In Glasgow, in a law passed in 1667, it is provided that “all who are delated by the public censor for speaking of English shall be fined in an halfpenny _toties quoties_.” The sum is not large, but the imposition of the penalty at that particular juncture looks rather unreasonable, since the Senate and the Faculty of Arts had just abandoned the use of Latin in their public documents, and had adopted what, if not strictly English, was the vernacular tongue—a change which was doubtless as much to their own ease as it is to the satisfaction of the reader, who becomes painfully alive to the continued and progressive barbarisation of the academic Latin. In a great measure, however, it seems to have been less the object in view to inculcate Latin than to discountenance the vernacular language of the country. In some instances the language of France is admitted; and, from the number of Scotsmen who carved out their fortunes in that hospitable and affluent country, this acquisition must have been one of peculiar value. In a set of statutes and laws of the Grammar School of Aberdeen, adopted in 1553, there is a very singular liberty of choice—the pupils might speak in Greek, Hebrew, or even in Gaelic, rather than in Lowland Scots: “Loquantur omnes Latinè, Græcè, Hebraicè, Gallicè, Hybernicè—nunquam vernaculè, saltem cum his qui Latinè noscunt.” This is by no means to be held as an indication of the familiar acquaintance of the Aberdonian students with the language of the Gael; on the contrary, it shows how entirely this was placed within the category of foreign tongues. We know no other instances in which the tongue of the Highlander is spoken of in connection with the earlier educational institutions of the country; but we think it not improbable that any encouragement it received was for much the same reason that Hindostanee and the African dialects are now sometimes taught to young divines—that they may work as missionaries among the heathen. A few students from this wild region, to which Christianity had scarcely penetrated, were indeed a peculiar feature of the educational institutions of Aberdeen, and in a modified shape so remain to this day, since some wild men from the hills, spending a brief period at school or college to acquire a fragment of education, are yet known by the term _extranni_, of old applied to them. There is a prevailing, but utterly false impression, that Aberdeen is in the Highlands. It lingers chiefly, in the present century, with Cockneys beginning their first northern tour; but in the seventeenth century it may, perhaps, have been entertained even in the metropolis of Scotland. Hence the educational institutions there, though at the extremity of a long tract of agricultural lowland, inhabited by a Teutonic people, and farther separated from the actual Celtic line than Edinburgh itself, are generally talked of in old documents as those which are peculiarly available for the civilisation of the Highlanders.