But the aping of English manners had not yet undermined the traditional Scottish democracy of intercourse. Though the barriers which divided gentleman from commoner were fully as strong in Scotland as they were in England, they were not so visible. If many of the gentry lacked wealth, they did not lack pedigree, and a plebeian could rarely hope to cross the boundary that excluded him from social equality. Nobles married with nobles, and lairds with lairds. Yet until the end of the century the sons of nobles, lairds, and ploughmen commonly began their education together in the village school, where boy-fashion they took each other at face-value without regard to rank. The result was an almost total absence among the lower classes of that servility which was bred into their compeers in England. Only as more and more of the sons of gentlemen were sent to English public schools did the old system decay, and some of the gentry begin to compensate for the inferiority they had been made to feel in the presence of the English by assuming a haughty air with their humbler countrymen. In short, all that had distinguished Scotland as a nation was on the way to oblivion. Literature, language, manners, and institutions were being anglicized as fast as a people roused to uneasy self-consciousness could manage it. In 1786 it seemed evident that when the former things passed away it would be into the darkness in which men and nations prefer to bury the ruder and more discreditable features of their early days. That the memory of the discarded heritage should be embalmed as a precious possession, and that the old world should be forever surrounded by the romantic glory of a golden sunset was due more to Robert Burns than to any other person. He made the Scots conscious of the richness of their national tradition. He could not restore it to life, but he taught his people to cherish its ruins. II EDUCATION Robert Burns was nearly nine years old before anything revealing his personality impressed his family enough to make them remember it. Unreliable tradition has it that he was a puny infant; slightly better evidence shows him as a nervous and temperamental child, alternating between wild high spirits and moody sullenness. Once, it is said, Robert hid in a cupboard when he and his schoolmates were frolicking. The master in restoring order struck the door a resounding blow with his tawse, and the nervous shock threw the child into such uncontrollable hysterical sobs that he had to be sent home. But the most devout worshipper would have trouble in discerning a future poet in so undifferentiated an episode. It is easier to do so in Gilbert Burns’s story of what happened at Mount Oliphant one evening in 1768.