Jack wants Sandy to lend him a penknife, he says, “Will you lend me your knife, Mr. Ramsay?” Sandy replying, “There it is, Mr. Frazer; but I have blunted it with cutting a portrait of the Professor on the desk, which the old boy has painted with a solution of sand for the express purpose of blunting knives and discouraging art.” To hear young men who are in the wood-carving stage of existence, some of them mere boys, addressing each other in this formal way, reminds one strangely of Sir Harry and My Lord Duke in the servants’ hall. Which is cause and which effect? Is it from natural reserve and deficient sociability that the Scotch came to undervalue the student life and to abolish it? or is it the want of the student life and school life, such as it exists in England, that has produced reserve? There is something in both views; but if we are looking for causes, there are others that could be given for the decay of student life. One of these I have already indicated in speaking of the puritanic distrust of society, or, as it is called, “the world.” A worthy elder of the Kirk has got a son, who is the greatest little rascal of his age, the admiration of the parish dogs, the terror of the parish cats, curiously acquainted with the nature of the fruit in all the gardens and orchards around, impudent as a monkey, and idle as a fly, but who, in consequence of sundry floggings, carries himself so demurely in the presence of his fond parent, that he is supposed to be a chosen vessel—not far from the kingdom of heaven—a child of grace. The pious Mr. Alister Macalister feels that in sending forth his gracious young sinner into a mixed society of boys at a public school, or young men at college—he is sending his precious one into a den of thieves who will rob him of his innocence, is ushering him into the world and the things of the world, is imperilling his immortal interests. And while the puritanic tendencies of the Scotch have gone thus far to undermine the student life by degrading it in public esteem, another influence, even more important, has been at work in the same direction—poverty. Nowhere, I have said, has a good education been so highly prized as in Scotland; but in the attempt to place a good education within reach of every man, however poor, it has been necessary to cheapen it. The cheapness of it has not lowered the character of the education as far as mere learning goes, but has effectually stript it of the social life which ought to accompany it. “_Tenui musam meditamur avenâ_,” the Scottish student may say with Jeffrey and Sydney Smith. But if it is possible to cultivate letters on a little oatmeal, it is not possible to cultivate society on such attenuated resources. Society, even when it is laid out on the most thrifty principles, costs a good deal more than some men can afford. How would it be possible for the poor fellow who hopes to get through his terms for 30_l._ a year to dine