Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

4 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
separated than now from the other, larger, but not
more distinct capital and metropolis of the south.
The University of Edinburgh flourished greatly, not
perhaps as it does now, by monster classes mak-
ing a Scottish chair one of the prizes in the world
of learning ; but by the fame, which was European,
of many of its teachers, and the large invasion of
pupils of higher rank and greater pretensions than
the youth of Edinburgh to partake the instructions
which gave an intellectual stimulus beyond their im-
mediate sphere of action to half the world. There
were thus brought together many of the men who
swayed and were born to sway the conquering race
of the world, the united but various peoples whom
it sometimes vexes our little Scotland, which has
contributed so much to its force, to consent to
hear identified among the heathen as " English,"
—a whimsical yet by no means unreal, though we
fear inevitable, grievance. She has always had
plenty of revenges upon the more abundant neigh-
bour who, for general purposes, has swallowed up in
his, like a husband with his wife, an equally dignified
and considerable, if not so wealthy, name. She has
never been without her large share in actuating the
policy of the co-partnership ; and in those days she
moulded the minds of almost all the budding statesmen
of the time, English as well as Scottish. Even
now, when everything tends towards London, Edinburgh
preserves a very distinct stamp of her own
but in those days she was as individual and distinct
as Paris or Vienna. That time has had abundant
record. The great professors, the judges, the doctors,
the wits and humorists of the Parliament House, and.
;