Calvinistic creed could
have brought him little hope or comfort. Nay, it is a question whether his
superstition did not partly grow out of, or was fostered by, his hard, cold
religion. Superstition is the shadow of Religion, and from the shadow we may
infer the nature of the substance or object that casts it.
But of these darker things we shall not speak. Let us trace a few of the common