Aberdeen : Its Literature, Bookmaking, and Circulating. 269 But not content with the " twa " colleges, each of which claimed to be a university, and with the right of granting degrees, they actually aspired to have three such, so keen free-traders were they in the matter of education. For John Farquhar, a native of Crimond in Aberdeenshire (born 1751, died 1826), having acquired an immense fortune in India (leaving at his death one million and a half), offered to appropriate ^"100,000 to found a college in Aberdeen, on the most enlarged plan of education, with a reservation on points of religion; for his admiration of the simplicity and purity of the lives of the Brahmins had deeply influenced him. But parliamentary sanction being refused, the scheme was dropped. 1 King's College and University was a pre-Reformation one, founded by a bull from the Pope in 1494 ; and in the course of the next half-century, had sunk into the position of a con- ventual school, and when Protestant doctrines had permeated the community, Earl Marischal founded a rival institution in 1593- Two universities so close to each other was a singular phenomenon in so poor a country, and necessarily led to some amount of rivalry, which, if in some respects unwholesome, was highly approved of, and fostered by many of the inhabitants, and notwithstanding the benefits of an extended curriculum in a united institution, the union, in 1860, was long keenly resisted. As separate institutions they were the seed-bed of book- makers, of numerous volumes of dry-as-dust theses, of students and readers ; and have largely helped to give a distinct character to the men of the northern counties, helping to make model men. If, as was said of some universities, they got rich by " degrees," ours did not, but got rich by benefactions, which, managed by cannie, prudent Scotchmen, developed into rich bursaries, which attracted students from all quarters ; the Highlanders frequent- ing King's, and Lowlanders Marischal College. They gave such a tone to the whole district teaching, that pupils from the parish schools could enter directly into the Greek and Latin classes at the universities. They created in the city such a demand for books, that in relation to its size, Aberdeen has from then till now borne a most favourable comparison with any other place as to the number of booksellers maintained by it, and the high character 'See Anderson's Scottish Nation^ vol. ii., p. 191.
