Memories and Portraits | Page 9

strange), had previously happened to my father; and if they are
good and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will be found in
time to have befallen my successors of to-day. Of the specific points of
change, of advantage in the past, of shortcoming in the present, I must
own that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief
and far the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean,
ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and
heart of the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional
purposes of good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet, east-
windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during lecture
and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truantry, made up the
sunshine and shadow of my college life. You cannot fancy what you
missed in missing him; his virtues, I make sure, are inconceivable to his
successors, just as they were apparently concealed from his
contemporaries, for I was practically alone in the pleasure I had in his
society. Poor soul, I remember how much he was cast down at times,
and how life (which had not yet begun) seemed to be already at an end,
and hope quite dead, and misfortune and dishonour, like physical
presences, dogging him as he went. And it may be worth while to add
that these clouds rolled away in their season, and that all clouds roll
away at last, and the troubles of youth in particular are things but of a
moment. So this student, whom I have in my eye, took his full share of
these concerns, and that very largely by his own fault; but he still clung
to his fortune, and in the midst of much misconduct, kept on in his own
way learning how to work; and at last, to his wonder, escaped out of the
stage of studentship not openly shamed; leaving behind him the
University of Edinburgh shorn of a good deal of its interest for myself.

But while he is (in more senses than one) the first person, he is by no
means the only one whom I regret, or whom the students of to- day, if
they knew what they had lost, would regret also. They have still Tait, to
be sure - long may they have him! - and they have still Tait's
class-room, cupola and all; but think of what a different place it was
when this youth of mine (at least on roll days) would be present on the
benches, and, at the near end of the platform, Lindsay senior (3) was
airing his robust old age. It is possible my successors may have never
even heard of Old Lindsay; but when he went, a link snapped with the
last century. He had something of a rustic air, sturdy and fresh and
plain; he spoke with a ripe east-country accent, which I used to admire;
his reminiscences were all of journeys on foot or highways busy with
post-chaises - a Scotland before steam; he had seen the coal fire on the
Isle of May, and he regaled me with tales of my own grandfather. Thus
he was for me a mirror of things perished; it was only in his memory
that I could see the huge shock of flames of the May beacon stream to
leeward, and the watchers, as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of
the windward bars of the furnace; it was only thus that I could see my
grandfather driving swiftly in a gig along the seaboard road from
Pittenweem to Crail, and for all his business hurry, drawing up to speak
good-humouredly with those he met. And now, in his turn, Lindsay is
gone also; inhabits only the memories of other men, till these shall
follow him; and figures in my reminiscences as my grandfather figured
in his.
To-day, again, they have Professor Butcher, and I hear he has a
prodigious deal of Greek; and they have Professor Chrystal, who is a
man filled with the mathematics. And doubtless these are set- offs. But
they cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie has retired, and that
Professor Kelland is dead. No man's education is complete or truly
liberal who knew not Kelland. There were unutterable lessons in the
mere sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like
a fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of
that very kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences in class
time, though not for long, and give us glimpses of old-world life in out-
of-the-way English parishes when he was young; thus playing the same
part as Lindsay - the part of the surviving memory, signalling out of the
dark