LEARNING OF THE ATHENS.

——“As a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet,
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
His own weight brings him down again,
And still he’s in the self-same place,
Where, at his setting out, he was;
So, in the circle of the arts,
Do they advance their nat’ral parts,
Till falling back still, for retreat,
They fall to juggle, cant, and cheat.”

IF, in her metropolitan status as the seat of Caledonian law, the Athens be fixed as the dog-star, as the seat of Caledonian learning, she has been and must be, changeful as the moon. If the wealth of her lawyers “swells like the Solway,” the renown of her philosophers “ebbs like its tide.” The very same cause which raises the one,—which makes all hearts envy, all eyes admire, all knees worship, and all tongues speak the Babylonish dialect of special pleaders, comes cold and curdling as December’s ice over every thing else; and though there may be an occasional spring of the living water of the mind, which has its source too deep, or its current too thoroughly imbued with the immortal fire, for submitting to the cold congelation; yet such glorious instances must be few and far between. Even in the law itself, there may be green branches, just as there are green branches on the Upas; but, like the Upas, the law, or indeed any thing else which is so overpowering in its influence as the law is in the Athens, must in itself monopolize all the greenness, and etiolate and wither every thing that attempts to grow under its broad and gloomy shade. Whatever promises the chief reward will, under any circumstances, always attract the chief talent; and the state of the whole British dominions, and of the Athens not less than any other portion of them, is at present such as not to be exceedingly favourable to the pursuits of abstract and recondite philosophy. Luxury has found out for all those who have money to spend without working for it,—whether they have it as a legitimate heritage from their natural parents, or as the adopted children of that great nursery-mother of idlers, the state, abundant employment,—full occupation from every hour that they can snatch from the pangs of intemperance and the pillow of sleep, not only without profound philosophy, but without thought of any description that reaches beyond the enjoyment of the moment; and the number of these persons, especially the latter division of them, is so very considerable, that, of the remaining independent portion of the British people, none can afford to be philosophic or learned upon any other terms than those of being paid for it,—taking it up, and following it as a trade, as much as other men do the boring of cannon, or the building of bridges. That this is unquestionably true of the whole country, may be established from the philosophical publications, whether regular or periodical, which make their appearance at the present day. Of the regular class, there has not, so far as I know, been published, within the last thirty years, in any part of the British dominions, a single original work, that will transmit the name of its author to posterity. There have indeed been books, and books in which there have been the details of new experiments, and occasionally scraps of theories; but, like successive days in the kalendar, the one has usurped the place and extinguished the remembrance of the other; and, at the present moment, the most unmarketable article which an author could carry to a bookseller would be a profound treatise on any of the sciences. With regard to periodical learning again, (I use the word “learning” as distinguished from and even opposed to literature,) the case is very nearly the same. The philosophical journals, of all the periodicals, have the most limited circulation, are the least read, and the least worth the reading,—just because the proprietors of them cannot afford to pay for the labour which it would require to make them better.

Now, if this be the case with the British dominions generally, and with the British metropolis, where every species of talent has the means of being stimulated to the greatest exertion, and where every exertion meets with the most ample reward, much more must it be the case in the Athens, where there is not only no adequate remuneration for the labours of learning, but where there is a more honoured and rewarded pursuit, constantly soliciting the choice, not only of the Athenian, but of the Scottish talent generally, away from it. It cannot be hoped, that when a man of very ordinary talents can get a comfortable living and honourable distinction in society, by managing the estates of Scotch lairds, or the causes of Scotch litigants, men of superior ability will consent to starve in obscurity for the love of learning or of science. Mankind have become to the full as mercenary in their intellectual as in their civil marriages; and the Athenian muses, like the Athenian maidens, pine in unwooed neglect, because they have no dowry.

The Athenian University was long the boast of the Athens, not only as a school of philosophy, and a school of medicine, but as a general school of learning; and, with the exception, perhaps, of the latter, the titles were, in the case of a few illustrious men, well earned. Those times have, however, gone by, and the Athenian university, pressed down by the general circumstances of the Athens, and yet more by the peculiar circumstances of its own patronage, has sunk to rise no more.

Universities, indeed, have much of the general character of stars,—they shine brightest when all else is dark, and fade, if they do not disappear, when illumination becomes general. While the people, generally speaking, are ignorant, they are lights in the path of learning; but when the people become generally well informed, they are not much better than lumber. This would be their fate in general illumination, under any circumstances; but it is peculiarly so, in the circumstances under which—or rather, in spite of which, knowledge is at present spreading over the British dominions. The same cause which renders abstract studies unprofitable, must render the systems of universities unpopular, except in so far as the name of being there is necessary for professional purposes; and where the name is all that men actually need, they will not burden themselves with much of the thing named. If it were not that there are such things as fellowships, fat dinners, facilities for juvenile dissipation, church and other livings, a key to certain offices, and a general nominal eclÂt, which in so far serves as a substitute for real information, it is very possible that several halls in Oxford and Cambridge would be abandoned to bats and spiders,—that “the two eyes of England” would be left “for daws to peck at;” and it was pretty plain to me, from the general tenour of the Athenian feeling, as expressed in the Athenian speech, that, if the attendance of certain classes of her university were not required for those who plaster the consciences of Caledonian sinners, and who bring down the tone of the Caledonian pulse, or the Caledonian purse, her learned Thebans would be allowed to deliver their prelections to the stones in the wall, and the beam of the timber. In as far, therefore, as I could see and reason from circumstances, there is much, both in the feeling of the people in the Athens, and in the causes by which that feeling is produced, to render the decline of learning certain on the one hand, while there is little or nothing of a counteracting tendency on the other.

In addition to this, in as far as the university is concerned, there is the infliction of perhaps the very worst patronage that could be devised or even imagined. I have noticed already, what a precious piece of work the corporations, or, as they are termed, “the councils” of the royal burghs are in Scotland. In itself, there is nothing to render that of the Athens better than any of the others; and, in close juxtaposition with it, there is something which tends to make it worse. The whole town-councils in Scotland are, their attention to their own personal interests excepted, ignorant, unreasoning, and passive tools in the hands of the ruling faction. If the actual leaders of that faction have not their actual residence in the Athens, it is there that they find the hands which do their work. Those hands belong to men, who not only have a better education than the Athenian magistrates, but who perform more important functions, and perform them in the face, and for the weal or the woe of the whole of Scotland. To them, therefore, the magistrates of the Athens are inferior; and this circumstance, taken in conjunction with the inferiority which the whole system of the Scotch burghs tends to stamp upon the magistrates, renders the said civic rulers of the Athens the most unfit patrons of a school of philosophy, or indeed of any thing learned or liberal, that human imagination could devise. Not only this; but the superior talents, at least the superior pretensions, of the other functionaries alluded to, will throw the civic worthies into their train as followers; and thus, whatever patronage they exercise, will have to sustain, in addition to their own sheer dulness, the dead deadening weight of the party politics of the country,—a combination of stupidity and slavery, under which that system were either greater or less than human, which could flourish in a rational and liberal manner.

When it is known that the provost, bailies, counsellors, and deacons of the Athens,—seldom men of any education, and never men of any genius,—cum avisamento eorum ministrorum, (which, being interpreted, signifies “without benefit of clergy,”) have the sole power of electing the greater number of professors in the Athenian university,—when it is considered that the remaining ones are nominated by the crown, in other words, by the leading faction in Scotland for the time,—and when it is borne in mind that the said provosts, bailies, counsellors, and deacons, are little else than a pair of bagpipes, upon which the said faction discourses whatsoever music it chooses,—it will become but too apparent, that the chances of having the professors’ chairs filled by the very fittest men possible are about as small as can well be estimated. That ignorant men should have the power of appointing professors of learning is in itself a very great absurdity; and that the ignorant men to whom such a power is delegated, should themselves be tacked to the tail of a political faction for the purpose of retaining places, contrary both to reason and their own abilities, makes the matter, theoretically considered, a great deal worse. I have no wish to accuse the civic archons of the Athens of wilful abuse in the exercise of this patronage; but I have seen them, I have heard them speak, and I have noticed the estimation in which they are held; and, by a very charitable induction from all these circumstances, I cannot help coming to the conclusion, that they are totally incapable, of their own knowledge, of determining who is, or who is not, a fit person for being porter to the Athenian college, far less professor of the humblest art or science held forth upon within its walls, not even excepting the professor of agriculture, or, as he is aptly termed, “the doctor of dunghills.”

Accordingly, though in times past, and not very long past, there have been found, in sundry chairs of the Athenian university, men who would have done honour to any college in any country, I looked for a continuation of men of the same talents and eminence; but though I looked for them, I found them not. The time has not long gone by, when the principal of that university was numbered, if not with the most learned and profound, at least with the most elegant of historians; but I should be glad to be informed of what person, or thing, or circumstance, the being that I found holding the supreme sway in the Athenian university, and in its metropolitan name, presenting himself before the King, as a specimen and representative of all the universities of Scotland, could write the history. It is true, that the office of this person is not much else than a sinecure, as he seldom comes before the public, except when his name stands rubric to a diploma; but, if an image is found with a wooden head, people are apt to turn away, without any very much examination of the limbs. It is said, more wittily than wisely perhaps, among the fledglings at the seats of science in the south, that “whatever may be the walls, the heads of houses are most commonly of lead;” and the saying might be carried to the Athens, if it were worth the trouble. I was told that, if at some former point of Athenian history, this personage had not been a bachelor, and the daughter of a quondam provost of the Athens a damsel to be wooed, the college of the Athens might have gone all unprincipaled for him; but the Athenians are so prone to drill holes in the glory of each other, that one never knows how much of their story to believe.

Still, if the nomination of the masters of Eton and Winchester, and the doctors of Isis and Cam, were deputed to the corporation of London, England would tremble for her learned fame; and yet no one can deny that the court of aldermen, notwithstanding the mental and corporeal obesity of which they are accused, are far more promising patrons for such purposes, than the town-council of the Athens. Their own election depends upon a greater number of persons, and before they can carry it, they must have some superiority over the freemen of their ward,—the means of flattering and bribing them, if nothing else; but, in the Athens, there is not the smallest test of talent previous to a man’s being chosen an elector of professors; and, therefore, no pledge that he either will or can exercise that function in a proper manner.

The “avisamentum eorum ministrorum” has no tendency to amend the matter; for the advice which these worthies are most likely to give, is, that themselves are the fittest of all possible professors,—a proposition, of which the theoretical doubts are great, and they are not lessened by experience.

The ministers of the Edinburgh kirks, appointed by the same persons as the professors, may be presumed to be appointed upon the same principles; and thus, though they were conjoined with the others, in the university nominations, it would be but an increase of the evil,—the addition of the political son to that of the political father; or, as Professor Leslie would express it, “a combination of direct and retroflected dulness.”

In consequence of these circumstances, the eorum ministrorum have usurped every professor’s chair in the Athenian college which can be by any sophistry twisted into a compatibility with the functions of a minister of the Kirk. After the very Reverend personage who, as aforesaid, groans under the load of the principality (not of Wales), the chairs, not only of divinity, church history, and Hebrew, but of logic and rhetoric, and the belles lettres, are in the hands of the Athenian priests. Now, though a parson in esse be the most likely person to teach divinity and church history, because those who are parsons in posse are the only persons that are likely to dip deeply into such studies; though, in a country where Jews do not thrive, it be a matter of no great moment who shall teach Hebrew, and though logic and rhetoric, as they are usually taught, be no weighty matters, yet there are substantial reasons why no officiating clergyman in the Athens should hold any chair whatever in the college.

In the first place, the Kirk of Scotland, at least according to her book of discipline, recognises no clergyman who does not perform the whole of his duties in his own person. She will have no “dumb dogs who cannot bark,” and if they bark to the extent that she points out, they will have no strength left even to hunt syllogisms in Bar-ba-ra, or to nozzle up Hebrew roots. The minister of the Kirk is, by its constitution, presumed not only to reside in his parish, and perform divine service every Sunday, but to devote the whole of the week, that is, as much of every day of it, as other men of a similar rank in life are supposed to devote to business, to visiting his people at their houses, and receiving their visits at his own, instructing and catechising the young, recommending the destitute to the charity of the Kirk Session, praying by the bed-side of the dying, and performing a number of other little offices of religion and charity, which are supposed to be imperiously binding upon him in virtue of his solemn vow of ordination. Ministers of the Kirk are furthermore not understood to purchase their annual stock of “Conciones SelectÆ” in the booksellers’ shop, as is the case in some other places; and thus every spare hour from the parochial duties of the week is presumed to be taken up in preparing for the pulpit duties of the Sunday. Hence a minister of the Scottish Kirk, who is in the possession of a cure, cannot, in conscientious accordance with the oath that he takes when he is inducted, or with the practical duties which he ought to perform, accept of a professorship even of divinity or Hebrew. Either the church-living should be such as to occupy by its duties and reward by its emoluments, the whole of the incumbent’s time, or it should be so altered as to bring it to this state.

With regard to the professorships, again, it is extremely doubtful whether even such of them as divinity and church history can be profitably placed in the hands of the parsons; at any rate, one would very naturally think that the duties of a professor’s chair should be sufficiently arduous for occupying the whole of a mind as large as that which falls to the ordinary run of clerical persons; while, in the case of those of logic and rhetoric, the arts required in the Parliament-House, the grand theatre of logical wrangling and rhetorical display, not only in the Athens, but for all Scotland, the clumsy concatenation and leaden style which I heard, even in the Athenian pulpits, are strong presumptive evidence against the propriety of having them intrusted to clerical hands.

But it is not to those professorships alone that eorum ministrorum aspire. Not many years have gone by since the whole Athens was thrown into confusion, because one of the brethren was not permitted to squelch his carcass into the chair of mathematics, and become the successor of MacLaurin, and Stewart, and Playfair; and had he succeeded, the Athenians would perhaps ere now have had a clerical expounder of “Dirlton’s Doubts” in the chair of law, and a holder forth in the Tron Kirk wielding the anatomical scalpel during the week. The objections taken to the better-qualified candidate upon that occasion, were such as to throw considerable light upon the feeling of eorum ministrorum toward the university, and to enable one to form a pretty accurate guess at what will be its state if their unquenchable longing for it shall ever be fully satisfied. The exception which they took was a grave charge of infidelity, founded upon an allusion to David Hume, contained in a note to a purely philosophic book, and a book, too, which, both from its subject and its style, was never likely to get into general circulation, and would be read by nobody, merely on account of the note—the only part which was impugned as being contrary to the canons of orthodoxy.

It must be allowed that, if its patronage were at all in decent hands, the constitution of the Athenian university is not bad. The salaries of the professors are all so small that if the livings are worth the acceptance of men of talent, they must be chiefly made up of the small annual fees payable by the students. This is a very wholesome plan, and tends more to reward every one according to his real merits than that which obtains at most other places. The patronage, however, with the three elements of civil ignorance, political influence, and clerical intrigue, arranged against the single and undefined good of the institution, is more than enough to paralyze all the good which that principle, properly supported, or even let alone, would be capable of effecting.

Those evils have begun to pervade the whole system. As the Athens is the grand seat of lawyers, there will always be students for the law classes, increasing with the increase that there is for lawyers; but in every thing else the poison of decay has been infused, and the decay itself has become visible. With the exception of Leslie, who has written some very flaming articles in the Edinburgh Review, and some books in which the path to geometry is made a little more thorny than ever; of Jamieson, who has been most learned on slate and granite; and Wilson, who has indited some pretty lake poetry, and some pitiful political prose, of which he is said to be now highly ashamed,—I did not hear that any of the Athenian professors have put in a single claim for immortality. Even in her anatomical school, that upon which she rested her fame the longest and the most securely, the recent falling off has been great; and of all those who now shine in the lists of her senatus there is none able to hold the book for Gregory, or the scalpel for old Monro, or light the furnace for Black. I understand that for the fragments of her medical school that remain, the Athens is almost wholly dependant upon private lecturers; that the students pay their fees and enter their names at the college, not with any view of attending the classes there, but because the fees and entries are necessary for the ceremony of graduation. But for the celebrity of her professors, the Athens possesses no advantages as the locality of a medical school. From the nature and pursuits of the Athenian society, there is neither that variety of patients, nor that variety of cases, which is found in cities even of equal population, where a large portion of the people are engaged in manufactures. That it is as good in this respect as Glasgow begins to be doubted, as a considerable number of medical students now attend the Glasgow college in preference; and that it is any way comparable to London, as a school of surgery, no one can suppose. If the medical glory of the Athenian college continue to decrease as it has done for some time, that college will soon become, like the Athens herself, a pensionary upon the law and the politics of Scotland.

But if there be those causes of mortality in the college, there is not much hope of life in any of the other philosophic institutions of the Athens. Royal societies are no where much better than coteries of old wives; and, judging from their recent pursuits, that of the Athens can form no exception to the general character. That a poet and novelist should be the president of such an institution, is proof that the number of Athenian philosophers cannot be great; and however successful and deserving of success such a person may be in his other and lighter capacity, he is not the most likely man to give soundness and solidity to the speculations of philosophers. The fact is, that with the exception of the teacher of a class, and the editor of an Encyclopedia, (who are of course but very heavy and humdrum persons,) and a wisdom-struck squire or two, who take to the amusement of the small philosophy of mosses and muscle-shells rather than the small carpentry of snuff-boxes and fiddles, and who would be quite eclipsed in any other place, there is nothing in the Athens which can be called an amateur philosopher, and of the professional ones I have already spoken.

In their philosophical opinions, the Athenians are an absolute pendulum; and when the history of their swingings this way and that way is looked at, they seem to be a pendulum which has no continued stimulus of motion, but of which the oscillations, though not fewer in number, gradually become more and more insignificant in range. While David Hume was lord of the ascendant, the Athenians doubted every thing but their own wisdom and importance; under Adam Smith, they considered “moral sentiments” as being valuable only in “theory,” and learned “economy” in their “politics,” by bringing all their disposable votes and vices to the best market. Under Robertson, they knew all history; and with Blair, every sentence was taken from the storehouse of the Belles Lettres, and measured by the gauge of Rhetoric. When Reid and Dugald Stewart turned the tables upon the sceptics, the Athenians were entirely composed of intellectual or of active powers, and they were drawn and held by the sweetest cords of association. With Playfair, they attempted to go quietly to the very depth of philosophic systems; and anon, they started to the moon with Dr. Brewster. While Leslie was new, they burned and sweated with him in all the ardour of radiant caloric; and now they lie upon mossy banks, prepared for them by Brewster, Jamieson, and Sir George, and listen to the tales of Sir Walter, or to the ghost stories of Dr. Hibbert. Thus have opinions changed, and importances have faded away; but the Athenians have in their nature remained the same. So change the phases of the moon, now beamy, anon blank; now pushing her horns eastward, now westward,—but still the same dark globe, without light save that which it has at second-hand from another.