At an hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once
archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which philosophy
was formerly taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to
immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer
than the instability of vernacular languages admits.
We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend, lodgings
had been provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose
easy civility quickly made us forget that we were strangers; and in the
whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and
entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality.
In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history shews to
have once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient magnificence, of
which even the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some care be taken to
preserve them; and where is the pleasure of preserving such mournful
memorials? They have been till very lately so much neglected, that every
man carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them.
The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a small
part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious and
majestick building, not unsuitable to the primacy of the kingdom. Of the
architecture, the poor remains can hardly exhibit, even to an artist, a
sufficient specimen. It was demolished, as is well known, in the tumult
and violence of Knox's reformation.
Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a fragment
of the castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided. It was never
very large, and was built with more attention to security than pleasure.
Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had workmen employed in improving its
fortifications at the time when he was murdered by the ruffians of
reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls
a merry narrative.
The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was, raised
an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness and warlike
ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their own
thoughts, and who, conversing only with each other, suffered no dilution
of their zeal from the gradual influx of new opinions, was long
transmitted in its full strength from the old to the young, but by trade
and intercourse with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too
fast to that laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which
men, not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily
shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.
The city of St. Andrews, when it had lost its archiepiscopal
pre-eminence, gradually decayed: One of its streets is now lost; and in
those that remain, there is silence and solitude of inactive indigence
and gloomy depopulation.
The university, within a few years, consisted of three colleges, but is
now reduced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately dissolved by
the sale of its buildings and the appropriation of its revenues to the
professors of the two others. The chapel of the alienated college is yet
standing, a fabrick not inelegant of external structure; but I was
always, by some civil excuse, hindred from entering it. A decent
attempt, as I was since told, has been made to convert it into a kind of
green-house, by planting its area with shrubs. This new method of
gardening is unsuccessful; the plants do not hitherto prosper. To what
use it will next be put I have no pleasure in conjecturing. It is
something that its present state is at least not ostentatiously
displayed. Where there is yet shame, there may in time be virtue.
The dissolution of St. Leonard's college was doubtless necessary; but of
that necessity there is reason to complain. It is surely not without
just reproach, that a nation, of which the commerce is hourly extending,
and the wealth encreasing, denies any participation of its prosperity to
its literary societies; and while its merchants or its nobles are raising
palaces, suffers its universities to moulder into dust.
Of the two colleges yet standing, one is by the institution of its
founder appropriated to Divinity. It is said to be capable of containing
fifty students; but more than one must occupy a chamber. The library,
which is of late erection, is not very spacious, but elegant and
luminous.
The doctor, by whom it was shewn, hoped to irritate or subdue my English
vanity by telling me, that we had no such repository of books in England.
Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and
education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and
exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and
dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of
commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one the desire of
knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other, is
in danger of yielding to the love of money.
The students however are represented as at this time not exceeding a
hundred. Perhaps it may be some obstruction to their increase that there
is no episcopal chapel in the place. I saw no reason for imputing their
paucity to the present professors; nor can the expence of an academical
education be very reasonably objected. A student of the highest class
may keep his annual session, or as the English call it, his term, which
lasts seven months, for about fifteen pounds, and one of lower rank for
less than ten; in which board, lodging, and instruction are all included.
The chief magistrate resident in the university, answering to our vice-
chancellor, and to the _rector magnificus_ on the continent, had commonly
the title of Lord Rector; but being addressed only as Mr. Rector in an
inauguratory speech by the present chancellor, he has fallen from his
former dignity of style. Lordship was very liberally annexed by our
ancestors to any station or character of dignity: They said, the Lord
General, and Lord Ambassador; so we still say, my Lord, to the judge upon
the circuit, and yet retain in our Liturgy the Lords of the Council.
In walking among the ruins of religious buildings, we came to two vaults
over which had formerly stood the house of the sub-prior. One of the
vaults was inhabited by an old woman, who claimed the right of abode
there, as the widow of a man whose ancestors had possessed the same
gloomy mansion for no less than four generations. The right, however it
began, was considered as established by legal prescription, and the old
woman lives undisturbed. She thinks however that she has a claim to
something more than sufferance; for as her husband's name was Bruce, she
is allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were persons
of quality in the place, she was distinguished by some notice; that
indeed she is now neglected, but she spins a thread, has the company of
her cat, and is troublesome to nobody.
Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our curiosity, we
left it with good wishes, having reason to be highly pleased with the
attention that was paid us. But whoever surveys the world must see many
things that give him pain. The kindness of the professors did not
contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining, a
college alienated, and a church profaned and hastening to the ground.
St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and more
extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater force. We
were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins. The distance of a
calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or
sympathy. Events long past are barely known; they are not considered. We
read with as little emotion the violence of Knox and his followers, as
the irruptions of Alaric and the Goths. Had the university been
destroyed two centuries ago, we should not have regretted it; but to see
it pining in decay and struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful
images and ineffectual wishes.