he knew nothing, by English, concerning which he was nearly as ignorant. Heaven only knows the notes which he uttered, in attempting, with unpracticed organs, to imitate the gutturals of these two untractable languages. At length in the midst of much laughing and little study, most of us acquired some knowledge, more or less extensive, of the German language, and selected for ourselves, some in the philosophy of Kant, some in the more animated works of the German dramatists, specimens more to our taste than The Death of Abel.””

Mr. William Clerk, brother of the late lord Eldin, and Mr. H. Guthrie Wright, with some others, were members of this German class. Its history is less interesting on account of the light it throws upon the progress of Sir Walter's studies in that language, than from the information it incidentally communicates respecting his disposition and habits of intellectual labour at this period of his career. It shows him in possession of that confirmed health which in youth is always the source of high and overflowing spirits, the boldest and gayest among his young compeers, turning at times even those studies he had most at heart to a jest. It shows him at the same time possessed of knowledge beyond his years; extensively if not profoundly acquainted with the history and with the ancient language of his country. At the same time, we find that his naturally powerful and comprehensive mind, abandoned so long to its own unrestrained pursuits, had invented a method of study for itself which was anything but systematical. He seems, with an unexampled appetite for reading, to have devoured every book that came in his way, without order, arrangement, or purpose; and at leisure hours, with the aid of an astonishingly retentive memory, to have set to work to disentangle and arrange his multifarious knowledge. After this fashion he accumulated information to an extent that few have ever possessed, but of a kind that neither himself nor others could see the use of until the process of time turned his attention to novelwriting. With all its extent, there was a want of precision and accuracy about his knowledge that rendered it alike inapplicable to the purposes of a moralist, a metaphysician, or a practical man. He was regarded by his lighter built companions as a huge dungeon of inapplicable knowledge. Their ephemeral

minds shot out into form and existence in half a day; his world of intellect fermented for years in a state of chaos. It was with his German studies as with every thing else: he mastered the language after a fashion of his own; in a manner which enabled him at a later period to turn it to account, but never to become critically acquainted with it. Any attempts which he has made to express himself in German are eminently ungram

matical.

Six years had elapsed from the interruption of Scott's College studies by illness, six years spent, as we have seen, betwixt the practice of athletic exercises, idling in a writer's office, and studies of the most desultory and multifarious character, when he resumed the character of a student at the Edinburgh University. In the College register for the year 1790, the name of Walter Scott occurs in the roll of the Scots Law Class, at that time taught by Professor Hume, and in that of the Moral Philosophy Class, taught by Dugald Stewart. It was then, as now, the practice for the majority of those young men whose destination is the Scottish bar to become members of the Speculative Society, a name which has been blazoned broadly by the celebrity of many whose earliest displays of talent were made within its walls. With this custom Scott, who had long been determined to become one of the " noblesse de la robe,” complied ; and accordingly we learn, from the minutes of the society, that, on Tuesday 14th December 1790, a petition from Mr. Walter Scott to be admitted a member was presented, read, and ordered to be balloted for at next meeting; that on Tuesday the 21st December he was duly elected; and that on Tuesday the 4th January 1791 he took his seat for the first time.

Professor Hume, who still survives, although having since been promoted to a more lucrative office, he no longer fills the chair, is a nephew of the celebrated David Hume, and is said, by those who know him, to possess no small share of his uncle's subtilty of intellect. If we may judge, however, by his prelections, he is destitute of that comprehensive grasp of mind which enables a man to take bold leading views. He puzzled about resolving with infinite nicety the difficult points of law, but failed in conveying to his auditors, what is of the utmost importance to the young lawyer, a systematic view of its whole

extent. Towards the close of his career as a public teacher, this habit had gained so much upon him, that his lectures consisted of little more than classified notes of decisions. These remarks apply to him in the character of a commentator upon which a Benthamite would call the dispensative branch of the law of Scotland; his deficiencies in relation to the penal law were yet more dangerous.

What is called, in virtue of a rather equivocal provincialism, the criminal law of Scotland, is mainly what Bentham would call in his nervous language, "Judge-made law." The Scottish penal statutes are few in number, and many of them obsolete, as much from the principle of the law of Scotland, which admits even of a statute being abrogated by desuetude, as by the obsolete nature of the social relations and crimes to which they are applicable. It was universally admitted in the old time, and is still a pet doctrine with many, that every offence against morality may be made a ground of accusation at the bar of the Court of Justiciary, as a crime of "the awin kind," (sui generis ;) what is an offence against morality being a question left to the determination of the judge. With the exception of treason, the laws regarding which have since the Union been those of England, there are few of those offences which form the most frequent subject of inquiry before this court, that have not originally been smuggled in under this questionable form, and stamped matter of law by the sanction of prescription. The loose habits of thought and language superinduced upon those who have been long conversant with such a legal system, may easily be conceived. A system of penal jurisprudence thus vague and fluctuating, has, however, been rendered if possible more so from the gossiping inaccurate manner in which it has been treated by Professor Hume. It only remains to be added, that the Professor has proved himself one of the most bigoted, meddling, and relentless upholders of the prerogative in a narrow-minded and persecuting age. Under his hands, the unintelligible crime of sedition has become ten times more mysterious than ever. In vague horror it transcends even Milton's Death.

With respect to the extent to which Scott benefited under this learned lawyer, the manner in which the business of the class was conducted effectually prevents our forming any conjecture. At

tendance was quite optional on the part of the student, and no exercises afforded him any opportunity of displaying his proficiency. Judging by the natural bent of Scott's mind, we should doubt whether he derived much benefit from the lectures. A systematic outline of the principles of our municipal system he could have appreciated and made his own; but the consideration of a thousand minor details was little to his taste, and ill adapted to his peculiar talents. He possessed no hair-splitting fineness of intellectual perception. Besides, although his acquired habits of thought would have allowed him to take sufficient interest in the study of law to be at the pains of learning what it was, and discovering the turn of mind which would enable a man to succeed in it, he wanted the faculties and tastes which make a successful lawyer. There is therefore every reason to believe that his legal studies resembled those of his own Darsie Latimer, who says of himself, "I attended a weary session at the Scotch Law class: a wearier at the Civil; and with what excellent advantage, my note-book filled with caricatures of the professors and my fellow-students, is it not yet extant to testify ?" Perhaps, too, a passage in the introductory chapter of "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" may be understood to throw some further light upon the author's legal studies. "And that's all the good you have obtained from three perusals of the commentaries on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence?' said his companion. I suppose the learned author little thinks that the facts which his erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal doctrine, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library. I'll bet you a pint of claret,' said the elder lawyer, that he will not feel sore at the comparison."" Be this, however, as it may, Scott attended the Scots Law class for two successive sessions, the Civil Law class being at that time, on account of the Professor's extreme old age, in a state of temporary abeyance.

6

The Moral Philosophy class, as it was at that time taught, afforded a more congenial sphere of action to our student, both on account of the studies pursued in it, and of the amiable and highly gifted individual who filled the chair. It would be alien to our present purpose were we here to plunge into an antiquarian discus

sion respecting the rise and progress of the system of education which obtains at our Scottish universities. A brief retrospect, however, will not, we trust, be found altogether devoid of interest, and it will enable us to present more clearly to the apprehensions of our Southern readers the exact nature of the pursuits which occupy the students of Moral Philosophy.

At the first organization of our Scottish universities, the records of which have been preserved, the literary and philosophical department of study was intrusted to four Regents. All students, when they commenced their university career, were placed under one of these ; and it was the duty of this master to conduct his alumni through what was then considered the entire circle of the sciences. The curriculum lasted four years; and as each Regent in rotation took up a class of beginners, any individual joining from another university found one class at his own stage of advancement. At an earlier page of the present volume we have adverted to the great want of elementary schools in Scotland at the period to which we refer, and to the necessity consequently imposed upon the Regents of commencing with their pupils at the very groundwork of a learned education. "He found me," says the nephew of the sturdy and erudite Andrew Melville, while speaking of his own progress in knowledge when he first entered the university of St. Andrews," he found me baugh in the Latin tongue." The first year, during which the student was distinguished by the appellation Bagen, was devoted to the study of Humanity," which, being interpreted, means the Latin language. Students of the second year, or Semis, were initiated into the mysteries of the syllogism, and other matters pertaining to Logic. Students of the third year, Bachelors, were engaged in the pursuit of Ethics, Pneumatology, &c. The fourth year, during which they bore the title Magistrands, or inceptive Artium Magistri, (the honour conferred upon such as went regularly through the whole course,) seems to have been devoted to Physics.

"

As the field of science widened, and men of letters began to find any one of its departments enough, and sometimes more than enough, to engross the serious labour of a life, the detrimental effects of thus dissipating the attention of the teacher among a variety of unhomogeneous studies became apparent.