A year after we have another picture of his collegiate position."Our college is considerably more crowded than it was last session.My class indeed is much the same as last year, but all the rest are better.I believe the number of our students of one kind or other may be between four and five hundred.But the College of Edinburgh is increased this year much more than we are.The professor, Ferguson, is indeed as far as I can judge a man of noble spirit, of very elegant manners, and has a very uncommon flow of eloquence.
I hear he is about to publish, I do not know under what title, a natural history of man, exhibiting a view of him in the savage state, and in the several successive states of pasturage, agriculture, and commerce." " The most disagreeable thing in the teaching part is to have a great number of stupid Irish teagues who attend classes for two or three years, to qualify them for teaching schools or being dissenting teachers.I preach to these as St.Thomas did to the fishes.I do not know what pleasure he had in his audience; but I should have none in mine if there was not in it a mixture of reasonable creatures.I confess I think there is a smaller portion of these in my class this year than there was the last, although the number on the whole was not less.I have long been of opinion that in a right constituted college there ought to be two professors for each class, one for the dunces, and another for those who have parts.The province of the former would not be the most agreeable; but perhaps it would require the greatest talents, and therefore ought to be accounted the post of honor.There is no part of my time more disagreeably spent than that which is spent in college meetings, of which we have often five or six a week." "These meetings are become more disagreeable by an evil spirit of party, that seems to put us in a ferment; and I am afraid will produce bad consequences." We have here glimpses of the evils arising from the college patronage being so largely vested in a limited self-elected body, who turned it to party and family ends.As to the roughness of the Irish <teagues> (colts)which seems partly to have amused, and partly to have alarmed him, the blame of it is partly to be charged on the college itself, which received these students too eagerly, and allowed them to graduate too easily after a shorter period of attendance than the Scottish youths.The Presbyterian youth of {205} Ulster-shut out from Dublin University, owing to its sectarian character -- received from Glasgow, if not a refined, a very useful education, which enabled them, as ministers, doctors, and teachers, to raise their province above the other districts of Ireland in industry and intelligence.
As it is interesting to notice the Aberdeen philosopher's view of the frolicsome Irish youth, so it is instructive to observe the estimate by the Aberdeen moderate of the Calvinistic religion of the land of the covenant.
Writing to Aberdeen, July 13, 1765: ,I think the common people here and in the neighborhood, greatly inferior to the common people with you.They are Boeotian in their understandings, fanatic in their religion, and clownish in their dress and manners.The clergy encourage this fanaticism too much, and find it the only way to popularity.
I often hear a gospel here which you know nothing about; for you neither hear it from the pulpit nor will you find it in the Bible." Possibly this gospel was the very gospel of grace so valued by the people of the west of Scotland.It is possible, too, that at this time, when the contest between the refined moral system and the evangelical system was the closest and keenest, Dr.Reid may have been kept at a distance from the latter.In another letter he sees some of the more favorable features of the western character." The common people have a gloom in their countenance which I am at a loss whether to ascribe to their religion or to the air and climate.There is certainly more of religion among the common people in this town than in Aberdeen, and although it has a gloomy enthusiastic cast, yet I think it makes them tame and sober.I have not heard either of a house or head broke, of a pocket pict , or of any flagrant crime, since I came here.I have not heard any swearing in the streets, nor seen a man drunk (excepting, <inter nos>, one prof -- r), since I came here." The Aberdeen moderate is not prepossessed in favor of the west-country religion, but testifies in behalf of the west-country morality.He has an idea that the morality may somehow be connected with the religion; and possibly he might have seen more amiability and cheerfulness in the piety of the common people had he come in closer contact with it.It is significant that the drunk man is to be found in the class which had risen above the national faith.We shall have to look at a very {206}
different picture half a century later, when Chalmers begins his moderate <regime> labors in Glasgow.By that time, under the regime, both morality and religion have disappeared from the region (Drygate) in which Reid lived.The Glasgow professors may not have been directly responsible for the growing wickedness; but there was nothing in their teaching, moral or theological, adequate to the task of purifying the pollution coagulating all around them.
There are indications in these letters of the interest taken by Reid in every sort of scientific pursuit.He confidentially reports to Dr.David Skene Dr.Black's theory of heat before it was made known to the world.He is aiding a Turin professor of medicine who comes to Glasgow in his inquiries about the petrifaction of stones.He sends philosophical instruments to his friends in Aberdeen (Feb.
