The Modern Athens 23

The Modern Athens 23

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