The Chief Magistrate Resident In The University, Answering To Our
Vice-Chancellor, And To The Rector Magnificus On The Continent, Had
Commonly The Title Of Lord Rector; But Being Addressed Only As Mr.
Rector In An Inauguratory Speech By The Present Chancellor, He Has
Fallen From His Former Dignity Of Style.
Lordship was very
liberally annexed by our ancestors to any station or character of
dignity:
They said, the Lord General, and Lord Ambassador; so we
still say, my Lord, to the judge upon the circuit, and yet retain
in our Liturgy the Lords of the Council.
In walking among the ruins of religious buildings, we came to two
vaults over which had formerly stood the house of the sub-prior.
One of the vaults was inhabited by an old woman, who claimed the
right of abode there, as the widow of a man whose ancestors had
possessed the same gloomy mansion for no less than four
generations. The right, however it began, was considered as
established by legal prescription, and the old woman lives
undisturbed. She thinks however that she has a claim to something
more than sufferance; for as her husband's name was Bruce, she is
allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were
persons of quality in the place, she was distinguished by some
notice; that indeed she is now neglected, but she spins a thread,
has the company of her cat, and is troublesome to nobody.
Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our
curiosity, we left it with good wishes, having reason to be highly
pleased with the attention that was paid us. But whoever surveys
the world must see many things that give him pain. The kindness of
the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance
of an university declining, a college alienated, and a church
profaned and hastening to the ground.
St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and
more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater
force. We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins.
The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude
the mind from contact or sympathy. Events long past are barely
known; they are not considered. We read with as little emotion the
violence of Knox and his followers, as the irruptions of Alaric and
the Goths. Had the university been destroyed two centuries ago, we
should not have regretted it; but to see it pining in decay and
struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful images and
ineffectual wishes.
ABERBROTHICK
As we knew sorrow and wishes to be vain, it was now our business to
mind our way. The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the
traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken,
and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible
boundaries, or are separated by walls of loose stone. From the
bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree,
which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present
century.
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