peer, and that both peasant and peer take advantage of it. The benefits of a good education thus penetrate to a much lower class in Scotland than in England. There is not a small tradesman, or farmer, or gamekeeper in Scotland who, if his son displays any symptoms of "book-learning," does not think of the university as the proper field for the lad, and does not look forward to the day when he shall call his son "Doctor," or see him in a pulpit thumping the gospel out of the Bible.
It is another redeeming point of the system, that it does not crush the individuality of the student by too much contact with his fellows; only, as this advantage is so negative that it might be still better secured by not going to the university at all, it would be absurd to make too much of it. Rather let us dwell on whatever social good is to be found in the system. When 1,500 young men are congregated together with a common object, they will break up into knots and clusters, and form themselves as they can into something that may pass for society, although it more strongly resembles the town life of young men than what is understood by student life. It is less as students than as young men with time upon their hands, with no prospect of chapel in the morning, and with no fear of being shut out at night, that these herd together: and if I were to describe their doings it would be the description of what youths generally are who live in lodgings by themselves—with this only difference, that the talk would be rather argumentative and the anecdotes rather erudite. A certain amount of social intercourse is organized in this way for those who wish it or can afford it; but that species of society which we call public life is scarcely possible save in the debating clubs. These are legion. There are speculative societies, and diagnostic societies, and critical societies, and dialectic societies, and historical societies; and if with these I class innumerable missionary societies and prayer unions, it is because they are all more or less calculated for rhetorical display. It is in these associations, to which a student may belong or not just as he pleases, that the public life and the best student life of the Scottish universities are to be found. The society meets weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, as the case may be. An essay is read by some one appointed to do so, and the members of the society criticize it freely. Or a debate is started, the two men who are to lead in the affirmative and the negative having previously been named; the members take part in it as they please; the speaker who commenced has the right of reply; the chairman sums up, and the question is put to the vote. Any one who consults a certain quarto volume in the British Museum, devoted to the transactions of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, will find it recorded, that on the evening on which Lord Lansdowne, then Lord Henry Petty, attained to the dignity of honorary membership, the youthful debaters decreed, by a majority of eleven over eight, that suicide is not justifiable! This was in 1798, when Brougham, Jeffrey, and Walter Scott, were among the leading members; and one would like to have some statistics of the eight who voted suicide to be justifiable. The Archbishop of Dublin, some years ago, wrote a letter
