which a large town always gives. Their secluded habits when at college, and their intercourse only with their own number, prevented any improvement in this matter.

the whole, their conduct in the class, and their behaviour towards some of the professors, were anything but gentlemanly," 1

Another quotation from Mr M'Lean may be allowed, as embodying the descriptions often given by Dr Burton of the motley crew of competitors for the scholarships and bursaries dispensed by the university: "Gazing round the room, I noted that my competitors consisted of raw-boned red-haired Highlandmen, fresh from their native hills, with all their rusticity about them. All the northern counties had sent their quota to swell the number, and even the Orkney and Shetland Islands were represented. Many rosy-faced young fellows were also to be seen, who had left their country occupations for a little, and who, if unsuccessful"-i.e., in gaining a bursary-"would return to them, and work in their leisure hours at their favourite classics until another competition came round. Here and there were to be seen a few rather better dressed than the rest; whilst amongst the crowd the eye rested on many a studious, thin, cadaverous, hard-worked face, which made you look again, and feel in your heart that there sat a

1 Life in a Northern University. By Neil M'Lean, author of 'Memoirs of Marshal Keith,' 'Romance of the Seal and Whale Fishing,' &c., &c. Glasgow; John S. Marr & Sons : London; Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 1874.

bursar. A more motley crowd, as respects age, dress, and features, could scarcely be found anywhere; and yet over all there was an intellectual, manly look, a look of innocence and unacquaintance with the low ways of the world."1

Among this motley crowd John Hill Burton was no model student. He took his full share of the rough sport so well described in the 'Northern University'-wrenched off door-knockers and house - bells, transplanted signboards, &c. He was but a schoolboy in years when he left school for college, and his mother was frequently obliged to provide him with a private tutor, not so much to assist him in his studies as to keep him from idleness during his hours at home. Home was, during these years, for a time sad, and was always quiet. During his father's lifetime it was diversified by frequent changes of abode within a very narrow circuit.

The writer has seen some half-dozen small houses, in a rather unlovely suburb of Aberdeen, all within sight of each other, which had successively been inhabited by Lieutenant Burton and his family; the poor invalid craving for the real change which might have benefited his health, and seeking relief, instead, in constant change of house. Mrs Burton was entitled to an abode at Grandholm as well as her sisters, and the little family went there occasionally, at least after Lieutenant Burton's death. The place, which is a rather interesting one, filled a con

1 Life in a Northern University.

siderable space in the affections of the children. Its inmates did not. Clearly sister Eliza never was forgiven for her unfortunate marriage. Affection for her husband and for his memory prevented her apologising for it, and her children were not of the sort to apologise for their existence. A series of petty slights, small unkindnesses, imbittered the mind of the poverty-stricken widow against her unmarried sisters, and her feeling was strongly inherited by her children.

A house in Old Aberdeen has been already mentioned as the abode of Mrs Margaret Brown, Dr Burton's last surviving aunt. This quaint old house had been purchased by Mrs Brown's grandmother, mother of the laird of Grandholm, and at the beginning of the century was inhabited by her maiden daughter Margaret, or, as she was oftener called, Peggy Paton. This lady lived to the age of ninety, and at her death left her house and fortune to her niece and name-daughter, Margaret Paton (Mrs Brown), who in her turn adopted a grand-niece, the daughter already mentioned of Dr Burton's eldest brother, William, -the same who, having nursed her aged aunt till her death, in the last year of his life so tenderly ministered to her uncle, the subject of this notice.

The second in the line of female owners of the old house, Peggy Paton, was, for the outer world, what George Eliot calls "a charicter"-one of those distinguishing features of country-town life which the march of improvement

has swept away: a lady by birth, but owing little to schools or teachers, books or travel: a woman of strong natural understanding and some wit, who loved her nightly rubber at whist, could rap out an oath or a strong pleasantry, and whose quick estimates of men and things became proverbs with the younger generation.

For her inner circle Peggy Paton was a most motherly old maid. She it was who, when she found her niece Eliza would marry Lieutenant Burton, mediated between father and daughter, and arranged matters as well as might be in an affair in which her good sense found much to disapprove, and her heart much to excuse. Not only to her niece Margaret, her adopted daughter, but also to her other nieces at Grandholm, motherless by death, and fatherless by desertion, did she fill a mother's part as far as these robust virgins would permit her. Sister Eliza's rough little children, or rougher great boys, always found kindness in the house in the Old Town, first in their grand-aunt's1 time, and afterwards in that of her succes

1 It may not be counted indelicate, as it refers to a period 120 years gone by, to mention that Peggy Paton once had a lover, and that this, her first lover, was no other than the son of that Moir of Stoneywood, whose correspondence is so frequently quoted in Dr Burton's History of Scotland.' The young man was Peggy's first cousin, the lairds of Grandholm and Stoneywood having married sisters-Mackenzie by name. The laird of Stoneywood is known to posterity by his ingenious achievement of ferrying the rebel army across the Dornoch Firth in small fishing-boats collected by Stoney. wood all along the coast. On the defeat of the Pretender, and the suppression of the insurrection in 1746, Stoneywood's estate was con

sor, Mrs Brown. David, Dr Burton's younger brother, was lovingly tended by them during part of the lingering illness of which he died, and the youngest of Eliza Paton's sons remained an inmate of Mrs Brown's house that he might continue his education in Aberdeen, when his mother removed to Edinburgh.

For those who do not know Aberdeen, it may be proper to say that Old Aberdeen is as entirely distinct from New Aberdeen as Edinburgh is from Leith-in a different way. The distance between them is somewhat greater, about two miles; and whereas New Aberdeen is a highly prosperous commercial city, as entirely devoid of beauty or interest as any city under the sun, Old Aberdeen is a sweet, still, little place, hardly more than a village in size, in appearance utterly unlike any other place in Scotland, resembling a little English cathedral town,-the towers and spires of college and cathedral beautifully seen through ancient trees from the windows of Miss Peggy Paton's old house, to which that managing lady added a

fiscated, and he fled to the Continent. Family tradition adds that his escape was achieved by his disguising himself as a miller and swimming across the Don from Stoneywood to Grandholm, where the laird of Grandholm, who was of opposite politics, had removed the ferry-boat, and saw but did not denounce his kinsman. The houses of Grandholm and Stoneywood are exactly opposite each other on the two sides of the Don. Mrs Moir of Stoneywood did not immediately follow her husband, but remained with her friends to bring up her children, among them Miss Peggy's lover, who, soon after his engagement to her, joined his father on the Continent and there died.