第67章 INCH KENNETH(7)

The college has not had a sufficient share of the increasing magnificence of the place.The session was begun;for it commences on the tenth of October and continues to the tenth of June,but the students appeared not numerous,being,I suppose,not yet returned from their several homes.The division of the academical year into one session,and one recess,seems to me better accommodated to the present state of life,than that variegation of time by terms and vacations derived from distant centuries,in which it was probably convenient,and still continued in the English universities.So many solid months as the Scotch scheme of education joins together,allow and encourage a plan for each part of the year;but with us,he that has settled himself to study in the college is soon tempted into the country,and he that has adjusted his life in the country,is summoned back to his college.

Yet when I have allowed to the universities of Scotland a more rational distribution of time,I have given them,so far as my inquiries have informed me,all that they can claim.The students,for the most part,go thither boys,and depart before they are men;they carry with them little fundamental knowledge,and therefore the superstructure cannot be lofty.The grammar schools are not generally well supplied;for the character of a school-master being there less honourable than in England,is seldom accepted by men who are capable to adorn it,and where the school has been deficient,the college can effect little.

Men bred in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition,but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge,between learning and ignorance,not inadequate to the purposes of common life,which is,I believe,very widely diffused among them,and which countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious,that their friends cannot defend it,and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise,so vigorous,that their enemies are constrained to praise it,enables them to find,or to make their way to employment,riches,and distinction.

From Glasgow we directed our course to Auchinleck,an estate devolved,through a long series of ancestors,to Mr.Boswell's father,the present possessor.In our way we found several places remarkable enough in themselves,but already described by those who viewed them at more leisure,or with much more skill;and stopped two days at Mr.Campbell's,a gentleman married to Mr.Boswell's sister.

Auchinleck,which signifies a stony field,seems not now to have any particular claim to its denomination.It is a district generally level,and sufficiently fertile,but like all the Western side of Scotland,incommoded by very frequent rain.It was,with the rest of the country,generally naked,till the present possessor finding,by the growth of some stately trees near his old castle,that the ground was favourable enough to timber,adorned it very diligently with annual plantations.

Lord Auchinleck,who is one of the Judges of Scotland,and therefore not wholly at leisure for domestick business or pleasure,has yet found time to make improvements in his patrimony.He has built a house of hewn stone,very stately,and durable,and has advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants.

I was,however,less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion,than with the sullen dignity of the old castle.Iclambered with Mr.Boswell among the ruins,which afford striking images of ancient life.It is,like other castles,built upon a point of rock,and was,I believe,anciently surrounded with a moat.There is another rock near it,to which the drawbridge,when it was let down,is said to have reached.Here,in the ages of tumult and rapine,the Laird was surprised and killed by the neighbouring Chief,who perhaps might have extinguished the family,had he not in a few days been seized and hanged,together with his sons,by Douglas,who came with his forces to the relief of Auchinleck.