Let me premise that I am not going to enter into a disquisition on the subject, to analyze the plan of Scottish education, nor to be didactic in any way whatever. I am simply about to give a sketch of my Scotch school—the school I went to to be prepared for the university. There were penny postage-stamps when I went to my Scotch school; the Reform Bill had been passed eight years previously; daguerrotypes and the electric telegraph were coming in. So it was but the other day. My school was the parochial, or parish school, the school of all Scotch boys who dwell in the country, whether high or low, gentle or simple. Here in England the word “parish” is associated with all kinds of indignity—with the Workhouse, the lock-up, the pound, the pauper’s allowance. It may, therefore, seem to the English reader, ignorant of Scottish matters, when I say I went to the parish school, that I wore a muffin cap and premature knee-breeches (if the English mind can associate Scotland with these nether integuments in any shape), and was educated at the public expense. Let me dissipate this popular error. The parochial school in Scotland claims equal dignity with the parish Kirk. It is the chief educational establishment—the public school in fact—of the district, and is part of the national system for spreading education and enlightenment among the people of Scotland. The Kirk in Scotland, that is to say, the Established Kirk, is supported by a levy upon the occupiers of the land. The tax, however, is an indirect one, and therefore does not provoke the discontent caused by tithes and church-rates in England. The heritors, that is to say the landowners, pay the amount (on a scale in proportion to the price of grain), and repay themselves out of the rents of their tenants. This payment is not set down as a separate item in the rent-charge, and so the tenant pays his tithes and rates as he pays the tax upon his tea and tobacco. He is bled without knowing it. The parish school shares in this revenue with the parish kirk, but to a limited extent. Turning to the statistical account of my parish—written by the hand which directed the earliest calligraphical exercises of the one which now pens this—I find that the said parish is six miles long by five miles broad, and contains—or did contain then—a population of 1,661 souls. Those English persons who indulge in extravagant notions of the abundance of educational provision in the North may be a little surprised to learn that for this widely-scattered population there were only two schools, each capable of accommodating no more than sixty or seventy scholars. The endowments of these educational establishments were by no means magnificent. The allowance to the master of the parochial school (who was required to be a college man of considerable classical attainments) was 34_l._ 4_s._ 4_d._ per annum, with a dwelling-house and garden, and the fees of the