"What!" cried Kohl, springing up in his turn, "a hundred and fifty pounds! that makes one thousand and fifty dollars. A _baron_ would be satisfied in Germany with such a revenue as that; and do you mean to say that there are schoolmasters who grumble at it?" "Yes," said he; "but recollect how dear things are with us. Sugar costs eighteenpence a pound; coffee two shillings; chocolate is still dearer, and tea not much cheaper. And then how dear are good beef, and pork, and plums, and puddings, and everything else!" "I could not deny this," adds Kohl; "but I thought that our poor schoolmasters were content if they had but bread." In former times the parish schoolmasters did not receive so much as they now do; but then they were clerks of the parish, frequently _precentors_ in the church, and received a multitude of little perquisites. Their support has been made quite ample, having an average salary of a hundred pounds, with a free house. But the sight of that school-house brings back the days of "lang syne." Well do I remember the old parish school--a long thatched building, at the "Kirk of Shotts," where I received my preparation for college, under the free and easy, but most efficient, administration of 'Dominie Meuross,' famed through all the country for his great classical attainments, his facetious disposition, his kind-heartedness, and his love of the pure 'Glenlivet.' Those were not the days of temperance societies, and the Dominie had so much to do with christenings and weddings, parish difficulties, "roups" and law-suits, that he was greatly tempted by the bottle. But he was a worthy man, and an enthusiastic teacher, especially of the classics. Teaching A, B, C, was rather a dull business to the Dominie; but oh, how _merrily_ he would construe the Odes of Horace, what jokes he would crack over our lessons, and what effulgent light he would cast upon the classic page! Yet Dominie Meuross was a dignified man--no one more so. The boys, indeed, enjoyed considerable latitude, especially at that end of the school opposite the one in which the Dominie sat, and many facetious tricks were played upon the duller boys, the "sumphs," as we used to call them. But the Dominie had only to pull down his glasses from his forehead, where they were usually perched, and direct a keen glance to "the other end," instantly to bring us all to perfect order. Dear old man! he has long ago "gone to the yird," but his memory is green as the grass which waves upon his grave. The school and the church, the light of learning, and the light of religion, form the glory of Scotland. These have twined around her rustic brow a wreath of fadeless glory. These have given her stability and worth, beauty and renown.