Where The Loch Discharges Itself Into A River, Called The Leven, We
Passed A Night With Mr. Smollet, A Relation Of Doctor Smollet, To
Whose Memory He Has Raised An Obelisk On The Bank Near The House In
Which He Was Born.
The civility and respect which we found at
every place, it is ungrateful to omit, and tedious to repeat.
Here
we were met by a post-chaise, that conveyed us to Glasgow.
To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow, is unnecessary.
The prosperity of its commerce appears by the greatness of many
private houses, and a general appearance of wealth. It is the only
episcopal city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of
Reformation. It is now divided into many separate places of
worship, which, taken all together, compose a great pile, that had
been some centuries in building, but was never finished; for the
change of religion intercepted its progress, before the cross isle
was added, which seems essential to a Gothick cathedral.
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. I
clambered 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.
At no great distance from the house runs a pleasing brook, by a red
rock, out of which has been hewn a very agreeable and commodious
summer-house, at less expence, as Lord Auchinleck told me, than
would have been required to build a room of the same dimensions.
The rock seems to have no more dampness than any other wall. Such
opportunities of variety it is judicious not to neglect.
We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of
learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or
with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a pedant's praise.
The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to
the English; their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is
likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to
themselves.
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