Colin’s career at Oxford does not lie in the way of his present
historian, though, to be sure, a few piquant particulars might be
selected of the way in which a pair of young Scotch eyes, with a light
in them somewhat akin to genius, but trained to see the realities of
homely life on the Holy Loch, regarded the peculiar existence of the
steady, artificial old world, and the riotous but submissive new world,
which between them form a university. Colin who, like most of his
countrymen, found a great deal of the “wit” of the community around him
to be sheer nonsense, sometimes agreeable, sometimes much the reverse,
had also like his nation a latent but powerful sense of humour, which,
backed by a few prejudices, and stimulated a little by the different
manners current in the class to which he himself belonged, revealed to
him many wonderful absurdities in the unconscious microcosm which felt
itself a universe;--a revelation which restored any inequality in the
balance of affairs, and made the Scotch undergraduate at his ease in his
new circumstances. For his own part, he stood in quite a different
position from the host of young men, most of them younger than himself,
by whom he found himself surrounded. They were accomplishing without any
very definite object the natural and usual course of their education--a
process which everybody had to go through, and which, with more or less
credit, their fathers, brothers, friends, and relatives had passed
through before them. Life beyond the walls of the University had
doubtless objects more interesting than the present routine; but there
was no such immediate connexion between those objects and that routine
as Colin had been accustomed to see in his Scotch college.
As for Colin himself, he was aiming at a special end, which made his
course distinct for him among his more careless companions; he was bent
on the highest honours attainable by hard work and powers much above the
average; and this determination would have acted as a moral shield to
him against the meaner temptations of the place, even if he had not
already been by disposition and habits impervious to them. The higher
danger--the many temptations to which Colin, like other young men, was
exposed, of contenting himself with a brilliant unproductive social
reputation--was warded off from him by the settled determination with
which he entered upon his work. For Scotch sentiment is very distinct on
this question; and Colin understood perfectly that, if he returned with
only a moderate success, his _Alma Mater_ would be utterly disgusted
with her pet student, and his reputation would fall to a considerably
lower ebb than if he had been content to stay at home. He came upon that
tranquil academic scene in the true spirit of an invader; not
unfriendly--on the contrary, a keen observer of everything, an eager and
interested spectator of all the peculiar habitudes of the foreign
country--but chiefly bent upon snatching the laurel, as soon as that
should be possible, and carrying home his spoil in triumph. He entered
Oxford, in short, as the Czar Peter, had he been less a savage, might
have been supposed to establish himself in the bosom of the homely
English society of his time, seeing, with eyes brightened by curiosity
and the novelty of the spectacle, various matters in a ridiculous light
which were performed with the utmost gravity and unconsciousness by the
accustomed inhabitants; and, on the other hand, discovering as many
particulars from which he might borrow some advantage to his own people.
Certainly, Czar Peter, who was at once an absolute monarch and the most
enlightened man of his nation, stood in a somewhat different position
from the nameless Scotch student, between whom and other Scotch students
no ordinary observer could have discovered much difference; but the
aspirations of young men of Colin’s age are fortunately unlimited by
reason, and the plan he had conceived of working a revolution in his
native Church and country, or, at least, aiming at that to the highest
extent of his powers, was as legitimate, to say the least, as the
determination to make a great fortune, with which other young men of his
nation have often confronted the world.
Colin frequented the Oxford churches as he had frequented those in Rome,
with his paramount idea in his mind, and listened to the sermons in them
with that prevailing reference to the audience which he himself looked
forward to, which gave so strange an aspect to much that he heard. To be
sure, it was not the best way to draw religious advantage for himself
from the teachings he listened to; but yet the process was not without
its benefits to the predestined priest. He seemed to himself to be
looking on while the University preacher delivered his dignified
periods, not to the actual assembly, but to a shrewd and steady Scotch
congregation, not easily moved either to reverence or enthusiasm, and
with a national sense of logic. He could not help smiling to himself
when, in the midst of some elaborate piece of reasoning, the least
little step aside landed the speaker upon that quagmire of
ecclesiastical authority which with Colin’s audience would go far to
neutralize all the argument. The young man fancied he could see the
elders shake their heads, and the rural philosophers remark to each
other, “He maun have been awfu’ ill off for an argument afore he landed
upon yon.” And, when the preacher proceeded to “our Church’s admirable
arrangements,” and displayed with calm distinctness the final certainty
that perfection had been absolutely attained by that venerated mother,
the young Scotchman felt a prick of contradiction in his heart on his
own account as well as that of his imaginary audience. He thought to
himself that the same arguments employed on behalf of the Church of
Scotland would go a long way towards unsettling the national faith, and
smiled within himself at the undoubting assumption which his
contradictory northern soul was so far from accepting. He was not a bad
emblem of his nation in this particular, at least. He consented without
a remonstrance to matters of detail, such as were supposed, by anybody
who had curiosity enough to inquire into the singular semi-savage
religious practices of Scotland, to be specially discordant to the ideas
of his country; but he laughed at “our Church’s admirable arrangements”
in such a manner as to set the hair of the University on end. The
principles of apostolic succession and unbroken ecclesiastical descent
produced in this daring young sceptic, not indignation nor argument,
which might have been tolerated, but an amused disregard which was
unbearable. He was always so conscious of what his Scotch audience,
buried somewhere among the hills in the seclusion of a country parish,
would think of such pretensions, and laughed not at the doctrine so much
as at the thought of their reception of it. In this respect the young
Scotchman, embodying his country, was the most contradictory of men.
He was not very much more satisfactory in the other region, where the
best of Anglicans occasionally wander, and where men who hold with the
firmest conviction the doctrine of apostolic succession sometimes show a
strange degree of uncertainly about things more important. Colin’s
convictions were vague enough on a great many matters which were
considered vital on the Holy Loch; and perhaps he was not a much more
satisfactory bearer in his parish church at home than he was in Oxford
when there was question of the descendants of the apostles. But amidst
this sea of vague and undeveloped thought, which was not so much doubt
as uncertainty, there stood up several rocks of absolute faith which
were utterly impervious to assault. His mind was so far conformed to his
age that he could hear even these ultimate and fundamental matters
canvassed by the calm philosophers about him, without any undue
theological heat or passion of defence; but it soon became evident that
on these points the young Scotchman was immovable, a certainty which
made him an interesting study to some of his companions and teachers. It
would be foolish to say that his faith procured for him that awe and
respect which the popular mind takes it for granted a company of
sceptics must always feel for the one among them who retains his
religious convictions. On the contrary, Colin’s world was amused by his
belief. It was, itself to start with, a perfectly pious, well-conducted
world, saying its prayers like everybody else, and containing nothing
within its placid bosom which in the least resembled the free-thinkers
of ancient days. The Church was not the least in the world in danger
from that mild fraternity, to which every kind of faith was a thing to
be talked about, to evolve lines of thought upon, and give rise to the
most refined, and acute, and charming conversation. But, as for Colin,
they regarded him with amused observation as a rare specimen of the
semi-cultivated, semi-savage intelligence which is always so refreshing
to a society which has refined itself to a point somewhat beyond nature.
He was “a most interesting young man,” and they found in him “a
beautiful enthusiasm,” an “engaging simplicity.” As for Colin, he was
quite aware of the somewhat unfounded admiration with which he was
regarded, and smiled in his turn at his observers with a truer
consciousness of the humour of the position than they could possibly
have who saw only half of it; but he kept his shrewd Scotch eyes open
all the time, and half unconsciously made himself acquainted with a
great many new developments of that humanity which was to be the
material of all the labours of his life. He had it in his power to
remark the exact and delicate points at which Anglicanism joined on to
the newer fashion of intellectualism, and to note how a morsel of faith
the less might be now and then conciliated and made up for by a morsel
of observance the more. And, at the same time, he became aware of the
convenient possibility of dividing a man, and making him into two or
three different “beings,” as occasion required; so that the emotional
being--having sundry natural weaknesses, such as old association and
youthful habit, and a regard to the feelings of others, not to speak of
the affectionate prejudices of a good Churchman--was quite free to do
his daily service at chapel, and say his prayers, even at the very
moment when the intellectual being was busy with the most delicate
demonstration that prayer in a universe governed by absolute law was an
evident absurdity and contradiction of all reason. Colin for his part
looked on at this partition, and smiled in his turn. He was not shocked,
as perhaps he ought to have been; but then, as has been said, he too was
a man of his age, and found many things which were required by absolute
orthodoxy unnecessary _impedimenta_, as Lauderdale had called them.
But, with all this, the young man had never been able to cut himself in
half, and he could not learn to regard the process as one either
advantageous or even honourable now.
Such, apart from the work which was necessary in obedience to his grand
original impulse, were the studies he pursued in Oxford. At the same
time he had another occupation in hand, strangely out of accord at once
with those studies and with his own thoughts. This was the publication
of poor Meredith’s book, the “Voice from the Grave,” at which he had
laboured to the latest moment of his life. In it was represented another
world, an altogether contradictory type of existence. Between Colin’s
intellectual friends, to whom the “Hereafter” was a curious and
interesting but altogether baffling subject of investigation, and the
dying youth who had gone out of this world in a dauntless primitive
confidence of finding himself at once in the shining streets and endless
sunshine of the New Jerusalem, the difference was so great as to be past
counting. As for the young editor, his view of life was as different
from Meredith’s as it was from that of his present companions. The great
light of heaven was to Colin, as to many others, as impenetrable as the
profoundest darkness; he could neither see into it, nor permit himself
to make guesses of what was going on beyond; and, consequently, he had
little sympathy with the kind of piety which regards life as a
preparation for death. Sometimes he smiled, sometimes he sighed over the
proofs as he corrected them; sometimes, but for knowing as he did the
utter truthfulness with which the dead writer had set forth his
one-sided and narrow conception of the world, Colin would have been
disposed to toss into the fire those strange warnings and exhortations.
But when he thought of the young author, dead in his youth, and of all
the doings and sayings of those months in which they lived together,
and, more touching still, of those conversations that were held on the
very brink of the grave, and at the gate of heaven, his heart smote him.
And then his new friends broke in upon him, and discussed the book with
opinions so various that Colin could but admire and wonder. One
considered them a curious study of the internal consciousness, quite
worthy the attention of a student of mental phenomena. Another was of
opinion that such stuff was the kind of nutriment fit for the uneducated
classes, who had strong religious prejudices, and no brains to speak of.
When Colin found his own sentiments thrown back to him in this careless
fashion, he began to see for the first time the conceit and
self-importance of his judgment; and many discussions followed, as might
be supposed.
“When religion becomes a matter of self-interest,” said one of the young
men met in his rooms on one such occasion, “I don’t see any attraction
in it. I don’t understand what you can see in this rubbish, Campbell.
Inflated humbug and sordid calculations----”
“Hush!” said Colin, with a sparkle in his eyes, “the writer was of the
kind of man that saints were once made of--and I believe in saints for
my part.”
“Well, yes,” said his interlocutor; “I don’t mean to be vulgar: one
can’t help to a certain extent believing in saints--though our wise
fathers you know thought otherwise.” Perhaps the young speaker would not
have thought it necessary to be civil to them, if it had not been that a
former generation had made fun of the saints.
“And as for self-interest,” said Colin, “I don’t see how a man can have
an altogether generous and patronizing love for God. A child’s love for
his father is always interested in a kind of way. The love that has no
self-regard in it, is pity or patronage rather than love.”
“Oh, love!” said Colin’s friend, who had not been altogether thinking of
that; and then another speaker broke in.
“For my part, it is the emotional aspect of religion that chiefly
interests me,” he said; “in a philosophical point of view, you know. But
the only way you can influence the masses is by working on their
feelings. It would be different, of course, with a set of fellows like
you.”
“We are superior to that sort of thing,” said Colin. “Perhaps we have no
feelings. When a man becomes a Don, I don’t see what use he has for such
superfluities.”
“You are going to be a Don yourself, I suppose,” said some one. “You are
sure of your Fellowship, of course.”
Upon which Colin smiled with the pleasant arrogance of his age.
“Something better than that,” he said. “I am not the kind of stuff that
Dons are made of. I am going home to Scotland to the Kirk.”
Though his friends were all aware of this magnanimous intention, they
could not but open their eyes at every new repetition of it.
“If you have set your heart on being a parson,” one of his companions
said, “go into the Church, at least. Hang it! Campbell, don’t go and
bind yourself to a conventicle,” said his anxious acquaintance; “a man
has always a chance of doing something in the Church.”
“That is precisely my idea,” said Colin, “though you fellows seem to
think it the last possibility. And, besides, it is the only thing I can
do. I can’t be a statesman, as you have the chance of being, and I have
not an estate to manage. What else would you have me do?”
“My dear fellow,” said another of his friends, “you are as sure of your
Fellowship as any man ever was. Go in for literature, and send your old
Kirk to Jericho--a fellow like you has nothing to do in such a place.
One knows the sort of thing precisely; any blockhead that can thump his
pulpit, and drone out long prayers--”
“Many thanks for your advice,” said Colin; “but I prefer my own
profession, literature is all very well when a man is born to it, but
life is better than literature at its best; and my own trade should be
good for something, if any profession ever was.”
“Well, now, taking it at the very best, how much do you think you are
likely to have a-year?--a hundred and fifty perhaps? No, I don’t mean to
say that’s final;--but, of course, a thoughtful fellow like you takes it
into consideration,” said Colin’s adviser; “everything is badly paid
now-a-days--but, at all events, there are chances. If a man is made of
iron and brass, and has the resolution of an elephant, he may get to be
something at the Bar, you know, and make a mint of money. And, even in
the Church, to be sure, if he’s harmless and civil, something worth
having may come in his way; but you are neither civil nor harmless,
Campbell. And, by Jove! it’s not the Church you are thinking of, but the
Kirk, which is totally different. I’ve been in Scotland,” continued the
Mentor, with animation; “it’s not even one Kirk, which would be
something. But there’s one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom,
and I defy any man to tell which is which. Come, Campbell, don’t be a
Quixote--give it up!”
“You might as well have told my namesake to give up the Queen’s service
after he had lost a battle,” said Colin. “Though I don’t suppose Sir
Colin ever did lose a battle, by the way. I tell you I am not the sort
of stuff for a Don--the atmosphere is too much rarified up here--I can’t
breathe in it. Men who come of my race must work or die.”
“I can’t say that I feel the force of the alternative,” said Colin’s
friend. “A man must think; it is the first condition of existence; but
as for the other two-- What have you in common with the unreasoning
multitude?” asked the young philosopher. There were plenty of voices to
take the other side of the question, but Colin’s mind was not political
to speak of, and he had no inclination to take the democratic side.
“A few things,” Colin said, with a smile, “that don’t exist among the
Illuminati. For instance, ignorance and want and some other human
attributes; and we can help each other on down below, while you are
thinking it all out above. The worst is that we will probably find time
to live and die before you come to any conclusion. Let us talk it over
ten years hence,” said this young prince of the future, with royal
confidence. And this was how a great many such conversations came to an
end.
Ten years was like to be an eventful period to the young men who were
standing on the verge of life; but they all made very light of it, as
was natural. As for Colin, he did not attempt to make out to himself any
clear plan of what he attempted to do and to be in ten years. Certainly,
he calculated upon having by that time reached the highest culmination
of which life was capable. He meant to be a prince in his own country
without, at the same time, following anything for his own glory or
advantage; for in reality, the highest projects that could move the
spirit of a man were in Colin’s mind. He had no thought of becoming a
popular preacher, or the oracle of a coterie. What he truly intended
indeed was not quite known to himself, in the vague but magnificent
stirrings of his ambition. He meant to take possession of some certain
corner of his native country, and make of it an ideal Scotland, manful
in works and steadfast in belief; and he meant from that corner to
influence and move all the land in some mystical method known only to
the imagination. Such are the splendid colours in which fancy, when
sufficiently lively, can dress up even such a sober reality as the life
of a Scotch minister. While he planned this he seemed to himself so
entirely a man of experience, ready to smile at the notions of
undisciplined youth, that he succeeded in altogether checking and
deceiving his own inevitable good sense--that watchful monitor which
warns even an imaginative mind of its extravagance. This was the great
dream which, interrupted now and then by lighter fancies, had
accompanied Colin more or less clearly through all his life. And now the
hour of trial was about to come, and the young man’s ambition was ready
to accomplish itself as best it might.