hear the order of the day adopted by the Senatus Academicus. Α paper was read by the secretary, the purport of which was that the Moray nation comprehended all students born north of the Deveron ; the Buchan nation those born between the Deveron and the Don; the Mar nation those born between the Don and the Dee; the Angus nation all others wherever they might be born at home or abroad. A particular class-room was assigned to each separate nation, where they were to assemble, and choose their procurator or representative, whose duty it was to report their vote to the senatus. The procurator of the Buchan nation has not forgotten the honour conferred upon him by his fellowstudents at that and every other election: he never hears the old familiar Buchan burr, or sees a kindly Buchan face, without warm glow at his heart. When the four procurators met in the senatus room they all recorded their votes in favour of Lord P-, who was solemnly declared rector. The other candidates, to borrow the language of the turf, were left nowhere. Some five hundred students, wild with excitement, or intoxicated with success, made the old college towers ring again with their cheers. At this juncture the ingenious and much-contriving Daghesh did a deed which will immortalize his name for ever. He rushed off to the barracks where the gallant 93rd were stationed, had an interview with the commanding officer, and marched back to the college at the head of the regimental band. The cheers evoked by the appearance of Daghesh, followed by the pipers and the band giving forth with thundering crash, 'See the con a is not in our power to oblige our friends at the moment they would have us to do so. Daghesh did not die, but lived; nay more, he marshalled the students in military order, and marched at their head through the principal streets, preceded by the band playing "The garb of old Gaul,' 'Scots wha hae,' The kail-brose o' auld Scotland,' and other patriotic tunes. The sound of the martial music, the ferocious appearance of Daghesh, and the measured tread of the advancing procession, struck the hearts of many with a vague sense of terror: it was said that several sober citizens closed their shutters, and that some old maids, mistaking the red gowns for red republicans, bolted their doors, and went comfortably off into hysterics. there was no damage done': the procession returned to the college court, and the students quietly dispersed. But The next great event was the installation and rectorial address. Lord P-wrote to the chairman of his committee that he would arrive at a certain hour by coach (there was no railway in those days) and three of the students were sent as a deputation to receive him. He had taken the precaution to secure the whole of the interior of the coach, and his appearance produced such an effect upon one of the students, who had never seen him before, that he lost his gravity, and ignominiously fled. The other two accompanied him to his hotel, where he soon won their hearts by his sportive humour and easy affability. They breakfasted with him the following morning; they were still at table when one of the dons of the college was announced. This gentleman, like Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, knew the advantage of quering hero comes!' are still ring-booing,' so he made three profound ing in our ears. He should have died at that, the moment of his greatest triumph, as Alderman Sidney tells us Sir De Lacy Evans ought to have done thirty years ago, before he laid his unhallowed hands on that ægis of the British constitution, the City police. But, alas! none of us know when it would be best for us to die, and it salaams at the door; his lordship returned them with an air of mock dignity which seriously affected the gravity of his two young guests. Then came the installation; and we may safely say that there was the usual display of female beauty (there were and are many fair faces in that northern city), and exuberant animal spirits on the part of the students. While waiting for the rector, they cheered everything and everybody, shouted, yelled, whistled, and were as generally uproarious as the heart of man could desire. At length the Senatus Academicus advanced with slow and solemn step; the appearance of the rector, arrayed in his robes of office, was the signal for an outburst of deafening cheers. The noise gradually subsided, the doors were closed, and the ceremony was about to begin. At this moment the proceedings were interrupted by a loud voice outside the door; and a young English student, borrowing the language of a then popular song, exclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be heard by all, 'Who is that knocking at the door?' 'It's me!' said a shrill female voice, recognized at once as that of a lady of a certain age not remarkable for her personal attractions. You are not good-looking, and you can't come in,' was the immediate rejoinder, which created immense applause from the students. The lady did get in, however; and then came the address, which was like most other addresses, neither better nor worse. He praised Scotland, of course; he spoke of her mountains and rivers, her goldenhaired daughters and gallant sons, the renown of her universities, the distinction attained by her students, of the patriotism that glowed in his own bosom, and in the breast of every Scotchman; of the evils of idleness and the advantages of successful study; of the great honour conferred upon himself, and his deep appreciation of that honour. vindicated his own position as a worshipper of Themis and the Muses; he sternly reprobated the rudeness of the poet in thus apostrophising a lawyer seeking entrance into the temple of fame :Art thou a lawyer? Draw not nigh; Go carry to some fitter place The keenness of that practised eye, The hardness of that sallow face. These, we fear, are not the exact words, but n'importe; the address was hailed as a success by an audience who were far from being critical. When he had concluded, the Senatus bestowed upon him the degree of LL.D., and the leading citizens entertained him at a public dinner. There is one student (the only one present) who has a vivid remembrance of that dinner, and of the kindness of the M.P. who sent him a ticket; he trusts that his open manly honest face is still to be seen in the streets, that his swiftsailing argosies are bringing him ample returns from distant lands. If you want to make a man your friend for life, show him some kindness in his boyhood or his youth, it will never be lost or forgotten; the pleasures or the sorrows of that transition period of life can never be rased out from the memory. That student will never forget how those worthy burgesses patted him on the back and made much of him, and He cheered his every word, as with overflowing heart and inarticulate utterance he spoke the thanks of those whom he represented; nor will he ever forget the surprise excited in his unsophisticated mind by the manner in which the chairman discharged the duties of that office. He had been wont to regard him as the very embodiment of extreme puritanism: he came out that evening with a sort of elephantine playfulness as a roystering, rollicking madcap, a lover of the wine cup, a boaster of bonnes fortunes. It must have been his lordship's presence that infected him with a sort of unnatural, boisterous jollity, at which no one seemed more surprised than himself. In drinking to the fair sex he professed himself their universal admirer, and protested that he worshipped all women of all ages and countries. The following might be given as a poetical paraphrase of his enthusiastic address: Why differ on which is the fairest form, Ye bigots of beauty! behold I stand forth, When he concluded by giving, with Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh! what were man? A world without a sun; the enthusiasm of the audience knew Hurrah! a glorious toast, The dinner passed off pleasantly enough. One old gentleman forgot his speech, and broke down, but that, we believe, is not an unusual event. The rector delivered a series of mock heroic addresses on popular education, and a certain decree issued by M. Cremieux, the minister of public instruction in France, who had in some way incurred his displeasure; those who knew him best said that he was merely amusing himself at our expense. He administered a severe rebuke to Flibbertigibbet, who proposed that lawyers in drawing up wills for their clients should give the university the benefit of certain contingent advantages, instead of inserting the name of 'our Harry,' in allusion to a local case of some notoriety. Toward the close of the evening, he gave wings to his sportive fancy, and indulged his facetious humour at the expense of one of the professors, a man of exemplary character, and sternly virtuous principles. He was unfortunate enough to overturn a glass of wine when about to convey it to his lips. Ah, doctor,' said Psorrowfully shaking his head, we have all to suffer in our old age for the sins of our youth.' The expression of indignant surprise assumed by the doctor's solemn face will not be readily forgotten by those who witnessed it; il n'entendait pas la raillerie. We question whether he has quite forgotten that ill-timed jest even at the present hour. The festivities were not yet ended; the rector had to breakfast with the students the following morning, and to listen to a good deal of speechifying. A ludicrous event occurred in connexion with this breakfast; a large broadsheet appeared, professing to give a report of all the speeches, before they were delivered, and the characteristics of the different speakers were so admirably hit off, that though the names were fictitious, the real persons could be at once recognized. The Very Rev. the Principal, we were told, said grace in his usual impressive manner, using that beautiful form of prayer to be found at page 917 of his Family Devotim; the tall, graceful figure of the youthful chairman contrasted admirably with the Falstaffian proportions and immense rotundity of the noble rector, whose speech was a poetical dissertation on gastronomy. Dr. Pons Asinorum slowly described a perpendicular, and gravely announced, that though the race was not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, a life regulated on the principle of keeping things straight would sooner or later attain its end. Flibbertigibbet wept over the crudity of intellect and physique characteristic of his youthful pupils, and denounced his brethren of the Senatus as academic bears. The students displayed an unusual amount of hilarity that morning, on perceiving the points of resemblance between the real and the imaginary speeches. There was only one of the speakers who knew the cause. Ah well! all things must come to an end; rectorial elections cannot last for ever. Perhaps our readers would wish to know something, before we conclude, of the principal actors in the scenes we have been endeavouring to describe. The pas de précédence is assuredly due to Daghesh, but we have not much to tell. He had still to act the part of the Peri for years before any accommodating presbytery would consent to admit him within the sacred pale of the Kirk. During this interval, he was not content to sink feebly into the ranks of nobodyism; he was the good man of the Stoics, struggling against adversity, a sight acceptable to gods and men. The field of usefulness he had struck out for himself may be learned from the following incident:-An aged professor in the north, a stern, upright, honourable man, who had attained to the highest honour the Kirk can confer, and enjoyed the esteem of all who knew him, was about to close his long and useful life. Though an utter hater of shams, he had a thorough sympathy with all that regarded the interests of his country, and sought to relieve the tedium of his last illness by reading the daily papers, while his daughter occupied an adjoining room, ready to wait upon him at the smallest signal. One day she was startled by hearing sounds of unmistakeable laughter proceeding from the room of the invalid; he was a stern grave man, who rarely smiled in his happiest moments; she thought that his mind must be wandering. On entering the room she found him breathless and exhausted. 'Raise me up,' he said, 'that I may have one good laugh before I die.' She raised him up, and he had his laugh accordingly. accordingly. When, overpowered with weakness, he sank back upon the pillow, and she inquired the cause of this unusual explosion, he could not speak, but pointed to an advertisement in the paper he had been reading, announcing, in immense capitals, and with gigantic marks of admiration, The opening of a Working Men's College!! Under the most distinguished patronage, and with an ample staff of professors!!! Principal, Daghesh Forte!!!!' She now understood the cause of his laughter. No one knew or appreciated Daghesh more thoroughly than the dying professor. The very idea of a college with such a principal at its head was too much for his risible faculties. The working men failed to profit by the advantages thus held out to them, and Daghesh, despairing of success, gave up the cause of popular education in disgust. He was not destined to act the part of the Peri at the gate for ever; the perseverance of sixteen years was not to be without its reward; an accommodafing presbytery licensed him as a probationer of the Kirk, and an appreciating congregation soon chose him to be their minister. As might have been expected, his ministerial career has been attended with the most signal success. When the Revival movement was at its height, he assembled the people of seven neighbouring parishes, slowly ascended a mountain, like Moses of old, and delivered an address of such quickening power that nothing equal to it is recorded in the annals of the Church since the celebrated awakening at the kirk of Shotts. If we were to state the number of women said to have been struck down it might appear fabulous to our readers, but to us who remember that face and that voice, it does not exceed the bounds of credence. Who knows but he may be yet ex alted to the honour of D.D., and have to make his bow to the Lord High Commissioner as moderator of that venerable ecclesiastical council, the General Assembly of the Kirk! Lord P- died a few years after his election. We remember well the occasion of his death, or rather how it became known to us. The monthly mail had just come in-the only event which roused us Baratarians from our chronic state of languid indifference. In glancing over the papers, with which we sought to beguile the tedium of Baratarian life, we came upon a paragraph announcing his lordship's death. It affected us more than we should like to confess; that evening Fraser and Blackwood remained uncut; Dickens' and Thackeray's latest numbers had no attractions for us. We stole out into the verandah and sat down, sad and solitary, in our bamboo chair. It was one of those calm, lovely evenings peculiar to the southern hemisphere; no sound was to be heard save the shrill cry of the cicada among the long, withered grass, and the monotonous song of the labourer returning from his daily toil. Above was the glorious firmament, studded with its golden stars, and the bright moon with her long trail of silvery light on the ocean, the waves of which almost washed our feet. But we thought not of these things; our mind was borne back on the electric wires of memory, through the intervening medium of time and space, to the scenes we have tried to describe in this chapter. Often with a smile, sometimes perhaps with a tear, we thought of the man we had loved, with all his gibes, his gambols, his songs, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar; and also of the friends and companions of our early youth. Many of them still survive; one gained the Victoria Cross at Lucknow; another has risen high in the civil service in India; two are distinguished ministers of the Kirk; a few are not unknown in the world of letters; some have gone the way of all living. Among the latter is the most gifted of all, the only one who possessed that rarest of all God's gifts, a spark of true genius; his simple monument standing on one of the sunny slopes of the cemetery at Hastings tells how he perished in his prime. We visited it the other day. Its neglected state showed that no friendly hand had touched it for years; the solitary block of Peterhead granite looked cold and stern amid the surrounding tombstones. We knelt down reverently before it, and cleared away the moss from the letters, till the simple inscription again became legible. Ah well! it is better to die young than to belie the promise of our rising manhood. There may be much truth in the thoughtful saying of the ancients, that an early death is a proof of the divine favour. P. C. B. |