What particular parts of commerce are chiefly exercised by the
merchants of Aberdeen, I have not inquired.
The manufacture which
forces itself upon a stranger's eye is that of knit-stockings, on
which the women of the lower class are visibly employed.
In each of these towns there is a college, or in stricter language,
an university; for in both there are professors of the same parts
of learning, and the colleges hold their sessions and confer
degrees separately, with total independence of one on the other.
In old Aberdeen stands the King's College, of which the first
president was Hector Boece, or Boethius, who may be justly
reverenced as one of the revivers of elegant learning. When he
studied at Paris, he was acquainted with Erasmus, who afterwards
gave him a public testimony of his esteem, by inscribing to him a
catalogue of his works. The stile of Boethius, though, perhaps,
not always rigorously pure, is formed with great diligence upon
ancient models, and wholly uninfected with monastic barbarity. His
history is written with elegance and vigour, but his fabulousness
and credulity are justly blamed. His fabulousness, if he was the
author of the fictions, is a fault for which no apology can be
made; but his credulity may be excused in an age, when all men were
credulous. Learning was then rising on the world; but ages so long
accustomed to darkness, were too much dazzled with its light to see
any thing distinctly. The first race of scholars, in the fifteenth
century, and some time after, were, for the most part, learning to
speak, rather than to think, and were therefore more studious of
elegance than of truth. The contemporaries of Boethius thought it
sufficient to know what the ancients had delivered. The
examination of tenets and of facts was reserved for another
generation.
Boethius, as president of the university, enjoyed a revenue of
forty Scottish marks, about two pounds four shillings and sixpence
of sterling money. In the present age of trade and taxes, it is
difficult even for the imagination so to raise the value of money,
or so to diminish the demands of life, as to suppose four and forty
shillings a year, an honourable stipend; yet it was probably equal,
not only to the needs, but to the rank of Boethius. The wealth of
England was undoubtedly to that of Scotland more than five to one,
and it is known that Henry the eighth, among whose faults avarice
was never reckoned, granted to Roger Ascham, as a reward of his
learning, a pension of ten pounds a year.
The other, called the Marischal College, is in the new town. The
hall is large and well lighted. One of its ornaments is the
picture of Arthur Johnston, who was principal of the college, and
who holds among the Latin poets of Scotland the next place to the
elegant Buchanan.
In the library I was shewn some curiosities; a Hebrew manuscript of
exquisite penmanship, and a Latin translation of Aristotle's
Politicks by Leonardus Aretinus, written in the Roman character
with nicety and beauty, which, as the art of printing has made them
no longer necessary, are not now to be found.
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